A movie is shown in one of two widescreen aspect ratios. Ever noticed? Well, let's "widen" (bad pun) your knowledge.
So, just what are you talking about?
What I'm referring to is the aspect ratio of a film, meaning how wide the picture is in respect to it's height. Theatrical films are shot in one of two ways, they are:
Cinemascope, or anamorphic.
Or simply "scope" as we call it in the theatre biz. This is the widest picture possible, it looks like a long rectangle. It's ratio is 2:35:1, which means the picture is 2:35 units long to 1 unit height.
Flat
This picture ratio is 1:85:1, and as you can guess it's 1.85 units width to 1 unit height. In fact, it's not much wider than your TV screen of 1:33:1. In this case the entire frame on the film is shot, but the aperature plate in the projector "crops," or cuts off the top and bottom portions of the image to render a "wide" look.
As you can see here, a projector is outfitted with two lenses, one for each format.
