[foob]

There's a great blog post by David Simon on the conversion of The Wire from 4:3 to 16:9 [1]. It goes into a lot of depth about some of the trade-offs and considerations as well as the lack of communication from HBO. Unfortunately, the video examples don't seem to work anymore. I can't help but wonder if HBO sent YouTube a DMCA takedown for David Simon's clips from the post (or they got taken down automatically). It's pretty sad if the creator of a show can't even post short clips from it to illustrate some of the design decisions behind them.

[1] - http://davidsimon.com/the-wire-hd-with-videos/

[f0e4c2f7]

I remember reading that blog post at the time and being flabbergasted.

If I remember the details correctly HBO wanted to do a cut similar to the Netflix one and Simon (and maybe others?) Went back through the entire series and meticulously edited the shots to still have the same meaning / context.

The result by the way is incredible. The Wire is one of my favorite shows of all time anyway, but the fact that you can watch it today in such high quality is a real delight.

[remram]

Also the Buffy remaster, where interestingly they uncropped the footage, showing some of the filming crew, microphones, etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZWNGq70Oyo

(edit: already posted in this thread, oops: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28737063)

[urthor]

That's brilliant. That's the way it should be done.

[remram]

No it's not. This re-release is widely unpopular.

[urthor]

Idk, I'm just thinking about it as a theater kid.

Ignoring random fire alarms and watching the actors on stage is kind of natural to me, it wouldn't bother me watching Buffy.

[kristofferR]

It's not really the same issue though, with The Wire they had access to original master footage that had a wider view, so the 16:9 versions didn't crop into the 4:3 footage, it just added footage on the sides of the image.

https://i.imgur.com/SK1sPD9.jpg

[dogma1138]

In some shots yes but not in all, in others the extra wide shot could not be used because production elements could be seen or it drastically changed the framing of the scene so cropping was also extensively used.

You can see this in many other early 2000’s shows like TWW.

[dogma1138]

It’s quite strange because even if he wasn’t the creator it seems that it should fall very much under fair use because you critique the editing / remastering of the show from its original broadcast aspect ratio to a new one.