Why does Jeremiah Johnson look distorted on AMC?
January 8, 2012 7:09 PM Subscribe
Why does AMC's version of Jeremiah Johnson look distorted at times?
I caught the second half of Jeremiah Johnson on AMC. There is something strange about the picture. During several sweeping shots of the landscape, there is a distortion that looks sort of... bubbly? Rolly? Squeezed?
I've seen Jeremiah Johnson before, but I don't remember this happening. Here's a scene on youtube of Del Gue saying goodbye. At about 0:42 in the clip, it starts panning. In the youtube clip, it looks fine. On AMC during the same scene, the landscape was nauseatingly distorted. It sort of undulated and rippled as it panned.
You'll need to have caught it on AMC to know exactly what I'm talking about, but maybe the description will ring a bell... my curiosity is killing me.
I caught the second half of Jeremiah Johnson on AMC. There is something strange about the picture. During several sweeping shots of the landscape, there is a distortion that looks sort of... bubbly? Rolly? Squeezed?
I've seen Jeremiah Johnson before, but I don't remember this happening. Here's a scene on youtube of Del Gue saying goodbye. At about 0:42 in the clip, it starts panning. In the youtube clip, it looks fine. On AMC during the same scene, the landscape was nauseatingly distorted. It sort of undulated and rippled as it panned.
You'll need to have caught it on AMC to know exactly what I'm talking about, but maybe the description will ring a bell... my curiosity is killing me.
In editing films for TV...dont they sometimes pan a little to catch something otherwise in a theater aspect ratio? Also, could just be shitty print.
posted by timsteil at 7:17 PM on January 8, 2012
posted by timsteil at 7:17 PM on January 8, 2012
timsteil, you're referring to a technique called "pan and scan", which looks odd but usually not like what Marit has described.
posted by davey_darling at 7:27 PM on January 8, 2012
posted by davey_darling at 7:27 PM on January 8, 2012
What you saw could be a compression artifact of the cable or satellite service you have. There are many ways that could occur.
posted by caclwmr4 at 7:44 PM on January 8, 2012 [1 favorite]
posted by caclwmr4 at 7:44 PM on January 8, 2012 [1 favorite]
Could be an artifact due to interlacing. Interlacing(when present) tends to be most visible during pans, especially quick pans.
posted by Yowser at 7:51 PM on January 8, 2012
posted by Yowser at 7:51 PM on January 8, 2012
Shot in the dark, but could your TV / cable box be trying to stretch out a standard definition (4x3) image to fit a widescreen TV set?
If it's the AMC standard definition - not the high definition - channel, I'd check the zoom/stretch settings to make sure the TV / cable box isn't set to stretch out the signal. Some TVs only stretch out the sides of the image and leaves the middle of the image alone, giving a bubble effect in horizontal (not vertical) panning shots. It's also evident when someone walks across the entire horizontal plane of the image.
posted by thisisnotbruce at 8:00 PM on January 8, 2012 [1 favorite]
If it's the AMC standard definition - not the high definition - channel, I'd check the zoom/stretch settings to make sure the TV / cable box isn't set to stretch out the signal. Some TVs only stretch out the sides of the image and leaves the middle of the image alone, giving a bubble effect in horizontal (not vertical) panning shots. It's also evident when someone walks across the entire horizontal plane of the image.
posted by thisisnotbruce at 8:00 PM on January 8, 2012 [1 favorite]
Hard to tell without seeing it, but this effect could be produced by a combination of the wide-angle lens used to shoot the film (often used for landscapes; can impart the sort of "rolling," distorted effect you mention, especially in moving shots), and, as others have suggested, some sort of artifacting, perhaps relating to decompression, HD compensation, and/or improper masking/formatting of the image on your TV.
posted by Dr. Wu at 9:46 PM on January 8, 2012
posted by Dr. Wu at 9:46 PM on January 8, 2012
It appears that this film was shot with an anamorphic lens that would squeeze a 2.35:1 image into a standard 35 mm frame instead of a 70 mm frame. (This is old school cinematography and is most noticeable on films prior to the early to mid seventies in which the Panavision or Cinemascope logos are part of the opening credits.)
Anamorphic lenses were used to project this film on to the silver screen at the movie theater. Home video and television versions of these anamorphic films have always had this issue. Of course they pan and scan most of the film - but certain shots as well as the opening or closing titles would often be left in the squeezed state for these transfers in order to keep from cutting off the edges of the titles that had been hard printed onto the film or to preserve the majesty of certain shots. I can remember television screenings of A Shot In The Dark (the first Pink Panther film) being especially pronounced in the distortion squeeze during the closing titles when I was a kid.
But you might say, "Wait a minute - I have a widescreen television - this should not be happening on my expensive set!" Unfortunately, television stations and HD channels still practice pan and scan on some scope films so you will encounter this issue from time to time on films made before the early 1980's.
Most widescreen or scope films with the 2.35:1 aspect ratio shot since the early 80's are in the Super 35 format - its just a matte placed across the standard 35mm frame that crops the projected image to the scope format.
I've made some big generalizations here - but I hope you get the general idea of why these squeezed shots and sequences appear in older movies on your television. Though as stated above, sometimes a station will have there equipment set up improperly - but every shot/sequence will be squeezed in that situation.
posted by cinemafiend at 10:06 PM on January 8, 2012
Anamorphic lenses were used to project this film on to the silver screen at the movie theater. Home video and television versions of these anamorphic films have always had this issue. Of course they pan and scan most of the film - but certain shots as well as the opening or closing titles would often be left in the squeezed state for these transfers in order to keep from cutting off the edges of the titles that had been hard printed onto the film or to preserve the majesty of certain shots. I can remember television screenings of A Shot In The Dark (the first Pink Panther film) being especially pronounced in the distortion squeeze during the closing titles when I was a kid.
But you might say, "Wait a minute - I have a widescreen television - this should not be happening on my expensive set!" Unfortunately, television stations and HD channels still practice pan and scan on some scope films so you will encounter this issue from time to time on films made before the early 1980's.
Most widescreen or scope films with the 2.35:1 aspect ratio shot since the early 80's are in the Super 35 format - its just a matte placed across the standard 35mm frame that crops the projected image to the scope format.
I've made some big generalizations here - but I hope you get the general idea of why these squeezed shots and sequences appear in older movies on your television. Though as stated above, sometimes a station will have there equipment set up improperly - but every shot/sequence will be squeezed in that situation.
posted by cinemafiend at 10:06 PM on January 8, 2012
AMC is an awful channel that defaces the movies that it shows. It's likely a 4:3 ("full screen") cropped version of the movie that is stretched to 16:9 ("widescreen"). Because most of the important stuff in movies happens in the center of the screen, often channels will leave that portion relatively intact and then dramatically stretch the sides of the picture. This is particularly noticeable in pans because you see a weird bubbly, sea sick type effect.
Don't watch movies on AMC.
posted by The Lamplighter at 1:11 AM on January 9, 2012
Don't watch movies on AMC.
posted by The Lamplighter at 1:11 AM on January 9, 2012
I'm siding with "compression artifacts." Particularly because it is noticed most during a pan when the differences between adjacent frames are greatest and often require all keyframes to properly compress but that scene-to-scene care wasn't taken during the encoding (common with unattended, fixed-rate compression). The rolling, bubbly aspect-ratio distortion is *likely* a blending of visual information from multiple frames.
posted by bz at 9:38 AM on January 9, 2012
posted by bz at 9:38 AM on January 9, 2012
This is either AMC messing up the movie, or your TV doing same. I've seen "wide" modes on TVs do this -- they try to widen the whole picture but emphasize the middle of the screen by stretching it horizontally, while de-emphasizing the edges of the picture by squishing them. It's basically a crappy compromise designed to make standard 4:3 video look "widescreen". This makes panning look horrible because parts of the picture are panning at different rates.
Solution to possibility #1: Watch TCM instead. :)
Solution to possibility #2: Check your TV's screen mode. If you're watching letterboxed movies on cable, the mode you want is probably called "Zoom" or "Cinema".
posted by neckro23 at 10:45 AM on January 9, 2012
Solution to possibility #1: Watch TCM instead. :)
Solution to possibility #2: Check your TV's screen mode. If you're watching letterboxed movies on cable, the mode you want is probably called "Zoom" or "Cinema".
posted by neckro23 at 10:45 AM on January 9, 2012
What you're describing doesn't sound at all like a compression artifact to me, but it sounds exactly like what would happen if the scope (2.4:1) picture of Jeremiah Johnson was being squeezed at both edges -- but not so much in the middle -- in order to fit the image onto the 16x9 screen (1.77:1) with no black bars and with only minimal distortion in the center of the image. Lousy cable channels like AMC do this a lot. It sucks.
(If, however, you were watching this in SD, or an a HD screen with black bars, then it no longer sounds to me like stretch-o-vision.)
posted by Joey Bagels at 12:52 PM on January 9, 2012
(If, however, you were watching this in SD, or an a HD screen with black bars, then it no longer sounds to me like stretch-o-vision.)
posted by Joey Bagels at 12:52 PM on January 9, 2012
Response by poster: There are a lot of interesting answers and possibilities, thank you for the thoughtful responses! I checked my TV settings and indeed it was set to "stretch" full screen pictures into wide screen. Uff, how did that happen? However-- I watch more movies on TV than a person should, and even with my TV set to stretch, I had not seen that type of distortion before.
AMC will be showing Jeremiah Johnson again on the 21st, so now that I have changed my settings I will see if that was it and report back.
posted by Marit at 1:27 PM on January 9, 2012
AMC will be showing Jeremiah Johnson again on the 21st, so now that I have changed my settings I will see if that was it and report back.
posted by Marit at 1:27 PM on January 9, 2012
"It appears that this film was shot with an anamorphic lens that would squeeze a 2.35:1 image into a standard 35 mm frame instead of a 70 mm frame. (This is old school cinematography and is most noticeable on films prior to the early to mid seventies in which the Panavision or Cinemascope logos are part of the opening credits.)"
Got my feathers ruffled here. Anamorphics are considered in the highest regard by every camera person in local 600 (cinematographers guild). They are still today considered the best, pureset, most beautiful, way to capture the greatest amount of information on a 35mm piece of film and even in the world of digital.
Arriflex is just rolling out a new set of Anamorphic lenses specifically designed for the Alexa, currently the hottet selling digital camera in the professional marketplace, yes more so than the Red.
Anamorphic lenses (it is not a singular item, they are many different anamorphic lens sizes) are usually in such high demand that you cannot even get a set from Panavision, still the leader in the anamorphic lens market. I can wrastle up a list of what is currently being shot anamorphically if anyone wants to know.
Had to get that off my chest.
(I assume what the issue in this post is the span and scan issues particularly coming from 1:2.35 ratio for broadcast, though I am still interested to see the footage as I cannot remember seeing issues exactly as the OP outlined outside the opening credits and the end credits.
Henry
posted by silsurf at 8:38 AM on January 12, 2012
Got my feathers ruffled here. Anamorphics are considered in the highest regard by every camera person in local 600 (cinematographers guild). They are still today considered the best, pureset, most beautiful, way to capture the greatest amount of information on a 35mm piece of film and even in the world of digital.
Arriflex is just rolling out a new set of Anamorphic lenses specifically designed for the Alexa, currently the hottet selling digital camera in the professional marketplace, yes more so than the Red.
Anamorphic lenses (it is not a singular item, they are many different anamorphic lens sizes) are usually in such high demand that you cannot even get a set from Panavision, still the leader in the anamorphic lens market. I can wrastle up a list of what is currently being shot anamorphically if anyone wants to know.
Had to get that off my chest.
(I assume what the issue in this post is the span and scan issues particularly coming from 1:2.35 ratio for broadcast, though I am still interested to see the footage as I cannot remember seeing issues exactly as the OP outlined outside the opening credits and the end credits.
Henry
posted by silsurf at 8:38 AM on January 12, 2012
This thread is closed to new comments.
posted by Lazlo at 7:16 PM on January 8, 2012