What's your favorite aspect ratio?

[Marcel Birgelen]

Imagine you'd be banned to spend the rest of your life on a deserted island with no alcohol and just one aspect ratio, the one that you bring with you. What aspect ratio would become your eternal companion?

[Frank Angel]

2.39, but on my desert island, it would be on screen with a mild CinemaScope curve. Oh yah, and the screen most definitely will have a cream-colored satin curtain rigged too. Hey, it's my island, I get to have whatever I want.

[Agnius Acus]

1.85:1 is my theatre screen.
1.77:1 is the way I experienced most of the films.
Of those, some of the best were shot in 1.66:1 for some reason.
I have to admit that 2.39:1 is the most theatrical one.
2.76:1… I probably would have liked it, if I had experienced it in actual theatre, and not squeezed into my 1.77:1 screen.

[Frank Cox]

My screen is 2.39:1 and I figure that's the proper aspect ratio for any real movie.

"We have a big screen so we'll show you a smaller picture" makes no sense.

[Vern Dias]

PXL_20240513_125900021.jpg 2.76:1 as shown on the curved screen in my HT.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

2.20:1 As it reminds me of all the original 70mm films I'd watched over the years....

[Randy Stankey]

I like 1.66:1 because it's a good compromise between aspect ratios that are common in TV and internet, plus it's relatively easy to show in a theater at it's normal ratio without too much messing around.

If you show 1.66 on a regular 1.77 TV screen, you'll only see thin, black bars on the sides that almost go unnoticed. Shown on a wide movie screen, you can crop for common height and pull your masking in to the right position.

When shown on the internet, you'll never know what shape the viewer's screen is. It could be anything from an iPhone to a widescreen monitor. Content authored for the 1.66 ratio allows the viewer's device to scale it to something reasonably close that's acceptable for most people. If a person turns their phone from landscape to portrait mode, the video will still scale to something close to your original intent, only smaller.

[Frank Angel]

When shown on the internet, you'll never know what shape the viewer's screen is. It could be anything from an iPhone to a widescreen monitor. Content authored for the 1.66 ratio allows the viewer's device to scale it to something reasonably close that's acceptable for most people. If a person turns their phone from landscape to portrait mode, the video will still scale to something close to your original intent, only smaller.

If you are on a desert island, and if there is a God, there will be no cellphones. And if you DID have a cellphone and you were caught using it to watch a movie, then you would immediately and irrevocable be voted OFF THE ISLAND!

[Mike Blakesley]

One of the times we played Gone With The Wind, the print had the original aspect ratio of 1.37:1 but our screen was (and still is) 2:1, so I went to great trouble to install some temporary masking to make the GWTW picture look correct and proper. And it did, but of course it was a lot narrower than our usual picture.

Of the couple hundred patrons we had for it, NOT ONE asked why the picture was so much smaller than usual. In my whole career of running this place, I've had exactly one person ask me about why the picture didn't go all the way to the sides on a "flat" film.

Having said that, my favorite aspect ratio is 2.39:1 scope, because I like the widescreen look. I realize it doesn't use as much of the chip real estate, but I don't care. It still looks better than flat to me.

[Randy Stankey]

If you are on a desert island, and if there is a God, there will be no cellphones.

Well, sure, if you don't count the internet or streaming. Then, it would be 2.39.
The problem is that the internet is a fact of life, like it or not. No matter what aspect ratio you use to make a movie, some flapjack is going to put it on the internet or stream it on some subscription service and screw it all up and you'll never know what's going to happen to the movie you worked so long and hard to make "just right."

You'll be sitting there, on your desert island, watching your movie in your "perfect" aspect ratio while a bunch of wankers on the internet are tearing it to shreds because "black bars look cool."

Making the aspect ratio 1.66 is a compromise, admittedly, but at least some dummkopf that was sitting in the back of the high school classroom, drawing dicks in his textbook, when he should have been paying attention to the math teacher will have less chance of chopping your movie all to hell and people who really want to see it have a better chance of seeing somerthing half-way decent.

BTW: The way I understand, 2.39 is a preferred aspect ratio because it matches closely to the human field of vision. Technically, the central field of vision is approximately 2.0:1 but you want to have a little extra around the edges to account for peripheral vision. Right?

[Marcel Birgelen]

If you are on a desert island, and if there is a God, there will be no cellphones. And if you DID have a cellphone and you were caught using it to watch a movie, then you would immediately and irrevocable be voted OFF THE ISLAND!

Before you know you need to invest into your own navy to keep at bay all those refugees, that are desperately looking for this last place, where you can watch a movie without being disrupted by someone using a cellphone.

In my whole career of running this place, I've had exactly one person ask me about why the picture didn't go all the way to the sides on a "flat" film.

It always amazes me how little people are aware of a thing like aspect ratios and how to present it properly. I remember when I first saw "Nope" in a fairly big local multiplex, in their biggest room with big PLF branding all over it, including moving heads on the ceiling that activated and blinded you during certain trailers... Instead of this crap, maybe they should've put that money into some movable masking, which was obviously never installed here, on this oversized, silver screen. Due to the studio deciding to put the movie with an AR of 2.20 into a flat container and sending it out this way without any proper instructions and the particular multiplex not giving a shit either, it ended up being window-boxed on screen. The staff at hand didn't see the problem. "I thought there was something wrong with the picture?" I was the only one that ever complained that the movie didn't fill the screen vertically on this 2.39:1-sized screen and ended up floating on screen, like someone's PowerPoint presentation.

[Agnius Acus]

True. Most people don‘t notice it. Or care for it.
I remember explaining to my friend about the IMAX version of Dune: Part Two and the extra image it provides.
I‘m still pissed that we haven‘t received a flat 2D version of Avatar: The Way of Water. Or even HFR in scope. By the way, was there a 2D/flat/HFR version, either in 2K or 4K?

[Leo Enticknap]

As most under 30s consume moving image "content" on their phones, I suspect that 1:1.78 (the aspect ratio of a typical phone, roughly) would get a few votes from that demographic!

(Sergei) Eisenstein wrote an essay called "The Perfect Square," in which he advocated for an AR of 1:1 on aesthetic grounds. It's decades since I've read it, but remember not being too impressed with it at the time. I guess that the so-called "Movietone ratio" of roughly 1.19:1 is the nearest that mainstream filmmaking ever came to it (and for still photography, the 126 film format). If his piece is online, I can't find it: by Googling "eisenstein perfect square," I discovered that there was another famous Eisenstein: a mathematician called Gotthold. Needless to say, he dominates the results for that search term!

I'm not so fussed about ARs, as long as I'm seeing a movie in the one it was intended to be presented in. As most of my favorite movies are either silent or Academy ratio, I'd likely nominate the various iterations of roughly 4x3 (between Movietone 1.19 and IMAX 1.43, with about a dozen in between) collectively. As long as the screen is large enough and you're sitting close enough to it, it fills your field of vision in both directions. Of course almost all theaters now are architecturally designed and have masking systems to optimize 1.85 and wider, meaning that it's very rare to be able to see these ratios presented to their best effect.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

I accept what ever the Director wanted it to be. No arguement, he had his reasons. There have been some odd ratios in the past, but they were never a distraction away from the story contained within.

[Mark Gulbrandsen]

As most under 30s consume moving image "content" on their phones, I suspect that 1:1.78 (the aspect ratio of a typical phone, roughly) would get a few votes from that demographic!

Leo, the AR of my Motorola is almost right at 2.50... People need to quit buying those crappy 1.78 Eye Phones!! This phone's camera also has at least two settings in the camera for AR... I usually shoot at 2.5.