Pan & scan terribly ruins films. Although laserdisc is known for bringing proper aspect ratios to many films plus much more, there were plenty of pan & scan discs. I tend to avoid them even if it's a film a really want. I have had to settle on one or two for soundtrack or special feature reasons. Are you watching (collecting) widescreen (letterbox) discs only and do you look to dvd to avoid pan & scan on certain movies?

Unfortunately, too many people see a full-frame disc & assume it is pan-&-scan. The LDDb listings show lots of things as P&S which aren't at all. Worse yet, there are cases in which material has been butchered to make a "widescreen" version — Gone with the Wind being, of course, the most notorious example — & people assume it's supposed to be that way, that the full-frame would be incorrect.

But if there's no other feasible way to get a copy of something, I'll take the cropped version. I don't have to like it. (Seriously, how else would you get a copy of American Flyers?)

If it's the only version of a movie on Laserdisc and/or it's a movie I like, I'll get a P&S or Full Frame version.

I am trying to get the Dawn of the Dead: Perfect Collection box set, which I believe is open matte full frame (even though I already have the Elite Collectors Edition which is letterboxed.)

So it depends really.

... if two versions exist of particular disc (Wide & Full) ... I will select the Widescreen every time. If no other versions are available ... I'll take Pan & Scan.

Totally agree. There is a LOT of confusion with regard to correct aspect ratio. Sometimes it's really hard to tell if a disc is P&S or matted. Most of the early releases were matted but so many people believe that if it's not widescreen it must be P&S and I've always feared it would add to the confusion to go through and update all the listings in the LDDb. Does anyone know when P&S was first introduced? I've always assumed that it must be in the mid 80's since a lot of the big widescreen movies released in the early years of laser like Guns of Navarone were simply copped at either end with terrible results.

I'm not sure of the first film to have the pan and scan process done on it but it had to be one of the first widescreen ( cinema-scope) movies to be broadcast on tv, probably around 1953-55. Pan & scan cuts 1/3 off, you can lose up to 45% of the image. Not good. If your interested in learning more check out the letterbox and widesceen advocacy page.

To me, P&S signifies manipulation of the camera's focus, not just the chopping off of the ends of a widescreen film. An example is when two people are talking at opposite ends of a widescreen shot. In a P&S version, the image would cut between the two of them. Many of the early television presentation of widescreen films would simply chop of the ends, and in the example above, nearly loosing the image of both characters keeping the image in the center of the film. I hope that makes sense. To me, P&S means there must be an operator making decisions on what to keep in the frame.

A great example of this is in the Jim Carey film The Cable Guy. There's a dinner scene where the characters are seated at a table on opposite ends of the screen. Instead of cuts they use the artificial camera pans quickly back and forth and it's super distracting. Multiplicity is probably the best overall example I know of for demonstrating artificial camera movements, it's constant.

There are a lof of LD's that I haven't purchased b/c they are not in the original aspect ratio. I'd love to own Candyman among others but I'm sticking with the DVD.

I think it was with laserdisc from the start as I have a copy of the Discovision CAV release of Jaws and it's definitely Pan and Scan, and to date it's the only P&S laserdisc I own. On the whole I avoid them because I'm a videophile and as such enjoy seeing films presented the way they are meant to be; academy ratio, widescreen...whatever. I only got Jaws because it's considered to be the first laserdisc so the collector in me had to have it. I'm tempted to get a copy of the U.S. Theatrical Cut of Highlander which I believe was only released in P&S.

I suspected that to be the case. Although prerecorded VHS tapes first arrived in 1977, MCA was working on their Discovision transfers much earlier than that as their rollout for product was pushed back a few years. The earliest Discovision test disc transfer is of The Andromeda Strain according to Blaine's excellent Discovision website, although it was never released to the public. I believe The Sting would be the earliest transfer prepared that did appeared on disc. I may have to do a comparison some afternoon.

I just read that the first letterboxed Laserdisc was Manhattan in 1985, so I guess that would mean anything before that was pan&scan or simply cropped/chopped.

I think CED has the title for the first fully letterboxed home release with Amarcord (1974) [RCA 00904] in 1984. Before that several films were shown with the opening and closing credits letterboxed, I'm not sure whether laserdisc or CED did this first. The earliest example I know of is Rollercoaster (1977) [11-009] in 1979, side 5 of which features a brief section of the film letterboxed.

This was done a few times for credit sequences for Discovision films and Paramount releases prepared for Discovision. Chinatown, 3 Days of the Condor, and Fellini's Cassanova are a few examples.

I think, most releases were open matte. A great example that stands out for me is Escape from Alcatraz. During the conversation in the wardens office, the top of the set without a ceiling is visible. If you see a boom, it's open matte.

Most of the cropping you're all talking about came to be thanks to television. Films that were in some type of widescreen format may have been cropped or P&Sed for showing on television.

Interestingly, it was television that caused the rush to the widescreen formats in the 50s, of which there were plenty then, plus a wider use of color as well. Prior to that, films were basically academy ratio of 1.37 (1.37 wide to 1 tall), close enough to TV ratio of 1.33 to not make much difference.

Later common widescreen ratios ranged from 1.66 (mostly in the UK) up to 2.55. Typically anything using 35 mm film running straight (not sideways) was matted in the movie theater to acheive a "widescreen" effect (often somewhere between 1.78 to 1.85), although the film itself was actually academy ratio, with tops and bottoms of the frame unseen, and sometimes boom mikes would hover in that unseen area. These films were typically not subject to Pan & Scan upon transfer.

Other widescreen formats that were anamorphic (squeezed image like DVDs), or 35 mm run sideways, or 70mm, were the ones to get the Pan & Scan treatment because they usually were 2.35 to 2.55 in ratio, and that's a big difference from 1.33

Yeah, I avoid them like the plague.
I'd love to own a "Naked Gun" Widescreen on LD ... but it seems to only exist in 1.33

Most, if not all MVC titles were Pan & Scan. Although it is annoying, I've gotten used to it. Unless it's like "The Eiger Sanction" on Discovision, I find it okay.

PAN & SCAN Never heard of them, is this what a CCTV (close cercuit tv) Operator speaks of when looking for trouble makers, or any unusual / activity whilst watching security Camera's.

Seriously though; PAN & SCAN I would never own them.

Regards

As I referenced in about the 6th post in, tv wielded the double edged sword that forced us for many years to watch widescreen films butchered. On the tube you would get those long bodies and cut off scenes. But it also ushered in the majesty of cinema-scope because theatres needed a way to compete with the power of television.
Pan & scan was done regularly on Beta and VHS tapes as well. Although there were a handful of widescreen tapes, laserdisc gave us much of the good stuff. I do get bummed out seeing a good movie pan and scaned on laserdisc. That means I'v e gotten bummed out a lot. In the later years of laserdisc more widescreens seem to have been produced though.

I realize after many posts, I never answered the question. It depends on the film for me. Many directors in the 80's knew their films would hit home video in some kind of altered form. This led many to keep the action and dialog in the middle of the frame to avoid having the film panned & scanned. This is one of the reason there aren't too many truly breathtaking widescreen films in the 80's. For most of these I don't mind it, simply because the directors "vision" was kept in the frame. Kubrick knew that with home video his films would be studied frame by frame so he avoided the widescreen ratio. This is why there is so much debate now on what the correct aspect ratio is on most of his later films.