If you've followed the windingly torturous and crazily fast production of YELLOW SUBMARINE, it's not hard to believe that those who drew, inked, and painted the cels might not know exactly what would end up on film, or how the images would be framed by the rostrum camera operator.Lord Reith wrote: ↑Mon Mar 14, 2022 3:35 am If they bothered to draw and colour the full 4:3 picture then clearly it was intended to be seen by someone. Otherwise they would have saved a lot of time and just drawn a 16:9 frame.
Another part of this is the idea that the 4x3 versions people see on video are the entire full frame of 35mm film. In many cases, that's not true. I hope at some point to illustrate that for YELLOW SUBMARINE, but work and family needs have kept me from it.
YELLOW SUBMARINE has some sequences that fill the 35mm frame, like the one linked to by Venny. Some others don't. In them, you can see the edges of the animation cels, and read the set-up information on them. In some cases you can also see where the drawing ends and the the paint and outlines just sort of blob out on the cel. It would depend on who directed the sequence, and how the shots were framed and photographed.
The 4x3 video transfer (made for no reason but to fill a 4x3 TV screen) may show the entire frame, or it may zoom in a bit and catch whatever complete image there is top-to-bottom, cutting off image on the sides to maintain the 4x3 ratio.
The movie was made and intended to be shown in theaters at 1.66:1. I posted an image in another thread that showed that the distributor, United Artists, itself says that. (16x9 wasn't an aspect ratio that existed at that time.) Television would not have been a contributing factor in how the movie was made, because it would be years before it would be shown on TV, and the monetary return on TV sales was a pittance compared to theatrical.
Many people are looking at the issue through eyes influenced by decades of massive home video sales and viewing. That wasn't anything people who made movies thought about until the early eighties, at best. Before that, TV and non-theatrical markets were a very minor part of it all.
I totally understand the desire to see and hear as much as possible. It's just that the movie was composed and edited to look right at a particular aspect ratio. Many people have seen them the wrong way for so long that that's what feels right to them.