INTERVIEW: David Cronenberg

Widescreen Wonder

This was clipped out of a Dreamwatch interview with David Cronenberg (apparently it's “too techy”, but most TV remotes have an Aspect button these days so it should be fairly familiar). According to this, David Cronenberg invented the widescreen format...

"I’ve always felt, right from my first film, that my movies would have a greater life on TV and tape than they would at the cinema. I’ve never shot widescreen, for example; the aspect ratio I was using was done with TV in mind. And it’s ironic because I ended up shooting somewhere between European aspect ratio [1.66:1] and the American [1.85:1], so I actually invented the 1.75:1 ratio that now turns out to be almost exactly what these 16:9 widescreen TV have [laughs]. Who would anticipate that 16:9 would end up the standard frame for widescreen? Maybe they came to the same conclusion I did: it was the ideal frame."