Pan and Scan...

I was flipping channels the other day, which anymore seems like checking out the same edition of SportsCenter or avoiding The Jersey Shore or some reincarnation of The Kardashians, and actually came upon something about which I had nearly forgotten. Turner Classic Movies. I’m no expert on cinema, nor am I some type of Luddite longing for the days of yore. Over the years, TMC has reminded me that there are so many great old movies, especially musicals, and last Sunday, it taught me a bit about life.

There was a short feature, probably only 12 to 15 minutes, in which several well-known directors such as Curtis Hanson and Martin Scorsese discussed the film editing technique known as “pan and scan.” Since movies were always shot in the wide-screen format for play in the theater, the directors made the cuts and edits in a way in which their stories unfolded across the width of the screen. Pan and scan came into play to make movies fit onto television screens. The issue the directors had with it was that it altered the original composition of the film as the pan and scan editor could lose over 40% of the original image as they focused on what their perceptions of the most important part of the image. It was really eye opening to see the wide-screen images of classic movies, like “Seven Brides for Seven Brothers,” with the pan and scan image highlighted over the original wide-screen image. So much of the choreography was lost, which had a definite impact on the story.

It dawned on me that a lot of us live our lives in a pan and scan format. We all have big stories about the places and people that move in and out of our lives. We really do. I don’t care if you’ve travelled the world or barely left the county in which you grew up. The stories are there. What is interesting is how we edit them. It’s how we perceive the truths around us. Living in pan and scan is probably the ultimate story of missing the forest for the trees. Maybe editing yourself to try and keep the focus on your best parts is a nice safety net. And of course there are some things you don’t need to share with the world. But for my money, the most interesting things are often tucked away in the corners, just waiting to be explored.