The fifties were a time of tremendous innovation in film and picture formats. The onslaught of television caused panic in the film industry. Because television adopted the same aspect ratio as the academy 1.33:1 ratio, the film industry felt the need to become wider. Hence, the widescreen formats we have today are a direct result of this fear.
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On September 30, 1952, the film This is Cinerama premiered as the first Cinerama film. Cinerama was the first real widescreen feature film format and was invented by Fred Waller. Engineers Hazard Reeves and Wentworth Fling carried out tests to determine the number of channals necessary to have for the format. Reeves and Waller realized that at least 5 channels would be necessary behind the screen. A 7-track head stack was created to employ the soundtrack. These seven tracks feed eight speaker channels, five behind the screen and three around the auditorium. Tracks 6 and 7 are manually switched between stereophonic surround and monophonic surround plus rear surround for selected scenes in the film. In other scenes an "umbrella" configuration was employed. The umbrella configuration sent one track to both the left and right walls and the other to a speaker in the middle of the rear wall. This was commonly used to make sounds pass over the audience. The sound was handled by a 35mm magnetic full-coat piece of film run in interlock with three projectors for the 75-foot long, 146 degree curved screen. One of the advantages of Cinerama was the fast speed that the fullcoat piece of film. At over 29 IPS, Cinerama's fidelity was height. Because of the expense and difficulties of the system, it was abandonned in 1963. Super Cinerama was later adapted for the Todd-AO format using an anamorphic lense. In 1993, a museum in England started a Cinerama theatre. Then in Dayton, Ohio, another cinerama theater was opened in 1996 because of John Harvey at the New Neon Movies. |
On September 16, 1953, The Robe debuted as the first CinemaScope film. This anamorphic, widscreen format used an anamorphic lense to get its wide aspect ratio. This 4-track, discrete magnetic format used an LCRS speaker set-up and was striped right on the film. The first CinemaScope film, The Robe, was released on September 16, 1953. CinemaScope used a technique which had the dialog on screen follow the action on the screen. To accomplish this, production dialog was captured with three microphones. This practice continued for some years, but later abandoned. In addition to the four magnetic strips, there was one small optical track on the film. The magnetic tracks wore down quickly and production of them was difficult. Each reel had to be magnetically striped and recorded individually and each checked in a movie theater. Starting with the Cinemascope process, the Academy curve was no longer used. CinemaScope was later replaced with Panavision which uses an optical soundtrack typically with a Dolby Stereo soundtrack with noise reduction.
Warnerphonic
Warnerphonic was a separate sprocketed magnetic tape that played in interlock with the film. CinemaScope's combined film and magnetic stripe put Warnerphonic out of business.
| The first Todd-AO movie was called Oklahoma! and it opened on October 13, 1955. Much like the CinemaScope format, Todd-AO is used five speakers behind the screen and a mono surround channel. Todd-AO widescreen format was originally conceive by Michael Todd and the American Optical Company. Todd-AO's 65mm negative is printed on a 70mm release print. The extra 5mm is devoted to the soundtrack with 2.5mm alocated on either side of the film. Starting in the early 1970's, most 70mm films were shot in 35mm and then blown up to 70mm for release. In 1997, Kenneth Branaugh's Hamlet brought back people shooting in 65mm for 70mm blowup. The Todd-AO format was used by Dolby Laboratories in the 1970's and applied their own EQ curves and noise reduction. |  |
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