These are various audio and video segments that I've been able to retain over the years that help to explain widescreen and the importance of presenting movies and TV shows in their proper aspect ratio. (At least RealPlayer and Divx codecs are no longer required! Yay! I've taken widescreen.org out of the Internet's Jurassic period!)
John Carpenter Loves Panavision
In this audio clip John Carpenter explains why he prefers to shoot his movies in widescreen, specifically in Panavision, on the special edition laserdisc of Assault on Precinct 13.Leonard Nimoy Defends Widescreen
In this segment from the DVD and Director's Edition VHS of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Leonard Nimoy explains why he set up certain shots the way that he did any why the pan-and-scan process can distort the intent of the scene.AMC TV's Film Preservation Clip
This is a commercial that was aired by the American Movie Classics TV channel (now simply called "AMC") in 1996 during their Fourth Annual AMC Film Preservation Festival. It explains what is gained by watching movies in their original aspect ratios.Sorry for the quality, but this is effectively from a copy of a copy that was recorded in EP speed on VHS and captured with an inferior codec several years ago. I kept the tape specifically to get a better capture, but (of course) now I can't find it.
Fox Movie Channel Explains Widescreen
This video used to be available on the Fox Movie Channel's website in the early 2000s. (Fox Movie Channel is now the FX Movie Channel.) It's a great clip about the history of widescreen, although it focuses on Fox's own CinemaScope process, and the benefits of viewing widescreen movies in a letterboxed format.The original video resolution was 320 x 200 (or something similar) and was removed from their site many years ago. For whatever reason I downloaded a copy of it and kept it tucked away.
"Excuse me, waiter! There's a boom mike in my frame!"
This clip from the "full frame" VHS release of The Princess Bride shows how removing the matte bars in "full frame" movie releases, which was a very common thing to do on VHS and early DVDs, would show things that would have otherwise been matted out at the theater. In this case, the boom mike over Christopher Guest's character is easily seen in the last few seconds of the video. In the widescreen version black mattes would have hidden the boom mikes.Fox Home Video "Widescreen Series" VHS Introduction
This brief clip appeared at the beginning of many of Fox's "widescreen series" VHS tapes to highlight what widescreen and letterboxing was all about.It feels a bit like preaching to the choir because an appreciation for widescreen is exactly why you would have bought it in the first place. They probably put it on in case someone bought the movie who didn't expect it to be in widescreen, which happened more often than you might think. Believe me, I saw it with my own eyes and I got lots of hate mail about it from people who did it.