History
Silent films were shot at a 1.33 aspect ratio (also known as a 4:3 aspect ratio), with each frame using all of the negative space between the two rows of film perforations for a length of 4 perfs. The frame line between the silent film frames was very thin. When sound-on-film was introduced in the late 1920s, the soundtrack was recorded in a stripe running just inside of one set of the perforations and cut into the 1.33 image. This made the image area "taller", usually around 1.19, which was slightly disorienting to audiences used to the 1.33 frame and also presented problems for exhibitors with fixed-size screens and stationary projectors.
From studio to studio, the common attempt to reduce the image back to a 1.33:1 ratio by decreasing the projector aperture in-house met with conflicting results. Each movie theater chain, furthermore, had their own designated house ratio. The first standards set for the new sound-on-film motion pictures were accepted in November, 1929, when all major US studios agreed to compose for the Society of Motion Picture Engineers' (SMPE) designated size of 0.800 in × 0.600 in (20.3 mm × 15.2 mm) returning to the aspect ratio of 1.33:1.
Following this, Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (AMPAS) considered further alterations to this 1930 standard. Various dimensions were submitted, and the projector aperture plate opening size of 0.825 in × 0.600 in was agreed upon. The resulting 1.375:1 aspect ratio was then dubbed the "Academy Ratio". On May 9, 1932, the SMPE adopted the same 0.825 in × 0.600 in (21.0 mm × 15.2 mm) projector aperture standard.
All studio films shot in 35mm from 1932 to 1952 were shot in the Academy ratio. However, following the widescreen "revolution" of 1953, it quickly became an obsolete production format. Within several months, all major studios started matting their non-anamorphic films in the projector to wider ratios such as 1.66, 1.75, and 1.85, the last of which is still considered a standard ratio along with anamorphic (2.39). 1.37:1 is not totally obsolete, nonetheless, and can still be found in selected recent films such as Michel Hazanavicius's The Artist, Gus Van Sant's Elephant, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, Andrea Arnold's Fish Tank, or Kelly Reichardt's Meek's Cutoff.
Read more about this topic: Academy Ratio
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“Don’t you realize that this is a new empire? Why, folks, there’s never been anything like this since creation. Creation, huh, that took six days, this was done in one. History made in an hour. Why it’s a miracle out of the Old Testament!”
—Howard Estabrook (1884–1978)
“It gives me the greatest pleasure to say, as I do from the bottom of my heart, that never in the history of the country, in any crisis and under any conditions, have our Jewish fellow citizens failed to live up to the highest standards of citizenship and patriotism.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“All history attests that man has subjected woman to his will, used her as a means to promote his selfish gratification, to minister to his sensual pleasures, to be instrumental in promoting his comfort; but never has he desired to elevate her to that rank she was created to fill. He has done all he could to debase and enslave her mind; and now he looks triumphantly on the ruin he has wrought, and say, the being he has thus deeply injured is his inferior.”
—Sarah M. Grimke (1792–1873)