It's been quite a while since the last time — but a couple of days back, I did a drawing based on the recent Illustration Friday topic.

Last Friday's topic was "Wide", and I have a slightly unique take on it.  Below is the drawing I came up with, and following that, is an explanation.

The image you are seeing above is a drawing of a screenshot from the movie Kill Bill: Vol 1, with Uma Thurman.  This is from the "House of Blue Leaves" showdown scene where she fights the gang known as the Crazy 88.  There's a part where she pulls the eyeball out of one of the villains!  The screenshot was referenced from this page (by the way, that website, Movie-Censorship.com, is an excellent one that compares various versions of movies on DVD, such as "unrated" versions, "director's cuts", etc.).  The drawing was done with ballpoint pen (very quickly) and I later coloured it in Photoshop.

All this is fine, but how is it related to the topic of "Wide"?  The picture, you see, is essentially an excuse for me to talk about widescreen and aspect ratio (the ratio of the width to the height of an image).  Most movies nowadays are shot in a wide aspect ratio, 1.85:1 or 2.35:1.  In comparison, a normal TV display is 1.33:1 (almost a square).  Hence, if you want to show a widescreen movie on a regular display, the following options are available —

• Letterboxing: This is where you get black bars on the top and bottom of the image.  The complete frame is visible, but is smaller and less clear because the bars eat up usable space.
• Pan and Scan: Parts of the image on the left and right are chopped off so that the entire available image area is utilised, but you may not see everything the director wanted you to see.
• Anamorphic Widescreen: On DVDs nowadays, a compromise is looked at.  The image is squished so that a "taller" image is stored, which is stretched out depending on the type of display available.

There are other techniques too but the above are the common ones.  Kill Bill was shot in a 2.35:1 aspect ratio, and hence, if you are watching a "fullscreen" or "Pan and Scan" version on TV, you may not be able to see the complete frame.  In the shot above, for example, if the eyeball is to be shown, you will not be able to see Uma Thurman's face in full.  My drawing above is close to an aspect ratio of 2:1, but you get the idea.