Nominated four Oscars, won one.

 

Flightsim.to Livery (DC-6)

https://flightsim.to/file/18369/pmdg-dc-6b-the-high-and-the-mighty

 

https://www.amazon.com/High-Mighty-John-Wayne/dp/B000J13RCI/

 

 

Edited July 29, 20214 yr by Fielder

Cinemascope movies took a special screen. Not many theaters had them.

1 hour ago, Fielder said:

Cinemascope movies took a special screen. Not many theaters had them.

Not strictly true. Although cinemascope could produce images up to a ratio of 2.66:1, it was more common to shoot for 2.55:1, and whilst it's true that most cinema screens in theatres at the time when Cinemascope was a big deal (50s to late 60s) were suitable for projecting the more commonplace 1.37:1 ratio onto them, they could still receive Cinemascope release prints onto them with the addition of a projector lens adapter fitted to the projectors in theatres so equipped. 

For those who don't know what Cinemascope is, it was one of the first systems to use an anamorphic lens - an anamorphic lens is basically a prism system in the lens housing, designed to gather in a wider image field, which the prism can then compress down so it fits onto the narrower film width. This is why you used to see films shown on 4:1 aspect ratio TVs sometimes, where the titles would not be converted and so everyone would look overly tall and thin because they never bothered to convert the title sequences, just the main film. But in cinemas, the film can be projected through what is essentially a prism the other way around to the one in the camera which originally shot the film to convert it back into a very wide-field image, or, the original film can be projected through a converter onto a wider film stock for use as a distributable projector copy although this does introduce some graininess. Because of this, Cinemascope ended up using film stock with a finer emulsion so that when it was expanded, it did not suffer from graininess.

Cinemascope wasn't a new technique when Twentieth Century Fox developed it, it had been around since the mid 1920s, but it had not really taken off back then, however when it started being used and became a selling point for certain films and cinemas, other companies started producing their own versions of the system, such as VistaVision and SuperScope, whilst others licensed the Cinemascope system. These days anamorphic techniques are a bit more sophisticated and are encompassed in perhaps what might be regarded as the standard for them, which is Panavision, and a big clue toward that is if you look at the Panavision logo itself, and what appears behind the lettering, which is three outline boxes: a 4:1 aspect ratio TV screen, a 16:9 aspect ratio typical of widescreen TVs, and a 2.35:1 aspect ratio common for cinemas.

One of the interesting things about Cinemascope, is that it led to quite a lot of different cinematography, some of which was to take advantage of the wide field of view, but some of which was to alleviate some issues which it can create, the most noticeable of which is that in extreme close ups, the anamorphic distortion can lead to actor's faces looking a bit wider than they actually are in real life. A big advance which Cinemascope did however bring, was the use of the film to also carry the a true stereo soundtrack. This is why even though it could shoot in up to 2.66:1, it more often shot for 2.55:1, with the rest of the area on the film being used to carry the magnetic sound recording. Prior to this, it was common to have another camera being used to record the sound alone.

3 hours ago, Chock said:

Not strictly true. Although cinemascope could produce images up to a ratio of 2.66:1, it was more common to shoot for 2.55:1, and whilst it's true that most cinema screens in theatres at the time when Cinemascope was a big deal (50s to late 60s) were suitable for projecting the more commonplace 1.37:1 ratio onto them, they could still receive Cinemascope release prints onto them with the addition of a projector lens adapter fitted to the projectors in theatres so equipped. 

For those who don't know what Cinemascope is,

[...]

One of the interesting things about Cinemascope, is that it led to quite a lot of different cinematography, some of which was to take advantage of the wide field of view, but some of which was to alleviate some issues which it can create, the most noticeable of which is that in extreme close ups, the anamorphic distortion can lead to actor's faces looking a bit wider than they actually are in real life. A big advance which Cinemascope did however bring, was the use of the film to also carry the a true stereo soundtrack. This is why even though it could shoot in up to 2.66:1, it more often shot for 2.55:1, with the rest of the area on the film being used to carry the magnetic sound recording. Prior to this, it was common to have another camera being used to record the sound alone.

Thanks a lot, that's amazing info! That's where the term "projection" gets a much deeper mathematical meaning! 🙂
BTW, projections are important in many subjects. I work in GIS and land survey, and you'd better know what it's about there! And projection is a thing in virtual reality, of course.
 

Cinemascope: another effort by Hollywood to counter the TELEVISION MENACE!

Watch AIRPLANE after The High and the Mighty to see where they got most of their material.

Todd A.O. was another widescreen technology that was originally designed for deeply curved screens, but, like Technicolor (Chock will be familiar with Powell and Pressburger--the undisputed geniuses of Technicolor) didn't survive into what we laughingly call the film industry these days.

My parents had to traveled 90 miles to watch a film in Cinerama, instead of in any one of the many local theaters which were showing the film. Khartoum (Charlton Heston as Maj Gen 'Chinese' Gordon, and Laurence Olivier as the Mahdi).

The giant and super wide screen allowed the full aspect ratio over the entire height and width of the screen. The newspaper adds had blurbs about a full and genuine Cinerama experience with no compromises. Many in the audience were in evening dress, black tie. Reportedly there were no commonly dressed ladies of the evening allowed that night, only a very few classily groomed who fit right in.

Yes, I was confused between Cinemascope and Cinerama. High and Mighty was only Cinemascope.

 

Edited July 29, 20214 yr by Fielder

I remember seeing "This Is Cinerama" in 1955 at the old Orpheum theater in San Francisco. My mother and I trekked 125 miles just to see this movie. And it was worth it. At the time there was nothing that compared to that huge screen and the sound was simply awesome. Sigh... another reminder of the good old days of moviedom.

Yeah they probably thought Cinerama would be the new universal standard back then.

Earlier Abel Gance had made Napoleon back in the silent era. He used 3 cameras side by side to get a wide view on some of the larger army maneuvering scenes in the movie. When it was time for the wider view, the curtains were opened to show a temporary wider screen.

It's one of my 3 favorite silent films. Gance's Napoleon, von Stroheim's Greed, and best of all Fritz Lang's Dr. Mabuse der Spieler (Lang would later marry the writer. She stayed in Germany during WWII while Lang left). All 3 of these in original version were over 5 hours long.

On 7/29/2021 at 10:34 PM, Fielder said:

t's one of my 3 favorite silent films.

Ben Hur with the luckless Ramon Navarro and Francis X. Bushman is even more epic than the Heston vehicle. Greed is... really long 🙂 Reading a novel that jumps off from CBD's "buried city" (massive 10 Commandments set) that's pretty entertaining. I'll have to see if Criterion has any of your picks available for streaming.

Thanks, I'm going to have to go and acquire that early Ben Hur movie which I have never seen. It was off my radar.

In Gance's Napoleon, he hung a camera from a very long swinging rope forming a pendulum. Which was suspended from the ceiling of the enormous hall representing Tuilieries palace where the revolutionary National Assembly met. It was to represent the utter chaos that the revolution had produced in the government of France.

Nothing like the affects he used had been seen before. In the 3 screen wide shots, two were in color, I believe hand tinted.

The pendulum trick sounds amazing. Ben Hur also has early two-color Technicolor for some scenes, a full-sized floating roman warship that got torched (or at any rate burned, with extras who didn't get the memo jumping off for their lives, supposedly) and pre-Hayes Code flower-tossin' girls, What's not to like?

Alrighty, so I purchased 1925 Ben Hur on Amazon Prime. Hard to believe technicolor was there briefly before talking pictures. I saw in reviews how the Heston version used scale models for the naval battle. Looking forward to watching this in a day or so when I get time. Purchased, not rented, because sounds like a keeper.