Back to the Future DVD mistake

Since the origional pictures are being hammered due to Slashdot, I figure I'd post them here. Universal didn't frame the second and third Back to the Future properly on the new DVD release, resulting in this: (Images on the left are from the Laserdisc, the ones on the right from the DVD)




Region one owners are being told this:
"Thank you for your email. Universal Studios will exchange Back to the Future parts 2 and 3 for copies with the updated framing in late February 2003. You may send the DVDs back now or wait until February. Please send Back to the Future disks 2 and 3, without the case, and a letter with the following information: Name, Full Mailing Address, Daytime Phone Number, Reason for Return and Return Address. Send to:

Back to the Future DVD Returns
PO Box 224468
Dallas, Texas 75260

Whoops. Is it like that through the entirety of both movies, or just a few scenes? they are all like that? How could they miss such a large and noticeable error?

I'd guess that they accidentally cropped the top and bottom off of a pan and scan transfer that already had the left and right cropped.

Oops.

Well damn, now i'm hoping I don't get it for X-mas. :P

The DVD sure as hell looks crisper than the laserdisc , but I guess that could just be the equipment used to get the screenshot.

The transfer did improve the video quality quite a bit, as well as the audio. Beyond the glitch above, it's a great DVD set. And keep in mind the first movie is fine.

And yes, it is that way through the entire second and third movies.

Definitely classics, so I do plan on getting it, just not until after February. A shame, really, I was planning on having a Back to the Future night at my house, inviting 12 people over to watch all three movies. It will have to wait, but I still plan on it. Then again, maybe waiting a few months isn't a bad idea, I might have some newer/better equipment to showcase.

Damn! I've bought the trilogy in a box last month! Does this problem also occur with european releases? (probably yes)

And would it be possible for me too to trade in my second and third disk for an upgrade?

There's stuff at the top of those right-hand images that isn't in the left-hand ones: looks like the laserdisc wasn't full-frame either.

Peter

well someone got fired for this.

Thanks for the heads up. I showed this to my wife this morning and it's a good thing because she was going to buy me the set tonight. I don't want to mess with sending stuff in and all that hassle. We'll just wait for my birthday . . .

Is the region 2 set affected too? Or just the US release?

I've got the Region 4 (PAL) version of the BTF Boxed set and it has the same problems as the US release does, so I'd say that all region version have it.

In case any one is interested:

The bottom picture (just post Hoverboard chase scene) is at time offset: chapter 6 - offset 11 seconds or about 20:34 into the movie, in case you've got a copy and you want to check it for yourself.

looks like the laserdisc wasn't full-frame either

That's what I was wondering too. According to IMDb, the second film had an aspect ratio of 1.85:1. As far as I could tell by sizing the frame from that laserdisc image, it has a ratio of 1.74:1.

But what's odd is that the screenshot of the DVD release does have a ratio of 1.85:1.

My thought is that perhaps both were framed wrong. That the laserdisc wasn't cropped enough and that the DVD was cropped too high. I believe that the extra information is on the film when they capture it, but they crop it down for the theatrical release. That's how sometimes in the theaters you'll see the boom mic at the top of the screen. If I'm wrong, then I'm not sure how to explain it.

That's actually a very good explanation.

All films are cropped for the various ways they're displayed, you never see all the way out to the edge of the frame, even in the theatrical presentation. The cropping of a film is always a judgement call. But even with that in mind, I agree that the DVD images at the beginning of this thread seem over-cropped.

Sometimes films are shot with both 4:3 and widescreen in mind, and matting lines for both formats are on the director's viewfinder. The director frames the shot as a compromise between the two formats. This allows a transfer to 4:3 video where they don't have to do much pan-and-scan work. It also sometimes means that the TV 4:3 version displays more above/below information than the theatrical version (hence the visible mics in some badly transferred films).

Here's a fun example: The MST3K movie was supposed to be matted a certain way when presented in theaters (part of the normal instructions that come with the film). Some theaters didn't follow the instructions and hence you could see the pupeteers in certain scenes.

Something that HBO caught some flak for was broadcasting certain 2.35:1 films cropped to 16:9 for their HBOhd channel. HBO's (potentially valid) argument was that most people with 16:9 televisions bought them because they wanted the black letterbox bars to go away, so cropping to 16:9 reduced call-in complaints by their HD customers. The complaints by the few people "in the know" who preferred the 2.35:1 presentation were, I'll bet, less than the complaints they would have gotten from Joe Sixpack who just bought his first HDTV and got mad because he was still seeing letterbox bars.

you never see all the way out to the edge of the frame, even in the theatrical presentation

You do in some anamorphic presentations (and, heck, Vistavision/Ultra Panavision style non-anamorphic films), unless you're going to say that the very border counts as being cropped off, too.

Exactly. When I went (and I can't believe I did) to the theaters to see "An American Werewolf in Paris", there were a few times in the movie where the boom mic came into the picture. It was in one whole scene, too.

I'm going to put my money on both versions being cropped badly. Going off my first theory, another possibility is that the laserdisc version was taken from a print prepared for pan & scan release. They might have expanded the screen vertically to avoid cutting as much from the sides as possible, then when they made the laserdisc, they still used that print. It was, after all, the beginning of releasing widescreen versions of movies.

In case I wasn't clear (which can happen with me), here's what I'm talking about. This is from the laserdisc pic:


The large rectangle is a 4:3 ratio that fills the 1.73:1 print, and the smaller rectangle has the height of a 1.85:1 print of the same width.