From regy522@csc.canterbury.ac.nz Wed Jun  1 14:41:50 EDT 1994
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From: regy522@csc.canterbury.ac.nz
Newsgroups: alt.video.laserdisc
Subject: TECHNISCOPE: Never mind the quality...
Date: 1 Jun 94 16:28:43 +1200
Organization: University of Canterbury, Christchurch, New Zealand
Lines: 41
Message-ID: <1994Jun1.162843.1@csc.canterbury.ac.nz>
NNTP-Posting-Host: regyva.canterbury.ac.nz

Greetings from Christchurch, New Zealand!

Techniscope was a 35mm 2 perforation pull-down system;
the regular pull-down for standard 35mm filming, whether
flat or anamorphic, is 4 perforations.

Thus Techniscope, patented by Paramount, used half as much negative
as normal and was therefore very popular among producers on a budget
such as spaghetti westerners, or those running off miles of film
for recording such events as the Olympic Games, where there was a high
wastage factor.

Because filming used regular spherical lenses, which were (then) far 
faster and lighter than anamorphic lenses, it was also of use where light
levels were low e.g. jungle movies or where the camera was very mobile
e.g. ski movies.

The negative produced had an actual aspect ratio of about 2.35:1
and the image was not squeezed - this came later when stretch
printing in the laboratory produced conventional release prints,
with an image that was 4 perforations high, to be projected through
an anamorphic lens to arrive at a screen shape of about the same aspect
ratio as Panavision.  Naturally, because the original negative area
exposed was only half that of Panavision the final image was a little
soft and for that reason filters were rarely used.

One example of a movie that used Techniscope is AMERICAN GRAFFITI which
explains why it was first released letterboxed on television as there 
was insufficient image quality to survive being panned and scanned and 
then transmitted.  It was probably for this reason that the use of
Techniscope stopped after about 1964.

The system was refined in the early 80s as Super35 which manages to
expose a larger negative size by including the soundtrack area.

Regards
Richard

P S My grandfather told me all this!
 
CA