Vistavision Safe

[robcat2075]

You may recall the issue of "title safe" and "action safe" on SD format TV screens. You had to leave the edges of you image unused in case the home viewer's TV set had the picture skewed one way or the other. (A:M still has an optional guide for "TV Safe" in the camera properties, BTW)

 

http://scanline.ca/overscan/country2.s.jpg

 

Well, this is not quite the same thing but it reminded me of those diagrams. This is a bit of PR dreamed up to promote the not very-widescreen format "VistaVision" in the 1950s.

 

 

VistaVision was an answer to the wide-screen CinemaScope process (which was an answer to the very wide screen "Cinerama".)

Vistavision got its hi-res boost by running the film thru the camera horizontally, allowing an image area twice as large as with film oriented vertically. Eight "perfs" instead of four. Unlike CinemaScope, it didn't require anamorphic lenses and unlike Cinerama, it only required one strip of film in one camera.

 

[R Reynolds]

When John Dykstra started special effects work on the original Star Wars: A New Hope, he resurrected old Vistavision cameras and developed the first motion control camera dubbed "Dykstraflex" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dykstraflex.

Dykstra then formed his own SPFX company "Apogee" to do the work for Star Trek: The Motion Picture and reworked those same cameras into the Vistaflex system. And if you happen to have a spare $20,000 USD lying around you can have your very own Vistaflex camera crane https://propstore.com/product/star-trek-the-motion-picture/apogee-historic-visual-effects-vistaflex-camera-crane-system/

Think of the TikTok videos you could shoot!