Re: Aspect Ratios, before and after pictures re: Cocoanuts (1929) and others

Pluted Pup <[email protected]> wrote:
> For 70 years, Cocoanuts (1929) has had it's picture butchered
> by projectionists and video companies who cut off the top and
> bottom of the screen. This has happened to many films where
> the original ratio is 1.20, not 1.33.
> 
> Here's some links that try to explain aspect ratios and
> how piss poor the management of Universal Studios, who
> cut off the top and bottom of Cocoanuts and Animal Crackers
> for home video.
> 
> These are great links because they show before and after
> pictures, showing just what you are missing when you're
> being cheated by the video company or the projectionist.
> 
> These excerpts from
> 
> https://rjbuffalo.com/The_Cocoanuts.html
> 
> "All video copies of The Cocoanuts are missing the top and bottom
> of the image. Nobody seems able to see the difference - except for
> me. Yes, the Blu-ray is gorgeous, but it is cropped and it still
> has the mistakes that we have been seeing for more than 60 years
> now. Just because the shape is about 1:1.33 it does not follow
> that the entire image was transferred to video. Far from it."
> 
> "In nearly a half-century of trying, I have learned that it is
> impossible to explain any of the above to anybody who works in
> the movie business."
> 
> So it is up to us customers to observe and acknowledge
> technical defects in what is shown to us.
> 
> And there is more about aspect ratios in 2 other articles:
> 
> Apertures, Aspect Ratios, Film Formats
> 
> https://rjbuffalo.com/apertures.html
> 
> Apertures, Aspect Ratios, Film Formats Part 2
> 
> https://rjbuffalo.com/filmclips.html
> 
> 
> 

Having watched Animal Crackers only a few weeks ago, I can attest that you
are correct. At the end of the movie Harpo is being praised as a hero by
the police, when the Rittenhouse silver begins falling from his coat sleeve
and clattering to the floor, a gag just like the Thenardiers’ in Les
Miserables. The problem with the video I was watching was that the sleeve
extended below the bottom of the frame and I could hear the clattering but
I could not see what was causing it at first. Since then I have found a
better transfer, but even so that sleeve opening is almost cut off. A great
Marx Brothers gag is nearly ruined by the video transfer.

-- 
Bill Anderson

I am the Mighty Favog