From the Spring 1993 issue of the Operating Cameraman

The basic standards of motion picture photography and presentation were set 100 years ago and have only been altered significantly twice: With the introduction of sound in the late Twenties and of wide screen in the early Fifties.

This series of articles on the latter alteration gives a chronological overview of notable techniques and processes introduced during those times, the events and situations within the industry which precipitated their introduction and the subsequent loss of popularity of some of them and their effect on production, post-production and exhibition.

On the evening of September 30, 1952, a first night audience at the Broadway Theater in New York City was treated to an event that would have as shattering an effect on motion pictures as sound had almost 25 years earlier.

The theater itself had been altered; some side seats removed and a huge curved curtained proscenium installed. When the film started, if seemed rather unimpressive: Lowell Thomas seen in an almost Lilliputian size in relation to the proscenium in the standard 1.37:1 ratio image, giving a lecture on the history of motion pictures.

But when he said, "Ladies and gentlemen, this is CINERAMA!" his image faded out and the curtains parted to the full width of the screen as the famous roller coaster ride came on. Accompanied by directional stereophonic sound, everyone in the audience was aghast. At that moment, the shape of theatrical motion pictures would be changed forever.

WHAT WENT BEFORE

Exactly why W. K. L. Dickson chose the 1.33:1 aspect ratio for the motion picture system he was developing for Thomas Edison is still a subject of controversy and conjecture. However, by 1895, when a number of inventors were tinkering with motion picture projection, the Edison Company had generated a sufficient library of subjects for its Kinetoscope peepshow device that these films were used in projection experiments.

Although other film and frame sizes were experimented with, the 35mm 4 perforation per frame 1.33:1 image became the official standard in 1908.

The original 35mm 4-perf aspect ratio established by Dickson with a perforation-to-perforation image is 1.33:1. When the frame dimensions were reduced to allow for the optical soundtrack, the new dimensions were 1.37:1, though 1.33:1 is often commonly used to refer to the Academy aperture.

As the production and presentation of motion pictures developed into a multimillion dollar industry, no serious thought was given to changing this standard until after World War I.

Theater chains began erecting huge picture palaces in major cities around the world. Increasing the seating capacity of the auditoriums meant increasing the size of the projected picture. The extent to which this could be done was limited by the available negative and print stocks, projection lenses, light sources, as well as the balcony overhang which might cut off the top of the picture for those in the back rows of the first floor.

However, despite complaints from exhibitors, nothing was really done until the adoption of optical sound tracks in 1927. Recorded along the left side of the film inside the perforations, it cut the image aspect ratio down to about 1.22:1 which in many theaters projected as unnaturally higher than square.

Some theaters compensated by cutting new projector aperture plates which restored the squarer image even if the head and feet of actors were sometimes cut off.

By the early Thirties, cameramen began compensating for such projection and it became an official standard in 1934. In the impetus of the conversion to sound, serious thought was for the first time given to changing the shape and size of films, at least those for the first run picture palaces.

William Fox, then trying to take over the industry (he owned both the Fox Film Corp. and MGM during the summer of 1929), saw the establishment of a new format for first runs as a further way of extending his control. Fox opted for a 70mm system in which his company made four features and a couple of newsreels. The Big Trail (1930) and one of the newsreels was restored to 35mm anamorphic in 1985.

Paramount experimented first with a 56mm system in which it filmed one short and then with a 65mm system similar to today's except for an optical sound track. Pioneering producer George K. S poor had a 63mm system in which one feature was made. The film was distributed by RKO, which licensed the process.

Warner Bros. claimed to have a 65mm system in which it filmed three features, however, no technical details have been found on it. Roland West filmed The Bat Whispers (1931) in a 65mm system which looks similar to Paramount's, it has also been restored to 35mm anamorphic. Concurrent 35mm versions of all these features were made.

MGM borrowed Fox's 70mm Grandeur cameras to film two features which would be optically reduced to 35mm but projected on wide screens with wide angle lenses! Nine of these features are known to have been shown in their wide film formats in New York, Chicago and Los Angeles.

Although exhibitor resistance, audience indifference and the Depression doomed this Wide screen Revolution of the early Thirties, many of the techniques and even some of the equipment would be revived 25 years later.

CINERAMA

One of the studios briefly involved with wide film experiments at this time was Paramount, primarily at its East Coast Studios. It has never been documented whether or not Fred Waller, a special effects cinematographer at that studio, was ever involved in these experiments. Waller was interested in developing a motion picture system which roughly duplicated the wide view of human vision.

Beginning in 1936, with eleven 16mm cameras, Waller built a rig he called Vitarama. Each camera recorded a portion of a 146 degree field of view, and corresponding projectors presented the results on a deep curved screen, an idea he got from architect Ralph Walker.

Vitarama was demonstrated at the 1939 New York World's Fair and during World War II was used by the military to train aerial gunners, including Joseph W. Schmit, later of Technicolor and an interviewee for this article.

Exactly when Waller switched to 35mm has not been documented, but by 1949 he had developed the basics of what was to become Cinerama. The camera employed three synchronized movements running at 26 fps. Three 27mm lenses were set at slightly overlapping horizontal angles to each other and the frame height was increased to 6 perfs. A common shutter in front of the lenses insured equal exposure on all three negatives.

Projection was from three booths in positions corresponding to the photographic setup. With vibrating shutters at the edge of the overlapping frames to, in theory, improve the blend into one huge, wide image. The aspect ratio of three panel Cinerama has been listed as anywhere from 2.59:1 to 2.75:1; in actual practice it may have varied from theater to theater.

Release printing of the subsequent three panel films was by Technicolor. Initially on color positive stock, later three matrix printers were modified to handle the six perf frame and Dubray-Howell perforations.

A picture this big and wide needed more than standard monaural sound. Bell Labs had been experimenting with the recording of three discrete channels of stereophonic sound on film as well as transmitting and disc recording two channels of stereophonic sound since 1932. There are other documented attempts at recording more than one channel of optical sound on film prior to the FantaSound used in road show engagements of Fantasia (1940).

With post-war access to the German experiments with magnetic recording, practical high-fidelity stereo recording techniques became possible. Hazard Reeves of New York's Reeves Sound developed a special system for Waller that would run in interlock with his pictures on a 35mm fullcoat.

Reeves chose five channels across and behind the screen to allow the sound to flow smoothly across the picture. A sixth track (later modified to seven) contained surround information directed to speakers in the auditorium by a cue track.

Although "how it works" illustrations show six microphones being used for the production recording of Cinerama Sound in true stereo, this obviously was not practical in every situation. Tracks were expanded and panned in dub sessions.

Waller set up his base of operations on a converted tennis court in Oyster Bay, Long Island. He invited various studio heads to demonstrations which they all found impressive but impractical. There was no way Cinerama could fit into the average neighborhood movie house.

Subrun booking would be necessary to amortize the obvious high cost of producing films in such a process. It took a unique visionary from outside the industry to see the possibilities of Cinerama--Michael Todd.

During the late Thirties and Forties, Todd had made a name for himself in theatrical circles for producing flashy revues and stage shows. While he was strongly devoted to the legitimate theater, Todd felt a need to also make a name for himself in Hollywood. In Cinerama, he saw his way of doing so.

He realized that here was a special and unique form of film presentation, not something for the local Bijou. An event to be presented in specially selected theaters around the world under the same conditions as a legitimate stage show, which people would come from miles around to see.

Forming a company with Lowell Thomas, through whom he'd first learned of Cinerama, Todd first had his son reshoot the highlight of Waller's demo film, a roller coaster ride. To excite investors they used the new Eastman Color negative film.

Just as Niagara Falls became the symbol of the Thirties' wide film experiments, being used in practically every demo film, the roller coaster came to symbolize the fifties revolution. Used not only in early CinemaScope and Todd-AO tests, but even for climactic sequences in two 3-D film, Man in the Dark (1953) and Gorilla at Large (1954).

Todd then set off for Europe to film a series of travelogue type vignettes in various countries. Worried that Todd's work might be too highbrow, Thomas brought in veteran filmmaker Merian C. Cooper to supervise a sequence to be shot at Cypress Gardens in Florida and an aerial flyover of the United States by Paul Mantz.

The results wowed that first night audience and within days the Broadway Theater was sold out for the next several months. Cinerama was launched in New York.

Though radio and print communications were faster than 25 years earlier and in spite of increasing transcontinental air service, the coasts were still far more isolated than today. The full impact of Cinerama was not immediately felt in Hollywood.

Those executives who'd seen it still felt it to be economically impractical. Their interest was excited by a presentation of a more practical nature in their own backyards. The premiere of Bwana Devil in 3-D, a process easily adaptable to existing theaters.

3-D at that time was not a wide screen process and is really outside the scope of this article except for the following notes: By the time the studios' first 3-D films were ready for release, the practice of masking off the 1.33:1 frame to achieve a wider look had been introduced.

The House of Wax was shown in many situations at 1.66:1 and It Came from Outer Space at 1.85:1. 3-D films begun after April 1953 were composed for their various studios' recommended aspect ratio. Warner Bros. filmed spherical 3-D versions of The Command and Ring of Fear (both 1954); though the 3-D negatives were cut, these versions were never released. In 1960 20th Century-Fox released the independently-made September Storm, advertised as the "CinemaScope 3-D film" (the author was unable to locate a print of this film to determine if it had been shot with anamorphic lenses).

In the summer of 1954, as the 3-D boom was declining, Col. Robert Bernier announced he'd developed a process in which 3-D pairs would be recorded one above the other within the full aperture frame. The resultant images having a 2.35:1 aspect ratio similar to unsqueezed CinemaScope with an optical track.

This technique appeared 11 years later as Bernier's SpaceVision process and is the basis for one of the single film 3-D systems used extensively in the Seventies and Eighties. Flat prints from these negatives are blown up and squeezed for projection through anamorphic lenses.

The continuation of this article will present CinemaScope and many of the anamorphic processes following its public introduction by 20th Century-Fox in 1953.