Hot take: 4:3 > 16:9
It's been a while since I've watched an old TV show. We've had widescreen TVs in our houses for decades now. When HD and digital video came into the scene, it basically came hand in hand with the 16:9 aspect ratio. It was more cinematic. It was basically a mark of quality in and of itself.
On a whim, I decided to watch Wolf's Rain, an original Bones anime that was produced in 4:3. I thought it would be difficult to adapt to the more narrow screen. I was thinking what I'd be missing out on by the missing part of the screen.
In hindsight, those thoughts were pretty rediculous. The people who made the show knew they were going to target that aspect ratio, so they built the entire show around it. It's animation: every frame is literally a painting. The aspect ratio was never a limitation to the artist because it was effectively the same limitation any given piece of paper or canvas they would apply their art to.
By no longer producing video in 4:3, we have lost something important to framing: verticality and angularity. 16:9 means there's a lot more room to the left and right than there is up and down, and because you have so much more horizontal view dutch angles tend to be extra disorienting. While Wolf's Rain doesn't use dutch angles very often, vertical framing is extremely common. One early episode has a particularly striking scene where a white wolf is running vertically up a cliff towards the moon. Other times it's used to show off the scale of large structures, which can better express a sense of dread or oppression. The show also often has circular framing; where characters and objects are arranged in a circle, which doesn't seem to work quite as well aesthetically on widescreen formats.
Now that I've started thinking about this, I started to think about what a shame it is that we are actually losing some of our treasured 4:3 shows from the past. TV shows aren't terribly well archived in general outside of ultra-popular shows, and even then many old shows that were made for 4:3 have been bowdlerized into 16:9. Many shows have been stretched out or had their tops and bottoms deleted in order to fit into 16:9. Some shows were shot on film and had new scans done in order to use the parts that were originally designed to be cropped out. But because they are ruining the intent of the cinematographers, the addition is not necessarily a good one.
But what do you think? I know this is probably not a popular opinion, but I'm sure that I'm not the only one who thinks this.
4:3 / 1.33:1 is awesome. A lot of people think they're missing something with it being 4:3, but here's a good example of The Shining in open matte -- https://imgur.com/a/hA82pDp (c/o noamkroll on instagram.)
My favorite aspect ratio for film is 1.66:1 -- which is close to 5:3 or the original euro widescreen. I hate when they fuck with the frame to make it widescreen for the peasants. Its disgusting that the studios ever allow that.
When they did the new transfer of Star Trek: TNG, they were smart to leave it at 4:3. The picture looks great.
ot: bowdlerized is a great word
TNG was shot open matte and cropped to 4:3 in post production. Keeping the original aspect ratio it was composed for was the right call, however CBS also didn't have much choice in the matter. While the photography was open matte, no attempts were made to keep film crew and equipment out of parts of the frame that were going to be cropped out later.
Later seasons of DS9 were actually shot with 16:9 widescreen in mind so we might see that if it ever gets a proper remaster.
oh my god -- I would looooove to see DS9 and VOY redone. Even if they just left the CGI looking like scaled up hot garbage, that's fine. It'd be double-great for better quality intakes
These are hilarious, I can't believe I've never seen them before!
The Intakes are so good, eh. I love Worf walking in to the door with Troi going 'oh my god!' -- haha
I've got some other great edits for you that I was sent today:
Barren Planet! A Star Trek / Sopranos Crossover!
First and foremost, I agree with @granfdad that the intended aspect ratio is paramount. When everything is framed with a particular aspect ratio in mind, it's no surprise that late stage changes to that will at best be lackluster if it doesn't outright ruin the shot. Any older media framed and released in 4:3 needs to remain in 4:3.
I'd say in general, though I can and do thoroughly enjoy media in any aspect ratio, I prefer wide aspect ratios a default. They fit and better fill our natural field of view, wider than it is tall. It also lends itself well to larger home and theater screens; it's easier to take in an entire wide aspect image with peripheral vision than it is a 4:3 which may need some vertical scanning. This, to me, feels more immersive and less like I'm looking at a flat screen or through a window.
There have been a handful films and shows that have used varying aspect ratios. It can feel gimmicky sometimes, but can be impactful when when used with care. Different ratios for time periods, for controlling the scale of different scenes, for subtly highlighting character growth and realizations. This seems like a worthwhile approach to explore so that the aspect ratio can become another tool rather than a fixed constraint (which, to be fair, can also be creatively useful)
It is very interesting when filmmakers does experiment with aspect ratios rather than just doing the defaults. Mommy from 2014 changed ratios throughout the film, which I at first thought was a bit gimmicky, but the close narrow frame did help in highlighting the very "up close and personal"-feeling the film was aiming for. Films like The Lighthouse and Godland used it to give everything a look of a classic old photograph, which I think fits those films perfectly. And then we have Tarantino going somewhat contrarian with taking a very wide 70mm and then use to film mostly inside a crammed cabin. It would be great if more filmmakers dared take on the ultra wide 2.76:1 of Ben Hur again .
My understanding (someone correct me, please!) is that 16:9 was designed to be a middle ground between 4:3 and cinematic widescreen. I don't think that any aspect ratio is inherently better than any other (relevant CD video), but I certainly believe that intended ratio > any post-creation adjustment. I often play old games in 4:3 and with letterboxing on my widescreen display, just because it's the ratio that the game devs would have designed the game around (not that it really matters, though).
EDIT: I just realised that my source for that 16:9 middleground fact was the CD video I linked!
The 4:3 screens these shows were originally composed for were almost certainly smaller than the letterboxed 4:3 area on any modern 16:9 TV.
Just like the benefits of tall aspect ratios you point out, there are also very good reasons artists will choose a wide aspect ratio as well.
This is why 16:9 was chosen for the switch to high definition. It's a decent middle ground that allows both 4:3 and 2.39:1 content to be presented with minimal pillar/letterboxing.
I did rather enjoy The Grand Budapest.
David Bordwell has a lovely writeup on the aspect ratios used in that film.
https://www.davidbordwell.net/blog/2014/03/26/the-grand-budapest-hotel-wes-anderson-takes-the-43-challenge/
I genuinely don't understand why all 4:3 shows have to be cropped. Is it so hard to just (vertically) letterbox them and show black bars on the side? I wanted to watch the old Simpsons seasons: they're cropped on Disney+, and they're also cropped on the pirated version I downloaded. It's becoming literally lost media.