Monday, April 8, 2013
Dim the Lights / Moviegoing / Film When celluloid film bleeds over the screen
Posted By Ben Sachs on 04.08.13 at 03:35 PM
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I rarely experience this anymore when I go to first-run theaters. Movies projected digitally seem to fill the screen only just so—and in some cases, the digital image doesn't even reach the edges, exposing dead screen space above or to the sides of the frame. The worst part of this latter phenomenon is that it makes the images assume these hard corners, as if someone's taken a razor to them. It's a subtle effect, just like the bleeding of celluloid projection, but I think it makes a difference. If a movie appears confined within the screen with no hope of escaping, does this limit its ability to enter the spectator's imagination? I can't say for sure. I've been well aware of the parameters of every painting I've seen exhibited, and that didn't impede my enjoyment of any of them. Still, the movies are a different medium; the pleasures they offer are more immediate and sensual. I'd like to think that as digital exhibition develops, it will approximate more of the pleasures I associate with celluloid.
Ben Sachs writes about moviegoing every Monday.
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