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Full Metal Jacket, The Shining, and Eyes Wide Shut were all shot in 4:3 as well.

I know mentioned this, https://poal.co/s/Movies/325052, but I found this very interesting.

Also, I found another 27 related to movies.

Leon Vitali, Kubrick's closest assistant answers the debate clearly in no uncertain terms in this interview.

I pulled the above quotes above from here: https://forum.dvdtalk.com/hd-talk/596630-kubrick-aspect-ratio-controversy-answered.html

However there is another thread on that forum that disputes the reasoning behind the 4:3: https://forum.dvdtalk.com/movie-talk/419899-new-kubrick-book-settles-aspect-ratio-confusion.html

Either way, I still find it very interesting that this film was released in fullscreen 4:3 instead of widescreen 16:9 or an even wider format. Thank god it wasn't released as a vertical video to be viewed on iDIOTphones.

https://archive.is/m0NKM *Full Metal Jacket*, *The Shining*, and *Eyes Wide Shut* were all shot in 4:3 as well. I know @Conspirologist mentioned this, https://poal.co/s/Movies/325052, but I found this very interesting. Also, I found another 27 related to movies. >Leon Vitali, Kubrick's closest assistant answers the debate clearly in no uncertain terms in this interview. ----------- >[from DVDtalk interview] One of the areas of greatest debate in the DVD community is about aspect ratios. The two films that people talk about the most in terms of aspect ratio are Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut, maybe because those are the ones that have been seen theatrical by the DVD buying audience. But people will go through kind of frame by frame and say "In the trailer of Eyes Wide Shut, you can see a sign on the street that you can't see on the full frame video. You can see an extra character…" So how do you address the differences between the theatrical releases of Eyes Wide Shut and of Full Metal Jacket in the DVD releases? >The original video release of Full Metal Jacket was in the supervised hands and owned by Stanley. The thing about Stanley, he was a photographer. That's how he started. He had a still photographer's eye. So when he composed a picture through the camera, he was setting up for what he saw through the camera - the full picture. That was very important to him. It really was. It was an instinct that never ever left him. What he wanted the videos to reflect was how he shot the film through the camera, what was on the original neg and what his composition when he was shooting it was. That's why Full Metal Jacket is in full frame. If people looked, okay? What you get on the video that you didn't get in the theatrical because of the 185 masking, was what Stanley was invisioning. You assume these soldiers in the world that they're in. And he uses wide angle uses to shoot. I mean an 18 millimeter lens was the commonest one. He used 24 sometimes. Wide angle lenses. It was important to him the relationship between things. You can see in Full Metal Jacket how small the people were in relation to this huge landscape. >The thing with Eyes Wide Shot, it was how he saw the thing through the camera and how he set it up. That's what he wanted to reflect in his videos. >He did not like 1.85:1. You lose **27%** of the picture on 1.85. Stanley was a purist. This was one of the ways it was manifested. How much do you lose? 27%! >From The Shining and Full Metal Jacket and Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley had marks on the camera lens so he could see where the 1.85 lines. He composed his shots for the full screen, but he wouldn't be hurt by going to 1.85 if he had to do it. >*So he did the reverse of what most directors do, who look at the 'TV Safe Area', Stanley looked at the '1.85 Safe Area'.* Now I have my own connections to why TV's started out as 4:3. It is about the area you can see with one eye (monovision). With both eyes open, you can see a greater width, stereovision. Most people go through life never seeing with both eyes at the same time. Interestingly it is very hard effectively use both eyes at the same time when looking at a screen. You can however do it outside very easily, it just takes some practice. I can look up at the moon at night and see two moons. There isn't really two moons, but you can see the moon with both eyes at the same time, to your brain it appears as if there are two moons. My ocular muscles when I induce this sort of vision feels similar to when I look at a stereogram to see the hidden image. Example: https://imgpile.com/images/7GuQ14.jpg [You should be able to see a human skull in the above image.](#spoiler) I pulled the above quotes above from here: https://forum.dvdtalk.com/hd-talk/596630-kubrick-aspect-ratio-controversy-answered.html However there is another thread on that forum that disputes the reasoning behind the 4:3: https://forum.dvdtalk.com/movie-talk/419899-new-kubrick-book-settles-aspect-ratio-confusion.html Either way, I still find it very interesting that this film was released in fullscreen 4:3 instead of widescreen 16:9 or an even wider format. Thank god it wasn't released as a vertical video to be viewed on iDIOTphones.

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Holy shit! I never knew about this crazy aspect ratio/Kubrick controversy.

I poked around and found another article (actually, a blog) with some great stills and analysis and also a link to the infamous The Shining storyboard image.

https://www.alternateending.com/blog/kubrick-and-his-ratios

I agree with a lot of what the author wrote but of particular interest is:

>The story has since appeared – I first heard it in 2009 or so, and I have no idea how long it has been kicking around – that Kubrick’s stated desire wasn’t for open-matte presentations as such, but for presentations that wouldn’t involve black bars taking up valuable real estate on the TV. So with widescreen televisions all over the place, maybe a copy that fills up the whole screen is right?

Kubrick was both a brilliant film maker and an absolute sociopath. He was also a great chess player, using psychology as well as strategy to beat his opponents. One thing he was absolutely not was some sort of asthetic purist and I can totally see black strips on either side of the screen bugging the fuck out of him as that would be wasted space he could otherwise make use of.

He was also a relentless self promoter and, wanting his films to reach the widest possible audience, would likely decide to shoot his films in a widely used format. Being a control freak he would want to shoot in that format himself, rather than let some idiot overseas butcher his work.

Lastly, he always had to be technically ahead of the game. So when film-to-video became a certainty he would have been planning his films with that in mind from the start.

As far as him being first and foremost a photographer? I have to say that yes, he had a photographer's eye, but to think that he was some kind of slave to it - being esentially trapped by his need to use "the full picture" is quite frankly the dumbest thing I've ever heard.

To sum it up, I don't think Kubrick would have ever considered shooting a film in 1.33:1 (4:3) an option in light of ever widening cinema and TV screens.

Maybe he would do it as a special boxed DVD set but I don't think that was the film as he really intended it to be. He had a practical side, you know.

As far as what I said about Barry Lyndon goes - I had no fucking idea what i was talking about. 1.66:1 was just the standard format in Europe at that time.