Question on Sergio Leone technique

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Blutarski

Active member
I notice on most of his films at the very end of the movie the frame goes from standard widescreen to a longer condensed image, a subtle way of letting the viewer know the movie is ending. Could someone tell me what this is? Can it be done with a GH1?
 
Blutarski said:
I notice on most of his films at the very end of the movie the frame goes from standard widescreen to a longer condensed image, a subtle way of letting the viewer know the movie is ending. Could someone tell me what this is? Can it be done with a GH1?
Click to expand...

Don't think I've noticed that 'feature'... This would be a post processing effect anyway...

On some '4:3' reformatted for TV broadcast, they'd show the credits with the widescreen 'squashed' to get all the credits on the TV screen format, then when the movies started, they would go to the 4:3 mode.

Don't know if this is what you are seeing... I'm presuming you're watching at least DVD-widescreen...

But for me, the 'Sergio Leone" style tends to have widescreen, shots that are long in duration, more 'close ups', or even 'extreme closeups', as well as frequent deep focus of something in the foreground and reasonably sharp distant background, with composition of actor/actress on the side of the frame.

All of which can be done using the GH-1... with proper lensing, lens settings, and composition...
 
Blutarski said:
I notice on most of his films at the very end of the movie the frame goes from standard widescreen to a longer condensed image, a subtle way of letting the viewer know the movie is ending. Could someone tell me what this is? Can it be done with a GH1?
Click to expand...

What you're seeing is what an anamorphic lens does to an image. For films a widescreen image is condensed just like that to fit on a standard frame of 35mm film. Then the image is shown projected through a theatre projector lens to reverse the process and take that condensed image and widen it back out onto a cinemascope type wide screen. To get that condensed anamorphic image to show condensed yet again an optical printer was used to repeat the original anamorphic process. A squeezing of the squeeze so to speak.
 
no no no....

what it seems to me, is that you are watching television... where they have pan and scanned an image to fit the 4:3 or 16:9 frame, and when the movie ends, they go to the true aspect ratio for credits. This is not something the filmmaker has chosen to use, but in fact is just a cable television thing. I remember watching movies like Die Hard, on TNT and they did this on the last shot.

It's simply the end of pan and scan... and showing you the letterboxed true aspect of the film during credits.... presumably because the text in the credits is wider than the 4:3 screen it is pan and scanned for.
 
I first saw this at the end of a few westerns at the theatre when I was a kid in the 1960s and the movies were not Sergio Leone pictures either.
 
Oh yeah, pan and scan is of the devil. Leone shot his films in Techniscope, which is two perf 35mm shot with standard spherical lenses. It has an aspect ratio of 2.33:1, which is pretty wide and narrow. Panning and scanning a frame like that is a sin.

You will also see the aspect ratio switch on the front end of a lot of wide screen films that are shown on TV. My guess is that the framing of the titles don't allow for pan and scan, so they do an awful switch once the credits are over.... I hate that, I get excited that they are going to show the flick letter boxed, then they do the switch. I usually then go an check and see what is playing elsewhere.
 
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