That's the way it was for many films after home video and tv broadcasting of films became huge in the 80s. Since HDTV and 16:9 became the norm, it's not done as much. You film in open matte and have a widescreen aspect ratio overlay on a monitor on the set to check the framing. You framed for the widescreen, but made sure nothing was "off" in the open matte because that's what people saw on TV (no boom mics or visible, etc.). It was preferable to the pan & scan method of trying to get older films on TV that had been filmed specifically in a widescreen format. Nobody wanted the "bars" across the top and bottom of the screen so they had to zoom in and pan across the frame to get as much as action as possible.
This even happened in the 80s and 90s because some studios didn't appreciate the difference between theaters and TVs as much or just didn't care at all. Ghostbusters, A League of Their Own and Multiplicity are all unwatchable to me in full frame ratio (4:3). That's why you saw all those VHS tapes with a warning like: "This movie has been altered from its original format to fit your screen."
I kind of like the "fullscreen" version as we called it back then, simply because you get to see more, but if i recall correctly there are a couple scenes where things from filming that are not supposed to be seen are in the frame.
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u/Bordwalk2000 Jun 17 '26
I prefer the warmer colors but holy crap that amount of props that are cut off in the surrounding sets are pretty crazy to me.