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You might have noticed that your television screen today is a rectangle, but in the past TV screens were more of a square and sometimes you may have seen black bars on either the top or sides of a movie you're watching. The width or lack thereof of a film or TV show is known as its aspect ratio. Learn more about widescreen film formats, how they work and why they were developed on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by TrueWerk. Working outside in the spring means dealing with chilly mornings, hot afternoons, mud, rain and whatever else the weather decides to throw at you. And cheap workwear can make all of that worse. That's why the T2 work pant from TrueWerk is different. Most workwear is made from cotton blends that restrict movement and get soaked after just a few raindrops. TrueWerk uses advanced performance fabrics designed specifically for job site conditions. The T2 work pant has four way stretch for bending, kneeling and climbing, a water resistant finish to shed rain, and nine intelligent pockets placed where the trade pro said they need them. TrueWerkGear has been tested and validated for over 10 years by real trade pros and with over 15,000 5 star reviews and it's worth experiencing the difference yourself. I have a pair and I wish I had them years ago when I was traveling because they would have made the perfect travel pants. The work doesn't stop just because the weather changes. Upgrade to the T2 work pant and stay comfortable no matter what the day brings. Get 15% off your first order at truework.com with code everything that's T R U-E-W-E-R-K.com code everything true work Built like it matters, because it does. This episode is sponsored by Quint's. Summer's here and if you happen to live in a place with actual seasons as I do, that means wearing entirely different clothes. Wool sweaters are great when the temperatures drop, but they're not the best option when you're outside in the sun. Quint's has European linen pants and shirts that are the perfect warm weather upgrade to add to your rotation. Starting at just $34, their T shirts are soft and easy to wear, and their lightweight cotton sweaters are perfect for cool summer nights. I just got two Quint's T shirts myself and I love them as always. Everything at Quint's is priced 50 to 80% less than similar brands, and they can do that by working directly with ethical factories and cutting out the middleman. So you're paying for quality, not brand markup Elevate your summer wardrobe. Go to quints.com daily for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U-I-N-E.com daily for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quince.com daily. I've always had a soft spot for large screen and widescreen films. As I've mentioned before, I have a pretty sizable film collection, and one of the things I've always gone out of my way to collect are widescreen films. Over the years, I've spent a fair amount of time researching not just the films released in these formats, but also the various techniques that were used. So I figured it was time to put all of that knowledge to actual use. Early motion pictures used 35mm film running vertically through a camera. A standard frame was 4 perforations tall and had an image close to 1.331, meaning the image was 1.33 times as wide as it was tall. This is the same ratio later associated with early analog television broadcasts. When optical sound arrived in the late 1920s, the soundtrack had to be printed along one side of the film. That reduced the image area and briefly produced awkward, nearly square ratios. So in 1932, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences standardized what became known as the Academy ratio, which is 1.371, and this became the dominant theatrical format until the early 1950s. As I mentioned, for standard theatrical 35 millimeter film, the film runs vertically through the camera and projector. Each frame is normally 4 perforations high, often called 4 perf 35 millimeter. Each perforation is a sprocket hole located on either side of the film. Many classic films from the 1930s and 40s, such as Casablanca, It's a Wonderful Life, Citizen Kane, wizard of Oz, and Gone at the Wind, were all shot using the academy ratio on 35 millimeter films. After World War II, television spread rapidly in the United States. In 1946, only a tiny number of American households had a TV set. But by the early 1950s, millions did, and by the end of the decade, television had become a normal part of American home life. This hit the movie industry hard. Before television, movie theaters were one of the main sources of mass entertainment. People went to movies regularly, often weekly. Television changed that by offering free entertainment at home news, sports, comedy, drama, variety shows, and eventually movies themselves. Hollywood could not compete with television by offering greater convenience. The TV was already in the living room, so the motion picture industry tried to compete by making theatrical Movies feel bigger, more spectacular and more immersive than anything a viewer could see on a small black and white television screen. The trick at first was how to use the same 35mm film to create something bigger. Now, before I go any further, I should note why widescreen formats are preferable to the squarish academy format, which is also used in early tv. Wide images appear bigger because they fill more of your horizontal field of view, which is how humans naturally perceive space. Our vision is wider than it is tall, so an image that stretches right and left feels closer to the way we experience the real world. This is especially true in a theater. A wide image extends towards the viewer's peripheral vision, so the audience feels less like they're looking at a picture and more like they're looking into a large environment. The format that really launched the widescreen boom was Cinerama, which was introduced commercially in 1952. Cinerama used three synchronized 35mm cameras shooting side by side through three lenses in theaters. Three synchronized projectors threw three separate images onto a deeply curved screen. The result was an extremely wide image, roughly around 2.59 to 1. Cinerama was astonishing, but also a nightmare to use. The cameras were bulky, close ups were difficult, and the seams between the three images were easily visible. And theaters needed special projectors, a huge curved screen and careful alignment. The only remaining publicly operating venue that can present true three strip Cinerama is the Pitcherville Cinema at the National Science and Media Museum in Bradford, England. There are still Cinerama theaters in Seattle and Los Angeles, but they can't actually show Cinerama films. A better solution was needed that didn't require three times the film cameras and projectors. The first truly practical mass market widescreen process was called Cinemascope, launched by 20th Century Fox in 1953 with the film the Robe. CinemaScope used ordinary 35mm film, but added a crucial trick anamorphic lenses. An anamorphic camera lens squeezes a wide image horizontally into a standard 35mm frame during the projection. Another anamorphic lens stretches the image back to its proper width. Early CinemaScope had an aspect ratio of about 2.55:1 when used with magnetic stereo sound and no optical soundtrack. Later, when optical sound was added for wider theater compatibility, the standard settled closer to 2.35, which was later then revised to the modern 2.391 theatrical anamorphic standard CinemaScope mattered because it was practical. Studios could shoot on regular 35 millimeter film, theaters could adapt existing projectors with anamorphic lenses, and audiences saw a Dramatically wider image. But not every studio wanted to license CinemaScope or deal with anamorphic lenses. The simplest alternative was called flat widescreen. It usually had an aspect ratio of 1.66:1, 1.75:1 or 1.85:1. This method used standard 35mm spherical lenses. The camera photographed a normal frame, but the top and bottom were masked off in projection, creating a wider rectangle. This was called matting. The image wasn't optically squeezed. It was simply cropped. The problem with cropping is that it exposes a smaller part of the film, resulting in lower resolution and lower quality. There came a relatively simple solution to the problem of anamorphic lenses and cropping. Paramount introduced VistaVision in 1954, beginning with the film White Christmas. Instead of squeezing the image anamorphically, VistaVision used a larger negative area by running standard 35mm film horizontally through the camera rather than vertically. As I Previously mentioned, normal 35mm motion picture film runs vertically and uses a four perforation frame. VistaVision turned the film sideways and used eight perforations per frame, producing a much larger image area. Paramount called this the lazy eight system. The drawback was that true horizontal VistaVision projection required special projectors. Most theaters simply received standard vertical 35mm reduction prints, which meant that audiences got some benefit, but not the full large format experience. Paramount largely abandoned VistaVision as a primary production format in the early 1960s, although it survived for decades in visual effects because its larger negative was useful for composting. The original Star Wars Films used VistaVision for its effects work. Cinerama, CinemaScope and VistaVision were all attempts to try to use standard 35mm film to create a widescreen theatrical experience. But eventually it became obvious that the solution wasn't trying to adapt 35mm film. It was the creation of a larger film stock. Film producer Mike Todd, one of the original promoters of Cinerama, wanted the impact of Cinerama. But without three cameras and three projectors, the result was Todd AO. Introduced with the film Oklahoma in 1955. Todd AO used 65 mm negative film for photography and 70 mm film for the released prints. The extra 5 millimeters on the print was used for magnetic soundtracks. The standard 65 or 70 millimeter frame used five perforations per frame and produced a very sharp image commonly projected at about 2.2 to 1. And even though it was filmed in 65 millimeter, the film size is just commonly referred to as 70 millimeter. The format was expensive, but the results were beautiful. 70 millimeter prints were brighter, sharper, steadier and had a richer sound than ordinary 35 millimeter film. For several decades, 70 millimeter became the premium roadshow format for major releases. Now you might be wondering, what is a roadshow? Roadshow films were major motion pictures presented more like a theatrical event than a regular movie. They usually had reserved seats, higher ticket prices, limited engagements in select big city theaters, souvenir programs, overtures, intermissions and sometimes exit music. Many were shown in premium formats such as 70mm. The idea was to make a film feel prestigious and special, closer to attending a Broadway show or opera, rather than simply going to the movies. Other 70 millimeter formats soon followed. One of the widest major film formats was MGM Camera 65, which was later known as Ultra Panavision 70. It used 65 millimeter negative film like Tadao, but then added a mild anamorphic squeeze. This created an extremely wide projected ratio of about 2.761. Super Panavision 70 was similar to Tadeo, but unlike Ultra Panavision, it did not use an anamorphic lens. The heyday of 70mm films was from about the mid-1950s through the 1960s, and some of the greatest films of all time, such as Ben Hur, Lawrence of Arabia, the Sound of Music and 2001 A Space Odyssey were all all shot on 70mm film. By the 1970s and 80s, true 70mm films declined in popularity. It was expensive, the cameras were large, film stock and processing cost more and improved 35mm film stock made smaller formats just look better. Many 70mm releases were really just blown ups from 35mm rather than true 70mm originals. However, 70mm never really went away. One company in particular realized that you could make something even bigger. Just as VistaVision created a larger, wider image by turning 35mm film sideways, it eventually dawned on someone that they could create a truly monstrous image by turning a 70mm film sideways. That company was IMAX. IMAX began in Canada in the late 1960s. Its founders developed a system using 70mm film running horizontally with each frame spread across 15 perforations. The result was an image area larger than any other film format. IMAX wasn't technically a widescreen format. Its aspect ratio is usually 1.91, which isn't nearly as wide as other formats I've mentioned. But the sheer size of the screen more than compensated for that. A classic IMAX screen is often around 72ft wide by 52ft tall. That gives an area of 3,744 square feet, or about 348 square meters. The first IMAX film, Tiger Child was shown at Expo 70 in Osaka, Japan. The first permanent IMAX theater opened in 1971 at the Sinisphere in Ontario Place in Toronto where it showed the movie north of Superior. IMAX theaters were primarily built in places like museums, theme parks and zoos. The first IMAX movie I ever saw was in 1979 at what was then Marriott's Great America outside of Chicago. It was a specialty built IMAX theater that showed the short film To Fly. However, in the 2000s directors began using large format films for for parts of big budget movies again. Christopher Nolan became the central figure in this revival, using IMAX film for major sequences in the Dark Knight, Interstellar, Dunkirk, Tennant and Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer was especially important because it used both color and black and white 65 millimeter IMAX photography, helping turn 70 millimeter IMAX screenings into a major box office event. His 2026 film The Odyssey is the first feature film ever ever to be shot entirely in IMAX. Paul Thomas Anderson shot the Master partly in 65mm and Quentin Tarantino revived Ultra Panavision 70 for the Hateful Eight. 2024's The Brutalist was shot in VistaVision, the first film shot in that format since 1961 and the 2026 Best Picture winner One Battle After Another also used VistaVision. The reason for the current revival in widescreen film formats is surprisingly the same reason for the format's creation in the 1950s. Today, many people have high quality large screen televisions in their homes and have access to streaming services. The motion picture industry needs to give people a reason to come to the theater, and the way to do that is to provide an experience that can't be had at home, and this is done through gigantic screens and movies that can fill them. I'll close by answering a question that maybe some of you are asking yourselves. Nowadays everything is digital. Movie theater projectors are digital. What would be the Digital equivalent of 70 millimeter or IMAX film in terms of quality and resolution? There isn't a direct correlation between film size and digital resolution. A regular movie shot on 35 millimeter film can easily be transferred to 4K, which is the highest resolution consumer format available today. A 70mm film could be transferred to 8K and probably even 12K resolution, and an IMAX film could probably be transferred to 16K resolution or higher if such a thing actually existed. I fell in love with 70mm films when I first saw Lawrence of Arabia in 70mm at the Cooper Theater in St. Louis Park, Minnesota in 1987. The theater has since been destroyed. They had a curved parabolic screen designed for widescreen films and it was something that I can still remember. From the three projectors of Cinerama to the anamorphic squeeze of CinemaScope, from the 70 millimeter roadshows to IMAX and modern large format revivals, each system was an attempt to expand what movies could do. Widescreen formats were never just about making images wider for the sake of making them wider. They were about making movies feel larger, more immersive, and giving people a reason to go to the theater. The executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Austin Otkin and Cameron Kiefer. My big thanks go to everyone who supports the show over on Patreon. Your support helps make this podcast possible, and I also want to remind everyone about the community groups on Facebook and Discord. That's where everything happens that's outside the podcast, and links to those are available in the show notes. As always, if you leave a review on any major podcast app or in the above community groups, you too can have it read on the show.