For decades, when a 2.39:1 widescreen movie aired on 4:3 TVs, studios did "Pan & Scan"—they cut the sides off. But for some cheap TV broadcasts or foreign DVD releases, they did the opposite: they just opened the matte .
is what happens when you remove those black bars. You are seeing the full camera negative. The whole enchilada. The "Heavenly" Shot vs. The TV Compromise Open Matte usually appears in two specific, contradictory scenarios:
You might just find the secret version of the film the director never intended you to see—but that the camera saw anyway. Have you ever spotted a boom mic or a stunt wire because the matte was opened? Let me know in the comments. open matte
You switch to the Blu-ray, and suddenly the picture is wider, but the top and bottom are clipped off. You feel claustrophobic.
But , when a 4K Blu-ray is mastered, sometimes the studio is lazy. They take the Open Matte digital intermediate (the master file before the bars were added) and just slap black bars on it. For decades, when a 2
When James Cameron’s Titanic came to VHS, most people bought the widescreen version. But the standard Fullscreen VHS wasn't a Pan & Scan hack job. Because Cameron shot the film on Super 35 (a format designed to protect the top and bottom), the VHS actually revealed more information than the theatrical cut.
If you love movies, you need to know about this. Because once you see an Open Matte version of a film, you might never want to watch the "official" version again. Let’s do a quick science lesson. When a director shoots a movie, the camera sensor captures a massive square-ish image (usually a ratio of 1.33:1 or 1.37:1—basically, the shape of an old CRT television). You are seeing the full camera negative
But movies are shown in theaters in wide formats like (2.39:1, that super skinny rectangle) or Flat (1.85:1, a mild rectangle).