No, that's not right at all. When a studio does the cropping, it's usually done in a "smart" way, with at least some attempt made at shot composition. Depending on what's important in a given scene, the general wisdom is to position the matte just above the heighest head. If you use the zoom function on your TV, you will simply get the centre of the 4:3 image throughout - making many, many shots look bloody awful. For the record, I hate cropping of 4:3 material.
You're both right -- that the show was composed for 4:3 and that VFX would be problematic in 16:9... but here are two examples I put together that I thought might be visually helpful which utilize the Full Camera Aperture that we were fortunately shown in the gag reels, so that we can all see, in motion, where 1.33 and 1.78 would fall over the original film image. (I know that I have done this kind of thing to death in still form, so I apologize in advance to those who have had it up to here, but bear with me ). This also might help the OP if he's still around. The first video is how the show was framed in 1.33:1 TV Transmitted Area with Action Safe protection for old cathode ray tubes (which is what Robert seems so insistent on). The larger TV Trans area is how the show appears on Blu-ray, which, according to Panavision, is actually the SMPTE recommended practice... and here in fact I've used Panavision's frame leader chart for the markings, so you can get a pretty good idea of what the camera operator was seeing in his ground glass. Now the second video is patterned after the 16:9 example of footage from "The Naked Now" that is seen in the Energized! doc on the Season One blu-ray set and as you can see it is slightly wider than TV Trans area, which in fact causes a white bounce board to be visible in the frame at 3:44. That's the kind of thing (production equipment) that would have to be erased over and over ad infinitum if they had chosen 16:9. Both videos are in 720p, so feel free to chose that resolution and hit full screen: [yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpfgtMhKDTc[/yt] [yt]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvRLeDKrQbM[/yt]
Fantastic, concise and graphic visualization. Many, many thanks, I thought I'd never see it. And yes, "TV Transmitted" is what the broadcasters and others could see on their professional CRT monitors. But what the audiences actually got to see (and is still OAR in my opinion), after the overscan of their consumer TVs had trimmed the received / transmitted image, is "TV Safe Action". Bob
As I understand it the "safe area" is just where the action largely needed to stay. (Probably accounting for people who in 1990 still had older tube TVs with that shape picture) But the TV-Transmitted is what someone would have seen on their modern-day TV and is also what is on the DVD/BD.
I think TNG remastered will be shown in widescreen once stations finally start showing in syndication. It also happened with TOS remastered. But each episode with be a few minutes short since they will be edited to show more commercials.
Which is how they SHOULD be seen! We're in a modern TV world here, 45 minutes of content is way too much for modern audiences who're used to 20 minutes or so of commercials during their programing. So edit the episodes down to fit modern standards for episode length minus commercials.
It's not fans want, but I'm trying to be realistic. Stations want to make as much money as possible which means more commercials.
I'll grant you it's probably possible to make a decent looking widescreen version of the show. I still don't get why fans would want the show chopped up in the first place. Would sawing off the top and bottom of the Mona Lisa provide observers with a fuller experience? Would chopping off the left and right sides of Picasso's La Guernica to fit a frame it was never intended to fit make for a better art viewing experience? I just don't get it, and clearly I never will.
@ Trekker4747 If you ask for "TV Transmitted" than this is exactly what you get. The director didn't screw up, he simply and faithfully relied on a TV sets' overscan to trim the redundant areas on all four edges of the image. As far as I can tell "Sins of the Father" is the only TNG episode on Blu-ray which respects what the director intended and expected audiences to see (because the overscan effect was taken into consideration). @ Hober Mallow Star Trek is the Art of Entertainment and not the Art of Cinematography. You had renowned TV directors and a lot of first-timers but this can't possibly compare to acclaimed theatrical directors like Awesome Wells, Michael Curtiz, Stanley Kubrick and others where careful and subtle picture composition was truly a form of art (for which the TNG directors simply did not have the time). And frankly I'm really getting tired of the Mona Lisa comparisons, it's really not appropriate to compare the accomplishments of Leonardo Da Vinci with what is essentially a TV show, IMHO. (though I do love TNG). Bob
True, one is a bunch of splashes of paint on a canvas made by a single person, while the other is 176 living stories created and recreated by a team of hundreds of people with great care and precision. It's all a matter of opinion
If the goal is to get the stories out to the masses so they can enjoy them. Then it should be important to offer it in a way that they want to consume it. Full-frame is fine for someone like me, born in 1971 and accustomed to the format. Another five or ten years, you're going to have kids who are being born and will have never been exposed to 4:3 programming and keeping TNG framed as a 4:3 presentation only will make it look out of step with current programming. I want TNG and the rest of Trek to live on, not fall by the wayside because of aspect ratio.
Just like no one today enjoys movies made before 1950 or so because all of those movies are in a 4:3 or similar format. Wait....
As I said in my original post, I find the cropping of 4:3 material pretty unpalatable too! Also, I can actually spell "highest" - lord knows how I managed to get "heighest" in my post. Major boob!
But you have to admit, that those people are a fairly small group. Audiences are dying and being replaced by younger ones. Ten years from now, the likely available content of black & white material will be even smaller because you'll have fewer people who were ever exposed to the material to begin with. So, you can either "future proof" shows like TNG or you consign them to ever shrinking audiences and the day will come when there will be no one watching. I'd rather there be folks watching TNG which has a 16:9 aspect ratio than no one watching TNG at all. YMMV.
I think all of the "future proofing" it needs is what it's getting a clearer, HD, format with some SFX tweaks. I mean why not "future proof" movies like Casablanca into a 16:9 picture? Sure you'll utterly destroy a masterpiece of a movie but, hey, future audiences won't have some pesky black-bars on their screen. I would hope future audiences would will be smart enough to understand that when TNG (and other shows made before around 2000) was made 4:3 was the standard. Just like we know that be the case with older movies just like black and white, stop-motion special effects and every other technique that is outdated and quaint today. I'm able to get my 10-year-old niece to watch TNG in 4:3 without any problems and she only asked me once why there were black bars on the sides, "Because that's just how shows were made back then." "Oh." and we watched on. I hope future generations would be the same and rather see a 4:3 screen than seeing filming and lighting equipment on the edge of the scree for the sake of "filling the screen." Why is this obsession here, by the way? Why not demand that ALL media be cropped and edited to 16:9? I mean most movies aren't filmed in that format leaving us with black bars on home media even on wide-screen TVs. Dammit! They should cop that shit up because future generations won't stand for some slightly annoying if you think about them too much black bars!
I think that's the major difference when comparing B&W/Color and Widescreen/4:3. There isn't a magic "colorize" button on your media player or TV. There is a zoom/stretch button available on almost every media player or TV.
How are you destroying "masterpieces" by offering audiences options on how they watch entertainment? I've seen no one in favor of 16:9 versions saying that the 4:3 versions need to be burned. Did they destroy TOS and TNG by offering multiple audio tracks for home theater enthusiasts? Why is it okay to disrespect the work of the audio engineers who put the shows together in the sixties and eighties?
You're arguing that that the show needs to be cropped/edited to fit a 16x9 format because future audiences will not tolerate watching it any other way. So if you do that then you've, effectively, "destroyed" the originals since now no one will watch the originals they'll watch these ones that "fill their screen" and meet their expectations. Sure the original versions will still "exist" but in an outdated format and likely in an outdated media with no player for them if we're talking about truly future generations. If the only thing available to watch is this new format then, yeah, you've destroyed the originals because they no longer matter they might as well be destroyed.