These days, it seems Steven Soderbergh is in the news for everything except making movies.
Of course, there was the ugly and widely publicized cancellation of “Moneyball”, and now in the “In My Opinion” column in the latest issue of DGA Quarterly, Soderbergh has written a very candid, funny and scathing piece on HD channels that butcher widescreen films.
Non-aspect ratio nerds take note, this might be Greek. In particular, he speaks about films in 2.40:1 that are blown up or chopped to fit the 16:9 ratio of current television sets. Soderbergh is certainly no stranger to varying formats and composition so he knows what he’s talking about, and how important it is to the feel of the film. He shot in the “golden” Academy ratio for his WWII throwback “The Good German.” He mixed a variety of film stock, styles and elements to widespread acclaim for “Traffic.” And for last year’s “Che” even switched compositions, from 2.35:1 for Part 1 to 1.85:1 for Part 2 (of course all of four people caught this).
Soderbergh brings a refreshing director’s perspective to this long standing issue, however he keeps it very accessible, and the best part of the piece is his report card on how premium HD channels are showing movies. MGM HD, IFC HD, Sundance HD and HDNet Movies (chaired by Marc Cuban who is financing Soderbergh’s current run of low budget, digital films through Magnolia Pictures) score an “A+” while Showtime gets a solid “B.”
From there it gets ugly. HBO, who Soderbergh describes as a “poster child for stupidity”, scored a “D.” Soderbergh himself once got someone with pull to call the cable channel on his behalf to ensure the ‘Ocean’s’ films were not hacked. Awesome. But it’s AMC that scored the lowest with an embarrassing “F-” for running ads for movies in letterbox format and then showing them panned and scanned. This is made even more baffling, as their own original series like “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” are shown letterboxed. So enraged by their hypocrisy, Soderbergh wishes to “expel the channel from the universe.” Yikes.
The filmmaker closes his piece by urging his colleagues to consider the matter seriously, and when possible, to negotiate how their film will be shown on television. He says the best time to do this is during negotiations when the studio “wants you the most,” and not to wait until post-production or later. The most well known of this kind of agreement, is Woody Allen’s deal with UA for “Manhattan.” Wishing to preserve Gordon Willis’ cinematography (and to perhaps make it difficult for the film to be seen, as he famously hated it) the broadcast rights for the film required the preservation of the 2.35:1 format. This was a big deal, as FCC regulations at the time did not permit any part of the screen to remain blank and it was commonplace for films to be panned and scanned for television broadcasts. So until regulations changed, the film was shown with grey bars on the top and bottom of the screen.
There is so much more great stuff in Soderbergh’s piece, that we urge you to take a few minutes and read it. The site for DGA Quarterly appears to be down, but you can read Google’s cache for the article right here. It’s heartening that one of America’s foremost contemporary auteurs isn’t afraid to take these channels to task for slacking on their responsibility to filmmakers and their work and audiences who are paying premium bucks to get these movies streamed into their homes. Someone should seriously give this guy a regular column.
When not pissing off Sony and HD movie channels, Soderbergh is putting the finishing touches on his forthcoming whistle-blower comedy “The Informant!,” which stars Matt Damon and opens on September 18th. After that he may or may not get back into production of his musical “Cleo” and he’s also got another, currently untitled, Spalding Gray documentary in the works that could conceivably come first, as last we heard, all that needs to be completed is the editing.
This is my favorite part of the whole piece: "No, I’m not forgetting the original, “golden” ratio of 1.33:1, it’s just that no one uses it anymore except the pretentious assholes who made The Good German."
And I laugh at this as one of the 7 people who thought The Good German was kind of great.
i kinda like The Good German too, but it's not great all the way through, and I swear I simply hate Tobey Maguire. He's a big weak link. Blanchett and the aesthetics are amazing.
Maybe the Tobey Maguire fanclub will descend down on this post.
Soderbergh has 5 films released this year? is that a record?
Che 1
Che 2
The Girlfriend Experience
The Informant!
Spaulding Grey documentary
!
fuck Sony
I have to admit, I kind of liked seeing Maguire turn his "Gee Shucks" Leave it to Beaver personality on its head a little bit.
But yeah, I know what you're saying.
The Playlist: If not, the grammar fanclub will take you to task for typing "descend down".
The bright side: the grammar fanclub usually consists of sickly Tobey Maguire look-a-likes.
I love aspect ratio nerdery. I have so few people in my real life that I can talk to about it. I can't believe there are people who still don't get it.
Let's not forget those HD channels that stretch films or TV shows that were filmed in 1.33:1 to fit the screen, thus making the picture looked warped. Two of the worst offenders are TNTHD and TBSHD. Heck, on TNT they even take a 1.33:1 version of a show ( ie "Angel" ) that was filmed in 1.78:1 to begin with and stretch the picture to fill the screen, it's idiocy.
Shame on him for acknowledging channels that keep logos on the screen all the time, but giving them an "A+" anyways. As much as I hate cropping, I'd rather watch a pan & scan movie on a clean screen than widescreen with a logo on the picture. I don't know why people tolerate having their work vandalized like that- I wouldn't even let ABC show anything I shot on "America's Funniest Home Videos" if they kept their logo on during it.
Steven Soderbergh never said anything about that dumbass. And what you said had nothing to do with this article. Don’t ever bring up topics that are irrerelevant to the article ever again. Not now, not ever!
One point. Someone said that Spalding Gray Doc was released already. No. First, spell check – I rarely see BOTH first and last name name with wrong spelling, and article says the Doc may be in editing…at least that's the rumour…
jb
webmaster
http://www.spaldinggray.com
Soderbergh above all others seems like the sort who would demand that films be shown in Widescreen instead of pan & scan (full screen is a myth as it "fills the screen" but doesn't present the "full" picture).
I pine for the days when I would be in a Borders or somewhere and someone would see that a film they wanted was in Widescreen and FullScreen (a "more attractive" term than "Pan&Scan" I'm sure you'll agree). They'd ask the clerk in the DVD section what the difference was and the person would say they weren't sure and I would interject to explain – most films these days (99.9 % in fact) are shot in Widescreen of some form. There's 2.35:1 which is Cinemascope and there's 1.85:1 which is "Matted" 1.33:1 and from there there are things like 1.78:1 and 1.66:1… And of course, Anamorphic means that "big bars become little bars" and "little bars become no bars" on your DVD player (at least that's the condescending layman's terminology I used to explain it to my mom and sister)…
I've been making films for 40 years, and I still shoot 1.33:1 exclusively. It is the most appropriate "window" through which human eyes should view filmed images. Widescreen is grossly unnatural.
cinema is grossly unnatural.
i love that soderbergh is fighting this fight. it kills me that we have all these HD widescreen channels that are still not showing films properly.
Wow, and I thought I was the only one who gets peeved over stuff like this.
Imagine how much I fumed when I ponied up for premium HD channels only to discover everything squeezed and cropped into 16:9. I mean, why? Are people so afraid of the "black bars"?
What I find most ironic from Mr. Soderbergh or the author of this blog, whining about people not wanting to view movies in this most unnatural of formats (read on the field of view of the human eyes – it's closer to the classic 3/2 35mm picture format than to the absurdly wide 2:35 format used in so many movies nowadays), is that the picture used to illustrate this blog clearly shows everything that is WRONG with this format: The damned cut-off heads!!! I can't bear it. IMAX, the vision leader in movies, knows this well, with its 1.4/1 aspect ratio.
In this age where most people view movies on small screens, widescreen pictures are a royal pain in the butt. Two thumbs down to Mr Soderbergh!!!