8mm Forum: Anamorphic question

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Posted by Timothy Duncan (Member # 4461) on December 28, 2014, 08:12 PM:

Could someone please explain to me what a SCOPE print is? What does it look like and do you need a special lens to project one? Is it the same as WIDESCREEN?
-Tim

Posted by Andrew Woodcock (Member # 3260) on December 28, 2014, 08:26 PM:

It uses the tiny super 8 frame to stretch it to almost twice the width of it's normal size to give a true cinemascope effect whilst keeping the image correct in terms of perspective.
The depth of the screened image remains the same.

It does so by the use of a special lens called an anamorphic that is placed just in front of the projectors existing lens.

Films that are shot or printed in scope appear "squeezed" without first placing an Anamorphic lens in front of the projector.

There is quite a large loss of light output by using an Anamorphic lens, therefore you would need a very bright projector to screen anything quite large in "scope"

The image ratio transfers from the standard 1.33:1 to 2.35:1 by using the Anamorphic scope lens.

Posted by Maurice Leakey (Member # 916) on December 29, 2014, 02:55 AM:

Timothy
If your film looks OK and humans are not all squeezed up horizontally, you have a widescreen print, not a scope print.

Posted by Clinton Hunt (Member # 2072) on December 29, 2014, 04:09 AM:

I have a scope film called Born Free a 400ft colour super8,I don't have the lens needed to stretch the image but it's still great to watch,

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on December 29, 2014, 05:36 AM:

A 'scope film shown without the anamorphic has very interesting effects on the people on screen. Somebody of typical build will be kind of lanky, but somebody normally fat will look like they've been on a diet. People on horseback are hysterical: they look about 20 feet high! When the horse goes from a side view to a front view it will change from a stubby horse to a skinny horse.

The best test is to look for circles: wheels, clocks, planets, whatever. If you look at something you know has to be circular and instead you see an oval with the long axis vertical then you just know something is up.

I was on a video conference a couple of years ago. There were two screens on the wall: the video feed from the other end (in Russia) and our own. I looked at myself on screen and I saw I was a little...chunky. This really bothered me because I watch my weight, and obviously it was becoming futile. Then I noticed a drawing on the wall in back of me was horizontally oval when it's really circular. Problem: video was being taken 4:3 and stretched over a 16:9 monitor.

Afterwards I had a satisfying breakfast: I had dodged the bullet!

(Who could have guessed this knowledge would be generally useful?!)

Posted by Brian Fretwell (Member # 4302) on December 29, 2014, 06:14 AM:

I bought a squeezed print before getting an anamorphic lens. For a few weeks I projected in with a small screen at an angle to the projector to stretch it.

The small, fixed focus Hypergonar lens I bought originally did give a 2.35:1 picture (it being a 1.75:1 squeeze lens not 2:1) but that was wrong too as Super 8 Scope is cropped top & bottom on most prints to 2.66:1, not Cineavision of course. So I had to buy another lens, for all but the home movies I had made with the original one.

Posted by Martin Jones (Member # 1163) on December 29, 2014, 08:58 AM:

Commercial Super 8 Scope prints have a "squeeze" ratio of 2:1. Since they finish up on screen as 2.35:1 when shown with a 2:1 anamorphic they are actually less than normal width on the film (i.e. there are small black bars either side in the normal frame).

For amateur "filmers" requiring a true CinemaScope format of 2.35:1 as an end result, a !.75:1 lens is used for taking and projecting: I have one, a "Magnarama". They are relatively rare, since there was nothing wrong with using a 2:1 lens for the purpose and ending up with 2.66:1 (wider than CinemaScope, but not as wide as Cinerama).

Posted by Paul Adsett (Member # 25) on December 29, 2014, 09:30 AM:

I have always thought that the 2.66 aspect ratio of Super 8 Scope looks too extreme. It would have been much better to have retained the full height of the original 35mm print image and preserved the 2.35 aspect ratio. I have several S8 scope prints where tops of heads are cut off.

Posted by Rob Young. (Member # 131) on December 29, 2014, 09:37 AM:

"Commercial Super 8 Scope prints have a "squeeze" ratio of 2:1. Since they finish up on screen as 2.35:1 when shown with a 2:1 anamorphic they are actually less than normal width on the film (i.e. there are small black bars either side in the normal frame)."

Sorry Martin, but this isn't quite correct.

Only specially produced "Cineavison" prints are in this format.

Most super 8 'scope prints crop the top and bottom of the original theatrical version, thus providing full image width, but with some top and bottom frame information cropped.

As usual, when this topic "crops" up here on the forum, there is much confusion and deliberation over screen ratio.

Paul, whilst Cinevisions versions were specifically designed to address these issues, the results often suffered in resolution terms because additional optical intermediates were required. So you gained the full, say, 2.35:1 theatrical frame, but often with significantly reduced resolution..."horse for courses", as they say.

Posted by Osi Osgood (Member # 424) on December 29, 2014, 01:09 PM:

One of the slight issues I have had with most Super 8 scope prints (except for those lovely "Cineavision" prints), is that the anamorphic scope print come in on the scope image to fill the whole super 8 frame, but cut off image info on the top and botton, and while most of the time it's not too bad, sometimes, (as with, for instance, some of the DERANN issue Tom and Jerry scope prints), there is too much info lost in my opinion.

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