Archive for 'iRant'
iRant: Widescreen vs. Pan and Scan (Fullscreen)
Posted on 14. Oct, 2005 in All, Blog, iRant | 4 Comments
This post was going to be an eyeCandy segment about the Interpreter (2005, 4/5, taut political thriller revolving around a UN interpreter and the assassination of an African dictator – Nicole Kidman, Sean Penn, both of whom are great here). However, when I watched the special features, I noticed that director Sydney Pollack had a five minute segment dedicated to his thoughts on widescreen vs. pan and scan. It was quite powerful and I was glad to hear someone speak out about this (beyond me ranting in my local video store 
).
First, let me explain for those of you who don’t know, that pan and scan is the method used to format a movie filmed in widescreen so that it will play fullscreen on a regular television (which has a different aspect ration than widescreen). It involves some tech guy (basically) going through the movie, cutting off the edges of the widescreen and thereby focusing the camera where he thinks the action is. As the great Mr. Pollack explains, he has no issues with movies filmed in fullscreen. However, when he films in widescreen, he is telling the story through a different lens (literally). Each scene is carefully framed to contain a broader range of images (since it extends further out to the sides), and this is an integral part of achieving the director’s vision of the movie. For someone else, someone who is typically, as I said, just some tech guy (i.e. not the director, not the cinematographer, not the editor), to come along and reinterpret this vision by reframing each and every scene so that it fits the fullscreen ratio (and thereby contains only a bit over half of the original image) is obscene. For them to then put the director’s name back on the film, repackage it, and send it out for viewing is just wrong – it’s no longer the director’s vision, it’s his vision interpreter through someone else.
I always look for widescreen versions of movies. Just watch for the panning and scanning in a fullscreen movie and you’ll see why – a conversation framed between two still figures sitting on either side of the widescreen becomes a jolting back and forth of the camera in the pan and scan version. I want to see these movies how the director wanted me to see them – I want to see the whole picture (again, literally). Not only does it pay respect to the efforts of those directors filming in widescreen, as far as I’m concerned it is a much richer experience. Hopefully the increasingly common widescreen televisions will make this a thing of the past. And if you don’t want the picture that small – buy a bigger TV 
.
iRant: Downloading Movies Ad
Posted on 07. Oct, 2005 in All, Blog, iRant | 4 Comments
OK, I don’t want to get in a big discussion about how bad media downloading is, and I’ll probably regret posting this, but it grinds my gears (thank you, Peter Griffin ) to see those ads before movies in the theatres that feature, in the one I saw, a Hollywood stuntman telling you how downloading movies is endangering his livelihood.
The impact of downloading on that man’s career is far less than the impact of inflated actor and director salaries for movies nowadays. If they think this type of ad is such a good incentive against illegal downloading then why don’t they put George Lucas (or whoever) up there? “Hi, I’m George Lucas, and stealing movies is making it so that I can barely afford to buy a new jet to fly to the new home that I just bought on my own private island” .
I watch that ad and it just seems so crassly manipulative to me. It’s like the studios are trying to make us believe that some poor, hardworking Hollywood pions really need US, the people who have actually paid $10 to go into the theatre to watch the increasingly mediocre movies that the big studios put out, to change. Oh, no, nothing wrong with the system whereby the headlining actor gets several thousand times more pay for work that need not be as dangerous, challenging, or even very difficult – nope, the problem is that there’s people out there downloading movies. Come on guys – we know it’s an issue, but why are you targeting those who have obviously paid to see this movie – in fact, people who have ended up paying with their time and money to watch this ridiculous commercial. Give me a break.
PS: BTW, it’s not like everyone in this situation is a problem. I was quite pleased to learn that Keanu Reeves, of all people, gave almost $90 million of his Matrix-related profits to the costume and special effects teams who played an enormous role in making those movies what they were (he also bought his crew of stuntmen each $10,000 Harleys). Maybe that won’t change things all that much, but at least it shows he has some perspective!
iRant: User Interfaces
Posted on 30. Sep, 2005 in All, Blog, iRant | 3 Comments
I went looking for a new mobile phone today and it brought to mind some long-standing complaints I have about a lot of user interface developers. For instance, why do I have to press and hold down a red button, the “off” button no less, to turn on a cell phone? On my car stereo, why do I have to press and hold in the “audio” button to change the clock? Speaking of clocks – I’ve set a lot of alarm clocks in my time and I’m a pretty quick study in those types of things, so how is it that the alarm clock in our guest room took me several minutes to figure out – a task I was assigned after both of our guests in that room were unable to set it? There’s so many instances of bad user interfaces around that it just boggles the mind.
I helped teach a computer science class on user interfaces during my Master’s degree at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, and I loved it. We have a rich visual history that can, if we use it, supply us with a great deal of information without resorting to the written word. Red means stop, guys – or off – it certainly doesn’t mean on – why can’t I just hold down the green button on my cell phone to turn it on? At this stage in our evolution, many devices should be operable without resorting to instructions – we’re pretty tech-savy apes at this point, so why is there so little effort to unify the symbol-ism that we’ve all internalized into the development of consistently understandable user interfaces? This is one reason why I love Apple products so much – I don’t need to read the manual, it’s intuitive b/c Apple UI designers study how users USE things, so what gives with so many other companies (VCR makers take note! )?
I’ve brought up just a few instances of poor user interfaces, yet I come across new examples every week. Anybody out there want to share some of their worst UI experiences? It’s just a comment away…
PS: Woo hoo, got today’s post in before midnight!
