The ongoing debate over the issue of "widescreen" airings of Justice League and Justice League Unlimited versus "pan and scan" airings has been a hotly contested one, with arguments ranging from original intent and artistic vision to image quality and image omission. It also has taken a new twist this past week with the announcement of the Season One DVD box set of Justice League, and the promise of a Season Two soon to follow after. However, before we go into detail over this, we must first understand the issue at hand and what is truly at stake.
During its initial season, Justice League was animated in the standard full screen format (it was made to fit a television screen rather than a motion picture screen; this is also known as the "standard" version), but then the video was "matted," meaning that black bars were added to simulate the widescreen format (imitating the aspect ratio that films aired in movie theaters have). This is an old animation trick used since the 1950s, particularly for theatrical releases—this was how Mask of the Phantasm was animated—and it allows a studio to create an animated picture that is able to be shown in theaters on a rectangular screen, but doesn't compromise the image when it is later released on video or DVD (or aired on television), as it would then be shown on a square television screen. In the case of Justice League, this tactic was used because it was the intent of the creative team to give their show a "motion picture" kind of feel, and Cartoon Network, to their credit, aired both the standard version and the widescreen versions on their network, the latter in special widescreen airings.
0 Comments