Apocolypse Now - Pan&Scan Vs. Wide Screen
... that what the original shot, that was shot by the director, actually was. This is the case when comparing the pan and scan version and the wide screen version of Apocalypse Now. The wide screen version of Apocalypse Now is the way I believe that people were meant to see it. There are many elements in this version, which are cut out in the pan and scan version, that give the film so much more emotion and grandeur. Since in the pan and scan version the framing is so much smaller the background of a shot is some times cut out. For Example, there is a point in the film when all the troops are gathered around in a prayer session and a minister is preaching in front of them. In the pan and scan version of this shot you only see a little movement in the background with helicopters and trucks moving back and fourth. However in the wide screen version the background is filled with up too four or five helicopters at a time, tanks with flames being shot out of them, and people running for their lives. All of these things that are in the wide screen version add to the intensity of the time and show that these soldiers are praying in the middle of a war where they are killing people which totally goes against everything religion stands for. So in the pan and scan version we lose the total hypocrisy that Francis Ford Coppola is trying to show us that went on in the Vietnam War. Because of the framing in the pan and scan version of a film we sometimes also lose the images that lie of the sides of a shot. For Example, when Willard (Martin Sheen) is walking along this dirt field we hear the sound in the background of a “fire in the hole” and a second later we see some faint smoke. But because Willard was not startled and there was no change in his expression we, the audi...