Movies - Academy ratio

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The Academy ratio of 1.37:1 is the standard aspect ratio of a 35mm film frame when used with 4-perf pulldown, and was standardized by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences as the standard film aspect ratio in 1932, although it was used as early as 1928.

Silent films were shot at a 1.33 aspect ratio, with each frame using all of the negative space between the two rows of film perforations for a length of 4 perfs. The frame line between the silent film frames was very thin. When sound films were introduced in the late 1920s, the soundtrack was placed down a row along the inside of one of the lines of perforations, cutting into the 1.33 image. This made the image area "taller", usually around 1.19, which was slightly disorienting to audiences used to the 1.33 frame and also presented problems for exhibitors with fixed-size screens and stationary projectors. Therefore, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences resolved the problem by trying to retain a similar aspect ratio to the original silent ratio. As the width of the usable image area had been reduced, the height of each frame also was reduced, which created slightly thicker frame lines, which also had the additional benefit of making splices less noticeable in editing. The Academy ratio is actually 1.375, but is usually shortened to 1.37, and often is cited as 1.33 by laypeople, despite the fact that only silent films were shot in that ratio.

Virtually all films from 1932 to 1952 were shot in Academy ratio. However, following the widescreen "revolution" of the 1950s, it quickly became an obsolete production format. Within several years, all major studios started matting their non-anamorphic films to wider ratios such as 1.66, 1.75, and 1.85, the latter of which is still in common use along with anamorphic (2.39). It is not totally obsolete, nonetheless, and can still be found in selected recent films such as Gus Van Sant's Elephant
.

Keeping the horizontal strip of wider formats within the Academy frame, when anamorphic lenses are not used, is often considered to be expensive in terms of the cost of film stock and processing, especially in the case of television, which does not require a film print. The 3-perf pulldown process was invented to solve this problem.

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