What do the terms pan and scan and letterbox mean?
-Dan A: Back in the dark ages before high definition television, most TV sets were squares. Most film screens were rectangular. As basic geometry tells us, if we try to lay a rectangle over a square, there is going to be some hanging off the sides. So, feature films when shown on television had to be re-edited and re-cut to fit the 4:3 aspect ration of television, no matter what its original ratio was. When an editor is readying a print for TV they scan’ in what they want, usually focusing on the center of the shot. Sometimes the action will move to one end of the frame or the other, so the editor has to follow along or create the illusion of a pan shot. So, pan and scan is basically the editing process of transferring feature films to television. Letterbox, named for it resembling the size and shape of a letterbox, is a way to transfer feature film to television in order to preserve the original ratio. It’s wider to show the whole shot and by doing so leaves black bars at the top and
