CinemaScope

CinemaScope is a cinematographic technique which used an anamorphic lens to produce widescreen pictures. Crucially, these could be shown in theatres using existing equipment (and an adapter). CinemaScope pictures were produced from 1953[1] to 1967, and less often after.

When 20th Century Fox began using CinemaScope this marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in 2.55:1, almost twice as wide as the previously common Academy format's 1.37:1 ratio. Although the technology behind the CinemaScope lens system was made obsolete by later developments, primarily advanced by Panavision, CinemaScope's anamorphic format has continued to this day. In film-industry jargon, the shortened form, 'Scope, is still widely used by both filmmakers and projectionists, although today it generally refers to any 2.35:1, 2.39:1, 2.40:1, or 2.55:1 presentation or, sometimes, the use of anamorphic lensing or projection in general. Bausch & Lomb won a 1954 Oscar for its development of the CinemaScope lens.

Origins

CinemaScope derives from a film process called Anamorphoscope developed by French inventor Henri Chrétien and patented in 1926. It used lenses that employed an optical technique called Hypergonar to produce an image twice as wide as those that were created with conventional lenses by compressing the image laterally during shooting and dilating it during projection.[2] Chrétien attempted to interest the motion picture industry in his invention but, at that time, the industry was not sufficiently impressed.

By 1950, however, competition from television was causing a serious decline in cinema attendance. To combat this, Cinerama and 3D films were both launched in 1952. This persuaded Spyros Skouras, the head of 20th Century Fox, that technical innovation could buoy filmmaking against the television challenge.[3] Skouras tasked Earl Sponable, head of Fox's research department, with devising a rival projection system that, unlike Cinerama, could be retrofitted to existing theatres at a relatively modest cost. Herbert Brag, Sponable's assistant, remembered Chrétien's hypergonar lens.[4]

List of CinemaScope films

Early implementation

CinemaScope was developed to use a separate film for sound (see Audio below), thus enabling the full silent 1.33:1 aperture to be available for the picture, with a 2:1 anamorphic squeeze applied that would allow an aspect ratio of 2.66:1. When, however, developers found that magnetic stripes could be added to the film to produce a composite picture/sound print, the ratio of the image was reduced to 2.55:1. This reduction was kept to a minimum by reducing the width of the normal KS perforations so that they were nearly square, but of DH height. This was the CinemaScope, or CS, perforation, known colloquially as fox-holes.[6] Later still an optical soundtrack was added, further reducing the aspect ratio to 2.35:1 (1678:715). This change also meant a shift in the optical center of the projected image. All of Fox's CinemaScope films were made using a silent/full aperture for the negatives, as was this studio's practice for all films, whether anamorphic or not.

In order to better hide so-called negative assembly splices, the ratio of the image was later changed by others to 2.39:1 (1024:429). All professional cameras are capable of shooting 2.55:1 (special 'Scope aperture plate) or 2.66:1 (standard Full/Silent aperture plate, preferred by many producers and all optical houses), and 2.35:1 or 2.39:1 or 2.40:1 is simply a hard-matted version of the others.

Fox selected The Robe as the first film to start production in CinemaScope, a project chosen because of its epic nature.[7]

Audio

Fox officials were keen that the sound of their new widescreen film format should be as impressive as the picture, and that meant it should include true stereophonic sound.

Previously, stereo sound in the commercial cinema had always employed separate sound films; Walt Disney's 1940 release Fantasia, the first film with stereophonic sound, had used Disney's Fantasound system, which utilized a three-channel soundtrack played from separate optical film. Early post-war stereo systems used with Cinerama and some 3-D films had used multichannel audio played from a separate magnetic film. Fox had initially intended to use three-channel stereo from magnetic film for CinemaScope.

However, Hazard E. Reeves' sound company had devised a method of coating 35 mm stock with magnetic stripes and designed a three-channel (left, center, right) system based on three 0.063 in stripes, one on each edge of the film outside the perforations, and one between the picture and the perforations in approximately the position of a standard optical soundtrack. Later it was found possible to add a narrower 0.029 in stripe between the picture and perforations on the other side of the film; this fourth track was used for a surround channel, also sometimes known at the time as an effects channel. In order to avoid hiss on the surround/effects channel from distracting the audience the surround speakers were switched on by a 12 kHz tone recorded on the surround track only while wanted surround program material was present.[9]

This four-track magnetic sound system was also used for some non-CinemaScope films; for example Fantasia was re-released in 1956, 1963, and 1969 with the original

Rival processes

CinemaScope itself was a response to early realism processes Cinerama and 3-D. Cinerama was relatively unaffected by CinemaScope, as it was a quality-controlled process that played in select venues, similar to the IMAX films of later years. 3-D was hurt, however, by studio advertising surrounding CinemaScope's promise that it was the "miracle you see without glasses." Technical difficulties in presentation spelled the true end for 3-D, but studio hype was quick to hail it a victory for CinemaScope.

In April 1953, a technique simply now known as wide-screen appeared and was soon adopted as a standard by all flat film productions in the US. In this process, a fully exposed 1.37:1 Academy ratio-area is cropped in the projector to a wide-screen aspect ratio by the use of an aperture plate, also known as a soft matte. Most films shot today use this technique, cropping the top and bottom of a 1.37:1 image to produce one at a ratio of 1.85:1.

Aware of Fox's upcoming CinemaScope productions, Paramount introduced this technique in March's release of Shane with the 1.66:1 aspect ratio, although the film was not shot with this ratio originally in mind. Universal-International followed suit in May with a 1.85:1 aspect ratio for Thunder Bay. By summer of 1953, other major studios Paramount, Universal, MGM, UA, Columbia

Technical difficulties

Although CinemaScope was capable of producing a 2.66:1 image, the addition of magnetic sound tracks for multi-channel sound reduced this to 2.55:1.

The fact that the image was expanded horizontally when projected meant that there could be visible graininess and brightness problems. To combat this, larger film formats were developed (initially a too-costly 55 mm for Carousel and The King and I) and then abandoned (both films were eventually reduction printed at 35 mm, although the aspect ratio was kept at 2.55:1). Later Fox re-released The King and I in the 65/70 mm format. The initial problems with grain and brightness were eventually reduced thanks to improvements in film stock and lenses.

The CinemaScope lenses were optically flawed, however, by the fixed anamorphic element, which caused the anamorphic effect to gradually drop off as objects approached the lens. The effect was that close-ups would slightly overstretch an actor's face, a problem that was soon referred to as "the mumps". This problem was avoided at first by composing wider shots, but as anamorphic technology lost its novelty, directors and cinematographers sought compositional freedom from these limitations. Issues with the lenses also made it difficult to photograph animation using the CinemaScope process. Nevertheless, many animated short films and a few features were filmed in CinemaScope during the mid-1950s, including Walt Disney's Lady and the Tramp (1955).

CinemaScope 55

CinemaScope 55 was a large-format version of CinemaScope introduced by Twentieth Century Fox in 1955, which used a film width of 55.625 mm.[11]

Fox had introduced the original 35 mm version of CinemaScope in 1953 and it had proved to be commercially successful. But the additional image enlargement needed to fill the new wider screens, which had been installed in theatres for CinemaScope, resulted in visible film grain. A larger film was used to reduce the need for such enlargement.[12] CinemaScope 55 was developed to satisfy this need and was one of three high-definition film systems introduced in the mid-1950s, the other two being Paramount's VistaVision and the Todd-AO 70 mm film system.

Fox determined that a system that produced a frame area approximately 4 times that of the 35mm CinemaScope frame would be the optimal trade-off between performance and cost, and it chose the 55.625 mm film width as satisfying that. Camera negative film had larger grain than the film stocks used for prints, so there was a consistent approach in using a larger frame on the film negative than on prints. While the image area of a print has to allow for a soundtrack, a camera negative does not. CinemaScope 55 had different frame dimensions for the camera negative and struck prints.

Decline

Lens manufacturer Panavision was initially founded in late 1953 as a manufacturer of anamorphic lens adapters for movie projectors screening CinemaScope films, capitalizing on the success of the new anamorphic format and filling in the gap created by Bausch and Lomb's inability to mass-produce the needed adapters for movie theaters fast enough. Looking to expand beyond projector lenses, Panavision founder Robert Gottschalk soon improved upon the anamorphic camera lenses by creating a new lens set that included dual rotating anamorphic elements which were interlocked with the lens focus gearing. This innovation allowed the Panavision lenses to keep the plane of focus at a constant anamorphic ratio of 2x, thus avoiding the horizontally-overstretched mumps effect that afflicted many CinemaScope films. After screening a demo reel comparing the two systems, many U.S. studios adopted the Panavision anamorphic lenses. The Panavision technique was also considered more attractive to the industry because it was more affordable than CinemaScope and was not owned or licensed-out by a rival studio. Confusingly, some studios, particularly MGM, continued to use the CinemaScope credit even though they had switched to Panavision lenses. Virtually all MGM CinemaScope films after 1958 are actually in Panavision.

By 1967, even Fox had begun to abandon CinemaScope for Panavision (famously at the demand of Frank Sinatra for Von Ryan's Express, although a significant amount of the principal photography was actually filmed using CinemaScope lenses). Fox eventually capitulated completely to third-party lenses. In Like Flint with James Coburn and Caprice with Doris Day, were Fox's final films in CinemaScope.

Fox originally intended CinemaScope films to use magnetic stereo sound only, and although in certain areas, such as Los Angeles and New York City, the vast majority of theaters were equipped for four-track magnetic sound (four-track magnetic sound achieving nearly 90 percent penetration of theaters in the greater Los Angeles area) the owners of many smaller theaters were dissatisfied with contractually having to install expensive three- or four-track magnetic stereo, and because of the technical nature of sound installations, drive-in theaters had trouble presenting stereophonic sound at all.

Modern references

The song "Stereophonic Sound" written by Cole Porter for the 1955 Broadway musical Silk Stockings mentions CinemaScope in the lyrics. The first verse is: "Today to get the public to attend the picture show/ It's not enough to advertise a famous star they know/ If you wanna get the crowds to come around/ You gotta have glorious Technicolor/ Breathtaking CinemaScope and stereophonic sound." The musical was adapted for film in 1957 and was indeed filmed in CinemaScope. (Although the song refers to Technicolor, the film was actually made in Metrocolor.)

While the lens system has been retired for decades, Fox has used the trademark in recent years for a few films: Down with Love, which was shot with Panavision optics but used the credit as a throwback to the films it references, the Don Bluth films Anastasia and Titan A.E. at Bluth's insistence. However these films are not in true CinemaScope because they use modern lenses. CinemaScope's association with anamorphic projection is still so embedded in mass consciousness that all anamorphic prints are now referred to generically as 'Scope prints.

Similarly, the 2016 release La La Land was shot on film (not digitally) with Panavision equipment in a 2.55:1 widescreen format, but not true CinemaScope.[16][17]

See also

• 21:9 aspect ratio
• List of motion picture film formats
• VistaVision

External links

• Looking Back at CinemaScope at The Digital Bits
• A wider view: CinemaScope today at Sight and Sound
• Restoring CinemaScope 55: Carousel and The King and I at American Cinematographer
• CinemaScope: Selected Documents from the Spyros P. Skouras Archive (2013, excerpt) ed. Ilias Chrissochoidis