Anamorphic format in the context of "Digital cinematography"

A film format is a technical definition of a set of standard characteristics regarding image capture on photographic film for still images or film stock for filmmaking. It can also apply to projected film, either slides or movies. The primary characteristic of a film format is its size and shape.

In the case of motion picture film, the format sometimes includes audio parameters. Other characteristics usually include the film gauge, pulldown method, lens anamorphosis (or lack thereof), and film gate or projector aperture dimensions, all of which need to be defined for photography as well as projection, as they may differ.

Panavision Inc. is an American motion picture equipment company founded in 1954 specializing in cameras and lenses, based in Woodland Hills, California. Formed by Robert Gottschalk as a small partnership to create anamorphic projection lenses during the widescreen boom in the 1950s, Panavision expanded its product lines to meet the demands of modern filmmakers. The company introduced its first products in 1954. Originally a provider of CinemaScope accessories, the company's line of anamorphic widescreen lenses soon became the industry leader. In 1972, Panavision helped revolutionize filmmaking with the lightweight Panaflex 35 mm movie camera. The company has introduced other cameras such as the Millennium XL (1999) and the digital video Genesis (2004).

Panavision operates exclusively as a rental facility—the company owns its entire camera inventory, unlike most of its competitors.

CinemaScope is a cinematographic technique which used an anamorphic lens to produce widescreen pictures. Crucially, these could be shown in theatres using existing equipment (and an adapter). CinemaScope pictures were produced from 1953 to 1967, and less often after.

When 20th Century Fox began using CinemaScope this marked the beginning of the modern anamorphic format in 2.55:1, almost twice as wide as the previously common Academy format's 1.37:1 ratio. Although the technology behind the CinemaScope lens system was made obsolete by later developments, primarily advanced by Panavision, CinemaScope's anamorphic format has continued to this day. In film-industry jargon, the shortened form, 'Scope, is still widely used by both filmmakers and projectionists, although today it generally refers to any 2.35:1, 2.39:1, 2.40:1, or 2.55:1 presentation or, sometimes, the use of anamorphic lensing or projection in general. Bausch & Lomb won a 1954 Oscar for its development of the CinemaScope lens.

The 400 Blows (French: Les quatre cents coups) is a 1959 French coming-of-age drama film, and the directorial debut of François Truffaut, who also co-wrote the film. Shot in the anamorphic format DyaliScope, the film stars Jean-Pierre Léaud, Albert Rémy, and Claire Maurier. One of the defining films of the French New Wave, it displays many of the characteristic traits of the movement. Written by Truffaut and Marcel Moussy, the film is about Antoine Doinel (a semi-autobiographical character), a misunderstood adolescent in Paris, who struggles with his parents and teachers due to his rebellious behavior. It was filmed on location, in Paris and Honfleur.

The 400 Blows received numerous awards and nominations, including the Cannes Film Festival Award for Best Director, the OCIC Award, and a Palme d'Or nomination in 1959, and was also nominated for an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay in 1960. The film had 4.1 million admissions in France, making it Truffaut's most successful film in his home country.

70 mm film (or 65 mm film) is a wide high-resolution film gauge for motion picture photography, with a negative area nearly 3.5 times as large as the standard 35 mm motion picture film format. As used in cameras, the film is 65 mm (2.6 in) wide. For projection, the original 65 mm film is printed on 70 mm (2.8 in) film. The additional 5 mm contains the four magnetic stripes, holding six tracks of stereophonic sound. Although later 70 mm prints use digital sound encoding (specifically the DTS format), the vast majority of existing and surviving 70 mm prints pre-date this technology.

Each frame is five perforations tall (i.e., 23.8125 mm or 15/16 inches tall), with an image aspect ratio of 2.2:1. The use of anamorphic Ultra Panavision 70 lenses squeezes an ultra-wide 2.76:1 aspect ratio horizontally into that 2.2:1 imaging area. To this day, Ultra Panavision 70 produces the second widest picture size; surpassed only by Polyvision, which was only used for 1927's Napoléon.

Techniscope or 2-perf is a 35 mm motion picture camera film format introduced by Technicolor Italia in 1960. The Techniscope format uses a two film-perforation negative pulldown per frame, instead of the standard four-perforation frame usually exposed in 35 mm film photography. Techniscope's 2.33:1 aspect ratio is easily enlarged to the 2.39:1 widescreen ratio, because it uses half the amount of 35 mm film stock and standard spherical lenses. Thus, Techniscope release prints are made by anamorphosing, enlarging each frame vertically by a factor of two.

Anamorphic widescreen (also called full-height anamorphic or FHA) is a process by which a widescreen image is horizontally compressed to fit into a storage medium (photographic film or MPEG-2 standard-definition frame, for example) with a narrower aspect ratio, reducing the horizontal resolution of the image while keeping its full original vertical resolution. Compatible play-back equipment (a projector with modified lens, or a digital video player or set-top box) can then expand the horizontal dimension to show the original widescreen image. This is typically used to allow one to store widescreen images on a medium that was originally intended for a narrower ratio, while using as much of the frame – and therefore recording as much detail – as possible.

The technique comes from cinema, when a film would be framed and recorded as widescreen but the picture would be "squashed together" using a special concave lens to fit into non-widescreen 1.37:1 aspect ratio film. This film can then be printed and manipulated like any other 1.37:1 film stock, although the images on it will appear to be squashed horizontally (or elongated vertically). An anamorphic lens on the projector in the cinema (a convex lens) corrects the picture by performing the opposite distortion, returning it to its original width and its widescreen aspect ratio.