[Kevin McCarthy]

I was wondering what the percentage breakdown was among various film OAR's. It's not worth biasing this with old releases (4:3 from 1950, etc). Also, will we see a trend for 1.78:1 and 1.85:1 to grow in percentage as film makers cater to the popularity of 16:9 sets?

 

[wmcclain]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin McCarthy /forum/post/0


I was wondering what the percentage breakdown was among various film OAR's. It's not worth biasing this with old releases (4:3 from 1950, etc). Also, will we see a trend for 1.78:1 and 1.85:1 to grow in percentage as film makers cater to the popularity of 16:9 sets?

See this IMDB page. [EDIT: dead link. The last version in the Wayback Machine is from April 2008: DVD Aspect Ratios ].


The data is taken from the population of DVD titles.


-Bill

 

[Tukkis]



Quote:
I was wondering what the percentage breakdown was among various film OAR's. It's not worth biasing this with old releases (4:3 from 1950, etc). Also, will we see a trend for 1.78:1 and 1.85:1 to grow in percentage as film makers cater to the popularity of 16:9 sets?

.


This has been discussed before if you do a search.


The general concensus was that more and more movies are being filmed in 2.35. Even alot of comedies and romance which were traditionally 1.85, are being filmed in 2.35

 

[Kevin McCarthy]

Bill: Thanks! I didn't know IMDB broke it out by aspect ratio. I hadn't been able to think of the right search term, and a cursory read of the whole 2.35:1 CH forum didn't provide an answer, although it's probably there and I missed it. Other than scribbling down the IMDB stats and seeing how additional titles break out on aspect ratio going forward, I wonder if there is a quantatitive way to evaluate trends in OAR.

 

[wmcclain]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin McCarthy /forum/post/0


Other than scribbling down the IMDB stats and seeing how additional titles break out on aspect ratio going forward, I wonder if there is a quantatitive way to evaluate trends in OAR.

The raw data is available split into various text files: http://www.imdb.com/interfaces . You'd have to extract and associate (titleid, year, OAR). Small matter of programming, as I always used to say.


-Bill

 

[Josh Z]

The yearly split between 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 has been approximately 50/50 for decades. If it seems like movies are being made in one ratio more than the other, that has more to do with the types of movie you like rather than any objective statistics.

 

[Art Sonneborn]

Early HD optical disc releases have been heavy toward 2.35:1. But if you like films from all eras you will see that scope is in the minority by some margin.


Art

 

[wmcclain]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Josh Z /forum/post/0


The yearly split between 1.85:1 and 2.35:1 has been approximately 50/50 for decades. If it seems like movies are being made in one ratio more than the other, that has more to do with the types of movie you like rather than any objective statistics.

As I threatened to do, I downloaded the IMDB "technical.list" file and produced a summary of aspect ratios by decade.


This is not very scientific because the IMDB does not show aspect ratio for every title. I dropped some titles because of irregular data field formatting. And a huge source of bias is that they inconsistently list individual TV episodes as well as the series. This greatly increases the number of 16:9 titles for recent years. And video games are in there somewhere.


Since there are a scattering of odd ratios, I call everything 1.7-2.0 "~1.78", and take everything over 2.0 as the wider format.

Code:

~1.78    >2.0    ratio of ~1.78 / all
       =====    ====    ====================
1950     384    1141    0.25
1960     474    3343    0.12
1970     963    2523    0.28
1980    1306    1095    0.54
1990    3479    1259    0.73
2000   12256    3486    0.78

This would be more meaningful if I could limit it to theatrical releases.


-Bill

 

[Kevin McCarthy]

Bill: Thanks for crunching the numbers. It appears well above 50:50 in favor of 1.78, and if anything the recent explosion of 1.78 sets should provide a further bias. The post regarding the HD/BD titles being more 2.35 is true, perhaps because epics are overrepresented in their urge to show off the technology. On a side note, JVC demoed a 2.35:1 rear projector at CES; microdisplays are probably more flexible to produce in this regard than flat panel sets. Given that they tooled up and made at least three of the wide LCoS devices, future products for either FP or RP in this format are a distinct possibility.

 

[CAVX]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin McCarthy /forum/post/0


Also, will we see a trend for 1.78:1 and 1.85:1 to grow in percentage as film makers cater to the popularity of 16:9 sets?

Scope was introduced to get people back into cinemas during the TV boom of the 1950's. I seriously doubt that the film industry would reverse their view based on the shape of (HDTV) TVs today.


You know SCOPE is becoming more popular when animation like HAPPY FEET and CARS are presented that way...


Mark

 

[Farley Flavors]



Quote:
Originally Posted by Kevin McCarthy /forum/post/0


Bill: Thanks for crunching the numbers. It appears well above 50:50 in favor of 1.78, and if anything the recent explosion of 1.78 sets should provide a further bias. The post regarding the HD/BD titles being more 2.35 is true, perhaps because epics are overrepresented in their urge to show off the technology.

I can't find the source now, but I did read somewhere recently that although the majority of films are still shot "flat", when you take box office figures into account, around half of the top money-spinners are presented in 'scope.