{"id":591,"date":"2013-10-08T12:13:00","date_gmt":"2013-10-08T16:13:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2013\/10\/08\/why-widescreen-all-aspect-ratio-questions-answered-in-18-minutes\/"},"modified":"2013-10-08T12:13:00","modified_gmt":"2013-10-08T16:13:00","slug":"why-widescreen-all-aspect-ratio-questions-answered-in-18-minutes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/2013\/10\/08\/why-widescreen-all-aspect-ratio-questions-answered-in-18-minutes\/","title":{"rendered":"Why widescreen? All aspect ratio questions answered in 18 minutes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The average media consumer is probably familiar with two aspect ratios, 4:3 and 16:9. Those are the dimensions commonly associated with standard-definition and high-definition TVs, respectively. Most media we consume has been formatted into one of these ratios for the sake of home viewing, but as you&#8217;d know if you&#8217;ve ever had to watch a <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Letterboxing_%28filming%29\">letterboxed<\/a> film, studios still choose to film in wider and narrower formats. Yet some filmmakers like Yasujiro Ozu say widescreen looks like &#8220;a roll of toilet paper.&#8221; Why?<\/p>\n<p>FilmmakerIQ.com has put together a terrific 18-minute primer on the history of aspect ratios. Everyone has something to learn from this video, ranging from why 4:3 caught on as the first aspect ratio to how the experimental Cinerama format played a role in the development of widescreen. This was very much made for the most hardcore film buffs, but if you&#8217;ve ever gotten frustrated by the black bars on a movie you watched, this video might answer a few questions.\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The average media consumer is probably familiar with two aspect ratios, 4:3 and 16:9. Those are the dimensions commonly associated with standard-definition and high-definition TVs, respectively. Most media we consume has been formatted into one of these ratios for the sake of home viewing, but as you&#8217;d know if you&#8217;ve ever had to watch a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[212,377],"class_list":["post-591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-links-of-interest","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.library.american.edu\/mediaservices\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}