I was watching “The Empire Strikes Back” and listening to the commentary, and I noticed just how nicely shot this film is. Of course it is widescreen, and I noticed that the main subject/characters in each scene were rarely in the center. In fact, it seemed that they were positioned well off-center. In photography, there is the “rule of thirds” in which you divide the frame up like a tic-tac-toe game, and place the subjects at one of the four intersections. I wonder if that applies to movies as well. At any rate, they did a wonderful job with Empire, especially the scenes on Dagobah.

I did a little searching on the Internet about aspect ratios of film and came across “The Letterbox and Widescreen Advocacy Page”. They describe the aspect ratios of the different lenses and companies, such as Cinemascope and Panavision. They also show have examples of movies in their original widescreen format compared with edited pan-and-scan formats, and it really illustrates how much gets chopped off when you view the full-screen version of a movie. Check out the examples of “Star Wars” and another classic, “Escape from New York”. I always buy the widescreen versions of dvd’s whenever I can. It’s a much more enjoyable way to view a movie, in my opinion.

Click here to see a great flash movie that perfectly explains the difference between widescreen and pan-and-scan full-screen.