A question about movies re pan and scan and letterbox.
By suspenseful
@suspenseful (40192)
Canada
August 14, 2011 5:32pm CST
I just received a couple of movies from Amazon that I had recently seen on Tv and I had seen it in both the letterbox and the pan and scan variety. Now I watched the movie and noticed that it did seem longer on Tv - it was not the letter box version. because when I got the movie and put it in my dvd player, it was not as long.
So I was wondering when the movie is not letterbox or the tv version, do they have to increase the time because for instance, when there is a calvary charge in letter box you see all of the soldiers on their horses charging, but in a pan and scan, you have to see the commander at first, and then go over all the soldiers then?
I do find that when that happens, they might take parts out of the movie that would answer some of your questions,
I mean in one of the movies I got that was in the regular letter box form, it had a part that was omitted in the tv version and it did explains a lot to me.
2 responses
@suspenseful (40192)
• Canada
15 Aug 11
I also think it has to do with political correctness. They take parts out of the movie that they feel might offend some people. But sometime that part of the movies shows how things were like then really.
@thedailyclick (3017)
•
15 Aug 11
From experience the only time I have seen a movie on TV which is longer than the original version is when it is full of advert breaks. More often or not a movie shown on TV will be shorter than the original as not only do they cut out scenes so that a movie can be shown at a certain time of day so it doesn’t offend but they also cut them down so that they will wit into a specific time slot. The worst example of this is that I watched a TV version of Gorillas in the Mist a while back, it’s a movie which last 129 minutes in original form but on TV it was crammed into a 105 minute slot, 24 minutes dropped just to fit it into a certain time slot.
The only explanation I can come up with for your example is that the director himself did a pan & scan version and so did include the footage which normally would have been cropped off by the sides. But I’ve never heard of a director doing this although it wouldn’t be a bad idea.
But it really is annoying that a movie on TV can omit something really important, especially when it’s just been hacked down to fit in a time slot by someone who doesn’t really understand the movie or the importance of certain scenes.
1 person likes this
@suspenseful (40192)
• Canada
15 Aug 11
I do get the movie channels, but thinking of reconsidering since I only get two movie channels that should high definition and it might just be the pan and scanned version stretched out. And I think that is where the director decides to show more of the screen that would have been letterboxes in the original - like the captain on his horse, and then behind him -well they could not show them all in one shot.
And of course they have to take some parts that are essential to the story. I did get the Conan movies and noticed in the end when I warted the first dvd, that they showed how the princess showed Conan how to get up into Thulsa Doom's temple or lair so he coild kill him. They missed that on the tv version and I am sure that others wondered how he got up there.
