Ran across this interview with Joss Whedon. Contains spoilers for the next season of Angel. It also contains what I find an interesting exchange:
IGNFF: Did it surprise you the reaction that the lack of widescreen for Buffy season four on DVD got here in the U.S.?WHEDON: People were upset, right? I haven't seen the season four package ... it contains a disclaimer from me as to why it's not in widescreen, that I wrote. It's on it, it comes with it. It's not a widescreen show. We shot it in a TV ratio, and I am very, very specific with the way I frame things. To arbitrarily throw – and I love widescreen, but Buffy was never a widescreen show. It was an intimate, TV-shaped show. To arbitrarily throw wider borders on it, to make it more cinematic when I very specifically framed it. Think of "The Body" – the episode "The Body"...
IGNFF: Right, which I've seen in widescreen and full frame...
WHEDON: How could you have seen it in widescreen?
IGNFF: The U.K. sets are in widescreen.
WHEDON: Good. See, that is not the way I framed it. That's not the way it was meant to be seen, and therefore that's not the way I shot it. I'm preserving what I shot. The DVD is there to preserve what we made, for eternity. What we made, very specifically, was a certain shape. So I'm sure there'll be widescreen copies and there'll be arguments about what's better, but I'm not interested in – and I mean, I love widescreen. I'm a widescreen fanatic, when something's wide. When it's not, then I want to see it the way it was meant to be seen.
I just watched "The Body" last week, in widescreen, listening to Joss's commentary. He discusses the framing at great length, and I believed he was watching the widescreen print when he was talking about it. Despite his protestations, he was obviously using the whole wide frame, most notably during some tracking shots in the morgue scene. Still, I might have to get the square versions, too. The season four domestic set also has one more commentary on it than the international release did. Bastards.
He mentions later that Angel is widescreen, but doesn't comment on the fact that the domestic release of the DVDs is apparently not going to be.
Posted by Craig at June 30, 2003 10:27 AM