You switch to the Blu-ray, and suddenly the picture is wider, but the top and bottom are clipped off. You feel claustrophobic.
Watching Pacific Rim in Open Matte is a religious experience. The Jaegers (giant robots) actually look taller than the skyscrapers because you can see the scale from ground to sky. Sometimes, Open Matte ruins the magic. You see the boom mic. You see the edge of the set. The composition looks sloppy. open matte
Christopher Nolan loves this. When you watch The Dark Knight or Dune: Part Two in IMAX, the screen literally expands vertically. You aren't zooming in; you are unmasking the frame. You see the sweat on Batman’s brow and the floor beneath his feet. It is immersive. It is stunning. It is intentional Open Matte. You switch to the Blu-ray, and suddenly the
We’ve all been there.
When James Cameron’s Titanic came to VHS, most people bought the widescreen version. But the standard Fullscreen VHS wasn't a Pan & Scan hack job. Because Cameron shot the film on Super 35 (a format designed to protect the top and bottom), the VHS actually revealed more information than the theatrical cut. The Jaegers (giant robots) actually look taller than
But , when a 4K Blu-ray is mastered, sometimes the studio is lazy. They take the Open Matte digital intermediate (the master file before the bars were added) and just slap black bars on it.
If you love movies, you need to know about this. Because once you see an Open Matte version of a film, you might never want to watch the "official" version again. Let’s do a quick science lesson. When a director shoots a movie, the camera sensor captures a massive square-ish image (usually a ratio of 1.33:1 or 1.37:1—basically, the shape of an old CRT television).