Movie seems zoomed in on screen…not sure how to fix?

[Mike Reed]

Hello,

Showing Beetlejuice Beetlejuice this weekend. I noticed the movie seems a little zoomed in? Ive never really had to adjust the picture before on other movies. We only have 2Dscope and 2Dflat buttons on the side of the projector. Its an NEC2000 projector. Is it maybe the particular movie file we downloaded? Or something maybe with the projector? Honestly I’m not even sure how the projector knows how big the screen is to make the movie fit? It was all set up when I bought the theater. More newbie questions ?

[Sascha Roll]

Check both formats with the respective Aspect Ratio Test DCPs, those always have some sort of indication of image cropping an all 4 sides.
Make sure you're playing BEETLEJUICE in "2D Flat" as this is the Aspect Ratio of that film.

Playing it in Scope results in exactly what you're describing.

[Marcel Birgelen]

What's the filename of the DCP you're playing and are you playing it in flat or scope?

[Jim Cassedy]

What you are describing sounds exactly like what happens if you are playing
a 2D FLAT movie with either the projector or masking (or both) set for SCOPE.

[Mike Reed]

Thanks I will definitely try in 2D Flat. How do you know Beetlejuice is supposed to be played in 2D flat? We run pretty much everything in 2Dscope.

[Carsten Kurz]

You're not serious?

https://registry-page.isdcf.com/illustratedguide/

[Mike Reed]

Yep im very serious. That guide is extremely helpful thank you. Still learning on the fly every day. I appreciate your help!

[Steve Guttag]

Beetlejuice-Beetlejuice is definitely a "Flat" movie. Now, depending on your screen's native aspect ratio (and if you employ movable masking), be prepared for a possibly smaller picture as the flat ratio is smaller than the scope one.

[Mike Reed]

I have it switched over. Thanks for everyone’s fast help! We are switching trailers because we had a combination of flat and scoped mixed in. There seems to be a lot more scope movies than flat. Didn’t have any customers complained but I noticed. Thank you!

[Ryan Gallagher]

Get familiar with the ISDCF naming convention (we have a cheat sheet posted in the booth for pointing to when training others).

BUT, never trust its aspect tag completely, always check it on screen. Sometimes maybe only the studio card is in the listed aspect. (Common with classics).

if you become doubtful your setup is faithfully framing flat or scope, fire the built in projector test patterns, or any one of the myriad of studio framing charts they often send along with the DCP. (Disney is the most consistent sending em it seems).

and yeah, generally trailers will be sent along in both aspects for pairing with the feature aspect.

[Marcel Birgelen]

Yeah, some DCP's unfortunately end-up being mislabeled, but absent any other information, it's a good starting point.

I've just watched Beetlejuice Beetlejuice and yeah, it's definitely a "FLAT" movie, so there should be a _F_ in your title. If you play it in scope, you're definitely going to cut off even more heads than Tim Burton intended...

I didn't understand why this movie was in flat, I always remembered the original to be in scope, just checked it's also flat... But maybe I've last seen the head-chopper version of that one?

[Marco Giustini]

When I used to do training to a customer with a new Digital Projector my first 45 minutes was spent sitting on a desk showing them the ISDCF and explaining (if not already familiar) what Flat/Scope/5.1/7.1 meant.

THEN, we would move to the projector.

[Carsten Kurz]

Admittedly, the real pain in the ass is training people how to ingest OV/VF combos...

Probably not so often in the US, but in parts of Europe, having a dozen or more OV/VF packages to choose from is a regular practice. And one that often needs intuition that is impossible to train.

[Steve Guttag]

Many directors are not jazzed about the scope ratio (2.39:1). You need to fill that frame or it feels empty. Steven Spielberg clearly prefers 1.66 and 1.85 for even his Sci-Fi stuff like E.T. Jurassic Park was deliberately shot in 1.85 so the dinosaurs didn't feel small. Clearly, Steven Spielberg knows how to shoot in scope (i.e. Raiders of the Lost Ark, Close Encounters of the 3rd Kind, and others) The whole foreground/background relationship changes with the aspect ratio.

The Director and DP choose the format that they feel will best convey the image they were looking for. Unfortunately, there are too many looking to have odd-ball ratios rather than using the well established ones. Things like 2.1:1...is 2.1 really going to look that much different than 2.0? There are some here that absolutely refuse to handle anything other than 1.85 (flat) and 2.39 (scope). I sort of get that since the industry did set up around those two with DCI but did not preclude other ratios. Most of our clients support 1.33, 1.66, 1,78, 1.85, 2.00, 2.20 and 2.39. But, for most that means just having separate lens formats for F-200, F-220, S-220 on common height screens with the rest being within the Flat container and, depending on the cinema, needing an additional screen file.

[Ryan Gallagher]

F-220, S-220 on common height screens with the rest being within the Flat container and, depending on the cinema, needing an additional screen file.

oh my god, thank you for that little insight, i couldn’t make sense of why we sometimes get S220 and other times F220 when there is an obvious winner in terms of pixel utilization. Did they make both versions typically for those films? Are we booking the wrong one at times?