The pan and scan scam

 

 

Tuesday, July 21, 2009

 

Pan and scan videos suck.

I come to this conclusion after having spent years watching a collection of Indiana Jones movies on VHS and making certain assumptions about the filmmaker’s technique based on them.

This was a problem for the Jurassic Park films as well.

So I have been on a mission to update by collection by purchasing only letter box widescreen versions when I buy DVDs.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been reacquainting myself with the Indiana Jones films and learned a lot more about the techniques from the DVDs than  I could ever have gotten from the pan and scan DVDs.

Pan and scan out to be outlawed.

I suppose I began to suspect something was off when I got the collection of Jurassic Park DVDs and noticed for the first time how well Spielberg grouped his characters. A huge portion of his two films involved moving characters into interesting positions and developing relationships between the characters.

Was I blind? Why had I not seen this before?

The answer, of course, is pan and scan.

I’m not a rich guy so when I started my study of Spielberg I bought a lot of old videos from the local Salvation Army. At the time – prior to the release of War of the Worlds – I was largely looking for narrative patterns, and less at his work in image, trying to find out what he was likely to do in his new film.

Since I tended to watch these tapes over and over, I got used to their editing, little realizing that this did a disservice to his art.

This might explain why I got confused over his own self criticism that he tended to shoot in wide angle too much.

I didn’t put much stock in this when I saw Jurassic Park on DVD letterbox for the first time. Although the images took my breath away, I understood that the tale needed the wide screen to capture the breath of the creatures he was depicting.

My whole perception changed when I bought Crystal Skull in the wide screen and saw many of the same wonderful visuals games being played in it.

Then like a dull-witted dinosaur, I got the idea that I might be missing something in the other three films and so I purchased them, too – my wife wanting to know why when I already owned them.

As much as I’d like to kick myself for not thinking of this sooner, the experience has given me a new vision into Spielberg’s visuals I might have otherwise missed had I seen the films in letter box from the start .

To begin with, the new purchase answered one great mystery as to why I felt so awed at the films when I first saw them in the theater, and did not feel the same way when seeing them in pan and scan.

The DVDs brought the awe back, and answered the question as to why Spielberg claimed he shot too much in wide angle.

Close ups in the pan and scan weren’t close ups at all.

While Spielberg does use close-ups, these come far less often than pan and scan would imply. In fact, one of the lessons I quickly learned is that Spielberg most often uses variations of the reverse, often framing characters with other characters. The pan and scan often lops off the back of the other character so that we see only one character in a bastardized close-up Spielberg never intended.

The breathless sense of space Spielberg creates more than makes up for the supposed lack of focus wide shots in less-skilled hands would produce.

The widescreen versions allow me to see more clearly how Spielberg sets up his shots – and now they connect. You can almost see each set being set up for the change, with characters coming to life just as the camera gets up to speed.

This all means that I have to update my collection, while at the same time trying to save up enough money so I can buy “a real” movie camera. Panasonic has a model for about $2,500 that’s supposedly close to professional. Yet what’s the point of buying a new camera if I don’t get the vision on how to shoot with it first?