Editing 35 mm movie film (section)

===Widescreen===
{{Main|Anamorphic|Aspect ratio (image)|Widescreen}}
[[File:35 mm film (CinemaScope).svg|thumb|right|upright=1.5|CinemaScope (2.39:1, flat and anamorphic) format diagram]]
The commonly used [[anamorphic]] format uses a similar four-perf frame, but an anamorphic lens is used on the camera and projector to produce a wider image, today with an aspect ratio of about 2.39:1 (more commonly referred to as 2.40:1). The ratio was formerly 2.35:1—and is still often mistakenly referred to as such—until an [[SMPTE]] revision of projection standards in 1970.<ref name="2.39">{{cite web |last=Hart |first=Martin |year=2000 |website=Widescreen Museum |url=http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/apertures.htm |title=Of Apertures and Aspect Ratios |access-date=August 10, 2006}}</ref> The image, as recorded on the negative and print, is horizontally compressed (squeezed) by a factor of 2.<ref name="ana">{{cite book |last=Hora |first=John |chapter=Anamorphic Cinematography |title=American Cinematographer Manual |edition=8th |publisher=ASC Press |location=Hollywood |year=2001}}</ref>

The unexpected success of the [[Cinerama]] widescreen process in 1952 led to a boom in [[film format]] innovations to compete with the growing audiences of television and the dwindling audiences in movie theaters. These processes could give theatergoers an experience that television could not at that time—color, stereophonic sound and panoramic vision. Before the end of the year, [[20th Century Fox]] had narrowly "won" a race to obtain an [[anamorphic]] optical system invented by [[Henri Chrétien]], and soon began promoting the [[Cinemascope]] technology as early as the production phase.<ref name="scope">{{cite web |last=Hart |first=Martin |year=2000 |website=Widescreen Museum |url=http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/widescreen/wingcs1.htm |title=Cinemascope Wing 1 |access-date=August 10, 2006}}</ref>

[[File:35 mm film (Widescreen).svg|thumb|right|upright=1.5|Widescreen (1.85:1, flat and anamorphic) format diagram]]
Looking for a similar alternative, other major studios hit upon a simpler, less expensive solution by April 1953: the camera and projector used conventional spherical lenses (rather than much more expensive anamorphic lenses), but by using a removable aperture plate in the film projector gate, the top and bottom of the frame could be cropped to create a wider aspect ratio. Paramount Pictures began this trend with their aspect ratio of 1.66:1, first used in ''[[Shane (film)|Shane]]'', which was originally shot for [[Academy ratio]].<ref name="crop">{{cite web |last=Hart |first=Martin |year=2000 |website=Widescreen Museum |url=http://www.widescreenmuseum.com/Widescreen/evolution.htm |title=Early Evolution from Academy to Wide Screen Ratios |access-date=August 10, 2006}}</ref> It was Universal Studios, however, with their May release of ''[[Thunder Bay (film)|Thunder Bay]]'' that introduced the now standard 1.85:1 format to American audiences and brought attention to the industry the capability and low cost of equipping theaters for this transition.

Other studios followed suit with aspect ratios of 1.75:1 up to 2:1. For a time, these various ratios were used by different studios in different productions, but by 1956, the aspect ratio of 1.85:1 became the "standard" US format. These ''flat'' films are photographed with the full [[Academy ratio|Academy frame]], but are [[Matte (filmmaking)|matted]] (most often with a [[Masking (art)|mask]] in the theater projector, not in the camera) to obtain the "wide" aspect ratio. The standard, in some European countries, became 1.66:1 instead of 1.85:1, although some productions with pre-determined American distributors composed for the latter to appeal to US markets.

In September 1953, 20th Century Fox debuted CinemaScope with their production of ''[[The Robe (film)|The Robe]]'' to great success.<ref>{{cite journal|last=Samuelson |first=David W. |date=September 2003 |title=Golden Years |journal=American Cinematographer Magazine |publisher=ASC Press |pages=70–77}}</ref> CinemaScope became the first marketable usage of an anamorphic widescreen process and became the basis for a host of "formats", usually suffixed with ''-scope,'' that were otherwise identical in specification, although sometimes inferior in optical quality. (Some developments, such as SuperScope and [[Techniscope]], however, were truly entirely different formats.) By the early 1960s, however, [[Panavision]] would eventually solve many of the CinemaScope lenses' technical limitations with their own lenses,<ref name="ana" /> and by 1967, CinemaScope was replaced by Panavision and other third-party manufacturers.<ref name="obsolete">{{cite book |editor-last=Nowell-Smith |editor-first=Geoffrey |title=The Oxford History of World Cinema |url=https://archive.org/details/oxfordhistoryofw00geof |url-access=registration |page=[https://archive.org/details/oxfordhistoryofw00geof/page/266 266] |publisher=Oxford University Press |location=Oxford |year=1996}}</ref>

The 1950s and 1960s saw many other novel processes using 35&nbsp;mm, such as [[Vistavision|VistaVision]], SuperScope, and [[Technirama]], most of which ultimately became obsolete. VistaVision, however, would be revived decades later by [[Lucasfilm]] and other studios for special effects work, while a SuperScope variant became the predecessor to the modern [[Super 35]] format that is popular today.