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- Title
The Persistence of the Rectangle.
- Abstract
One of the earliest and most persistent standards of the motion-picture industry was the rectangle of projected images with a four-to-three ratio. Related media in the late nineteenth century, such as still photography and the magic lantern, advocated for rectangular borders (rather than alternatives such as circular masking), a trend that motion pictures codified with a fixed technical standard. Industry publications provided a powerful rhetorical justification for this standard by presenting the rectangle as an aesthetic preference, a display of skill, and a means of erasing a viewer's consciousness of borders. This rhetoric-and the (slightly wider) rectangle-still influence twenty-first-century media.
- Subjects
ASPECT ratio (Images); STANDARDS; MAGIC lanterns; WIDESCREEN motion pictures; 19TH century photography; STANDARDIZATION; CINEMATOGRAPHY -- History; COMPOSITION (Cinematography); HISTORY
- Publication
Film History, 2017, Vol 29, Issue 3, p136
- ISSN
0892-2160
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2979/filmhistory.29.3.06