What was Kurosawa's Square Film Format?

[Lucas Lightfeat]

Anybody know what size those old Japanese films were shot on? It is a virtualy if not literaly square format, always black and white, and I'm really curious. The web doesn't seem to know, or at least google doesn't

My guess is that it's a really obscure "dead" format. I ask because everybody is raving about widescreen format, but I love 4 by 3, whatever they say, infact in spite of it. I am more keen on it since everyone frowns on it. I like that square frame - kind of sexy, like a medium format rollfilm sexy.

What say you?

[Guest]

Kurosawa shot on standard, everyday 35mm.

ALL film formats are 1.37:1 (with the notable exception of Super16). 35mm is 1.37:1. 16mm is 1.37:1. 8mm & Super 8mm are 1.37:1. Super35 is 1.37:1.

The original film format, 35mm "Silent Aperture", is a full-frame, sprocket-to-sprocket 1.37:1 format. With the advent of sound and the need for space for a soundtrack, the frame was shrunk slightly to "Academy Aperture", which is still 1.37:1, and which is the primary shooting format used today. The invention of "Super35" opened up the full frame, which is identical in fact to the original "Silent Aperture" mode.

The two exceptions are Anamorphic 35mm and Super16mm, discussed below.

Any aspect ratio other than 1.37:1 is accomplished by cropping the frame. All 1.85:1 movies are made by masking the 1.37:1 image. In Europe, movies are projected at 1.66:1, which is again accomplished by masking the 1.37:1 image. Widescreen Super35 movies (such as Lord Of The Rings) are shot on 1.37:1 film, and they literally crop almost half the frame out to shrink the image down to 2.39:1.

1.37:1 was the dominant projection format from the inception of the movies up until the introduction of television. When TV came out (and chose its 1.33:1 aspect ratio for compatibility with film, by the way) the movie producers said "how will we convince people to come to the theater still? We need something original!" So they experimented with surround sound, electric shock (The Tingler) and all sorts of things, but the cheapest and easiest to implement was WIDESCREEN -- accomplished by throwing away part of the negative, covering it up with black bars.

The exceptions to 1.37: Anamorphic 35mm, which is shot using a film gate aperture of approximately 1.2:1, through a 2:1 anamorphic lens, giving an uncompressed result of anywhere from 2.35:1 to 2.39:1 (today's standard). And Super16, which is the only native film format in common use that is wider than 1.37:1... Super16 has a ratio of 1.66:1. It still must be cropped for HDTV or 1.85:1 blowup.

Depending on the point in Kurosawa's career, he used various standard Hollywood formats. All his early stuff is 1.37:1, but later (such as The Seven Samurai) is anamorphic, etc.

[Lucas Lightfeat]

Thanks for the info. I know a fair bit about film formats and sizes from having studied cinematography, but was curious about Seven Samurai in particular, because it is cropped at the sides, due to the frame being slightly squarer than 1.33:1, contrary to your suggestion that it was shot anarmorphic. It wasn't anarmorphic - neither was it cropped. I had thought it might have been a smaller format but it is probably, as you say 1.37:1 35mm as it is one of his old films. If judged without prejudice, the frame shape is really nice, and draws your eye not just left and right, but up and down too. I think square is cool. I'm going to dedicate myself to the anti-widescreen revolution!

Thankyou, Lucas

[Guest]

DOH! I am a dope, Seven Samurai is definitely 1.37:1. Sorry 'bout that. I had accidentally clicked on "The Magnificent Seven" instead of "Seven Samurai". But Kurosawa's few later films were shot in conventional widescreen aspect ratios, "Ran" was 1.85:1 and "Dreams" was 2.35:1.

[Cheezy]

ALL film formats are 1.37:1 (with the notable exception of Super16). 35mm is 1.37:1. 16mm is 1.37:1. 8mm & Super 8mm are 1.37:1. Super35 is 1.37:1. [...] In Europe, movies are projected at 1.66:1, which is again accomplished by masking the 1.37:1 image. Widescreen Super35 movies (such as Lord Of The Rings) are shot on 1.37:1 film, and they literally crop almost half the frame out to shrink the image down to 2.39:1.

What you are stating here seems odd and weird to me. That's not exactly what I was explained. Can you prove that? BTW, I often read in many cinema books that 16mm is 1.33, not 1.37. So... according to you Super35 is 1.37... Then why not Super16? Would you say that 70mm is 1.37 too? Then why have all these different formats?

[mattias]

Can you prove that?

prove? come on. it's actually pretty much common knowledge. very easy to verify in books and on the net.

So... according to you Super35 is 1.37... Then why not Super16?

super-16 is single perf, and there's no room to grow the frame's height as there is in 35mm, which has a wider frameline.

Would you say that 70mm is 1.37 too?

70mm is a film gauge, not a single format.

Then why have all these different formats?

well, they're generally compromises between price and performance, tweaked to fit the previous technology. it's not very logical at all times.

/matt

[Lucas Lightfeat]

Yeah, but what's your favourite aspect ratio guys?

Mine is 1.33:1, or as I prefer to call it, good old 4:3. I believe that in the past I have believed that widescreen was better like a sheep because I was told it was better.

Widescreen was developed initially in a drive to help cinema survive by offering something new and different from television, with it's 4:3 aspect.
Source: British Film Institute handbook

It's happening again within TV, where manufacturers are making us rebuy televisions with widescreen aspect. Surely we die-hard rebels of the Super8 world should confirm our loyalty to the 4:3 "logical" frame.

Lucas Lightfeat[/i]

[tfunch24 being lazy]

I shoot 4:3 not because I like it but because converting my S8 cam to a widescreen setup would be a royal pain in the arse. That said, I do believe 4:3 would be a better setup for most S8 shooters since the majority of the films shot and finished end up being shown on TV or projected on a small Radiant movie screen.

I do believe that allowances should be made so that films shot at 2.35.1 can be shown as the director intended--even on a small TV screen. However that doesn't mean everyone should have to spend $$$ for widescreen TVs. There's nothing evil with those black bars that appear on the top and bottom of the telly's screen.


Tom

[Guest]

Let me amend what I said:

I wrote:
That said, I do believe 4:3 would be a better setup for most S8 shooters since the majority of the films shot and finished end up being shown on TV or projected on a small Radiant movie screen.

What I meant to say was:

...since the majority of the S8 films shot and finished up being shown on TV or projected on a small Radiant movie screen.

Tom

[mattias]

Yeah, but what's your favourite aspect ratio guys?

Mine is 1.33:1, or as I prefer to call it, good old 4:3.

yeah, i really like 4:3 as well, but it's usually a lot easier to frame a subject "correctly" for a wider aspect. i'm not sure why, but it's probably because there are a lot more horizontal lines than vertical ones in the world, plus the lower center of gravity of a wider shape makes it physically more stable. it could also be psychological cultural since we are more accustomed to moving our heads and eyes from side to side than up and down. perhaps if the fish and the birds had invented cinema we would have had 3:4 and 9:16 instead? ;-)

/matt

[Guest]

Theoretically S16 should provide the nearly "perfect" aspect ratio, if ancient Greek architects are to be followed... there exists a ratio known as the "golden ratio" which humans find very attractive. It's derived from taking a line and separating it into two segments, where the ratio of the long piece to the short piece is the same as the ratio that both pieces is to the long piece. Coincidentally it's approximately the same ratio as borne between numbers in the Fibonacci series (which is adding the prior two numbers to come up with the next number in the series, i.e. 1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21, etc. The ratio between those numbers is roughly 1.6-something, which is about the same ratio as the "golden ratio". Greek architects used the ratio to put "golden rectangles" in the Parthenon, Acropolis, etc.

Discover magazine had a fascinating article on human beauty, where they basically determined that the golden ratio governs faces in the same way: i.e., the closer the distances that make up a face (hairline to eyebrows, eyes to chin, etc) approximate the "golden ratio", the more likely people were to declare that face "attractive".

And that ratio, like I said, is 1.6-something. And Super16 is 1.66:1. So, my vote is for S16!

[S8 Booster]

Yeah, but what's your favourite aspect ratio guys?

Mine is 1.33:1, or as I prefer to call it, good old 4:3.

yeah, i really like 4:3 as well, but it's usually a lot easier to frame a subject "correctly" for a wider aspect. i'm not sure why, .....

/matt

I shot a video in 16:9 for the first time of a Lucia pre-performance with scool children a couple of days ago. (as told before I just recently found my Sony Hi8 CC to have a "real" 16:9 setting, not letterboxed)
Having run quite a few (kilo) meteres of identical performances of theatre stages I found the 16:9 format much easier to work with than the 4:3 which very often covers top and bottom pieces of a stage that are normally useless unless you go for CLOSE framing for most of the time. (YEAH, parents really likes CLOSEUPS of their children on stage though!)


I really liked the 16:9 but 2:1 would be perfect for this as I see it.

However, on S8 shooting I find the 4:3 very good because I usually project the stuff and and the extra image area doesn´t really disturb at all there on "the big screen".

As a funny note I would like to mention that I shot some short clips on S8/K40 of an identical performance some years ago and it came out pretty good in quite low stage light as well and the "presence" of the film material is really exceptional when I project it compared to the video on TV. The "extra" vertical frame area (full stage width takes) compared to the videos 16:9 very often goes totally black on full stage takes so it is not really noticed.

I fear that running my newly aquired C310XL migh be,... far too expensive in operation for this. (film costs)

R

[Guest]

I usually don't like 4:3 when it comes to video, but with Super8 it's ok. I'm pretty much a 2.35 addict actually, but 1.33 is what makes Super8 so... Super8! Obviously, 1.66 should satisfy both square and widescreen lovers