When I saw "Blue Thunder" on video, I thought Roy Scheider's acting at the end was great but that it was very cheap of the film makers to focus on his face rather than the fate of his eponymous helicopter. Years later, watching it on TV, I thought it was very good how they showed the fate of the helicopter but such a shame we didn't see Scheider's reaction. Eh?
The rectangular format of most cinema films means that they do not fit easily onto square TV screens. Video distributors and TV companies get around this by using a technique known as "panning and scanning". Some poor soul has to slog through the widescreen movie and decide whether we should see the left, right, or middle of the rectangular cinema image on our square TV screens, based on what action is deemed of most interest or use to the viewer.
This panning and scanning affected my opinion of "Blue Thunder" but I'd not have known that if I hadn't seen it panned and scanned differently. Yet there are films where you cannot help but notice. In "Lawrence of Arabia", for instance, there's a scene with two characters astride camels talking to one another and in some pan and scan versions all you can see is the nose of each camel on either side of the screen.
Yet this isn't just a problem when it looks silly, it's a problem for most non-letterboxed films viewed on a TV set. It isn't such a tragedy that you can't see Arthur C. Clarke's cameo in "2010" on a pan and scan version, but it is a problem that the scene shimmers as an opening shot of the White House scurries to the right to catch action that is clearly visible in the widescreen version.
You could buy a widescreen TV set and fortunately more films are being shown on TV in widescreen. But even by just keeping your existing TV you can see the whole film by watching letterbox versions. These put black bands across the top and bottom of your screen, which many people object to.
But why? How can you really prefer to throw away half the film just because you don't like black bands on the screen? If it's really a huge problem for you, sit closer!
