A widescreen process developed for producer Michael Todd by Dr. Brian O'Brien, Jr. of the American Optical Company.
Films were shot on a 65mm negative [30 fps for the first 2 features] using 4 new lenses, among them a 12.7mm 'bug-eye' lens, that photographed an image 128° wide. The picture was printed on 70mm film [2.20:1] to allow for 6 stereophonic soundtracks or was squeezed onto 35mm [2.35:1].

Producer Michael Todd had a dream... a motion picture system with one camera that could photograph action in a very wide angle... a camera that was flexible, capable of telling a story... on one strip of film... from a single projector... on a large screen that was wide and deeply curved... with a quality so perfect that the audience would be part of the action!

Shortly after the premiere of 'This is Cinerama' Mike Todd sold his shares in Cinerama because the board of directors did not listen to him when he was complaining about the shortcomings of the system. At the moment that the decision was made by Cinerama to build theatres all over the US and Europe, Todd left the company because he was aware of the many problems of Cinerama, in particular the join lines between the three projected images. He wanted the same effect as Cinerama but with just one camera and one projector. His dream began to come true.

He was very lucky to find Dr Brian O'Brien, Jr. who had just entered the American Optical Company, the largest optical company in the country as head of research. It took O'Brien and a team of the University of

Rochester nearly three years of research and experiments to develop the new lenses. Although American Optical had to design the complete new system, they subcontracted the camera work to the Mitchell Camera Company. And the N.V. Philips' Gloeilampenfabrieken of Eindhoven, Netherlands, entered into an agreement with American Optical in October 1953 to design the projector for the Todd-AO process. Philips had a lot of experience since they were engaged in the design and production of 35mm projectors since 1934. They were instructed to design a compatible 35/70mm projector that could handle 70mm film as well as 35mm. They succeeded in developing the DP70 projector in only 6 months and by the spring of 1954 three finished projectors were delivered at American Optical in Massachusetts. Philips [North American Philips Co., Inc.] received a Class II Technical 'Oscar' [1962] for their revolutionary design of this 'all-purpose' projector, which was only slightly larger than a 35mm machine. Yet, it could project film from any of the eight motion picture systems in use at the time.

Dr. O'Brien found out that for the projection of a movie on a large curved screen a 35mm film would not be sufficient and so he decided they would need a new larger camera negative. So he was provided with cameras from the earlier industry's attempt to introduce wide film in 1930. His 65mm format is exactly the one used to photograph the 65/70mm version of 'The Bat Whispers' [dir: Roland West; ph: Robert H. Planck (Magnifilm 65/70mm) & Ray June (35mm version)]. This 65mm picture frame is three and a half times the area of the standard 35mm film frame. A six channel soundtrack was developed and the release prints were 70mm: 5mm extra to create space for the 6 magnetic sound tracks along the edge of the film. O'Brien and his assistants of the American Optical Company developed four new Todd-AO lenses that cover everything from a close up to wide distance shots. They range from the huge 128° [angle of coverage] wide-angle lens - called 'bug-eye' because of its enormous front element - down through the 64, 48 and 36 degree lenses. And so the Todd-AO 65/70mm format was the guarantee for a sharp image when blown up onto a large wide screen and without the technical problems of the 3-strip Cinerama system where Mike Todd's dream for Todd-AO was born.

The first Todd-AO film, 'Oklahoma!' [1954 (filmed 14 July - 7 September 1954 on location & 8 September - 6 December 1954 in the studio); ph: Robert Surtees & Floyd Crosby (2uc)], was shot simultaneously in Todd-AO [2.20:1] & CinemaScope [2.55:1; 24 fps], a version that was significantly different [also in length] from the Todd-AO version.

The next film, 'Around the World in 80 Days' [1955; ph: Lionel Lindon] was shot simultaneously in 2 Todd-AO versions with one camera running 30 fps and the other 24 fps. One of the last Todd-AO films was 'Airport' [1969; ph: Ernest Laszlo].

In the 1960's, Todd-AO needed a new life, and that was done in the form of Dimension 150 [D-150], a photographic and projection system developed by Richard Vetter and Carl W. Williams. The optical system included a 150° photographic lens, which gave the system its name, special projection optics and a patented deeply-curved screen. The photographic lenses were adaptable to Todd-AO/Mitchell 65mm cameras. The first film was 'The Bible... In the Beginning' [1963; ph: Giuseppe Rotunno]. The last was 'Patton' [1969; ph: Fred Koenekamp].

"Patton"

In 1971, Todd-AO licensed a line of Japanese designed anamorphic lenses, primarily for use with Arriflex cameras, which it marketed under the name Todd-AO 35.

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Paramount liked the results and set about to obtain a second 'Natural Color' camera. With two cameras available, Paramount began filming 'White Christmas' [1953; ph: Loyal Griggs] in 8-perf and placed orders with the Mitchell Camera Company to develop a new silent studio camera for the process that had been christened VistaVision. When the first of the new cameras arrived they were immediately put into use in the production of 'The Ten Commandments' [1956, Cecil B. DeMille; ph: Loyal Griggs; the re-release in 1989 was on 70mm (2.20:1 - Super VistaVision)], which would not reach the screen for two more years.
While the first conception of VistaVision called for standard 35mm prints, Paramount felt that the negative quality allowed for a variety of prints to be made. Several features were shown in 8-perf horizontal contact prints in limited runs, e.g. 'White Christmas', 'To Catch A Thief' [1954, Alfred Hitchcock; ph: Robert Burks] and 'Strategic Air Command' [1955, Anthony Mann; ph: William H. Daniels; aspect ratio 1.96:1 (VistaVision) and 2.00:1 (anamorphic prints)]. While Paramount tried to keep with their preferred aspect ratio of 1.66:1, they also made provisions for 35mm 4-perf anamorphic prints with an aspect ratio of approximately 2.00:1. The special 8-perf horizontal prints and the anamorphic prints did not see much use and the vast majority of VistaVision films were released on standard 35mm flat prints.
With Technicolor's dye transfer printing and the large format Eastman Color negative, VistaVision films, regardless of print type, provided an extremely sharp image with beautifully saturated colors. Throughout the 1950's vast improvements in Eastman Color began to reduce the initial benefits of VistaVision's large format negative as a production medium. VistaVision was no longer used for feature production after 1962 ['My Six Loves'; dir: Gower Champion; ph: Arthur Arling].
Paramount switched to Technicolor's Technirama based in part on VistaVision's horizontal film transport and double-frame picture area.
After its adoption by special photographic effects supervisor John Dykstra for special effects work on 'Star Wars' [1976; ph by Gilbert Taylor in Panavision], VistaVision became standard in rear projection work and is still used for plate photography on elements to be composited digitally. [Using quotes from an article by Martin Hart, The American WideScreen Museum, 2004.]

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Widescreen: Any spherical film presentation employing an image on the screen with an aspect ratio wider than 1.37:1, which was the standard ratio until the early 1950's.

As early as the 1930's, studios began experimenting with widening the image, e.g. Paramount [Magnascope], Fox [Fox Grandeur - 70mm], MGM [Realife - 70mm (2.13:1)] and Warner Bros. [Vitascope - 65mm (2:1)]. After the introduction of CinemaScope by 20th Century-Fox other studios, especially those with a large backlog of unreleased spherical films, panicked and began to look for other ways to jump on the widescreen bandwagon. Paramount Pictures was particularly disturbed. The studio had over a year's worth of unreleased features in its vaults and began to investigate the feasibility of obtaining a 'widescreen effect' by masking off the top and bottom of the projected image and using a shorter focal length spherical lens to throw the image onto a wider than normal screen. Warner Bros. had already rejected this technique because it compromised the visual integrity of the film. But Paramount felt that by using an aspect ratio of 1.66:1 and favoring the upper two-thirds of the image - in the 1950's, important information was rarely placed at the extreme top or bottom of the frame - most films could be shown without disturbing the composition too much.
The day after Fox presented its first public demonstration of CinemaScope, Paramount screened 'Shane' [ph: by Loyal Griggs] in a 1.66:1 aspect ratio on a huge, slightly curved screen specially set up on stage 15.
Other studios also chose to mask off the top and bottom of the 1.37:1 photographed image during projection, creating the illusion of a wider image. The resulting, and competing, aspect ratios used by the various studios were 1.66:1 [Paramount, 20th Century-Fox's Panoramic Pictures, RKO & Republic], 1.75:1 [MGM, Disney & Warner Bros.] and 1.85:1 [Universal, Columbia & Allied Artists].
Once they had released their inventory backlog, these studios began to establish this type of widescreen process as a standard by instructing their cinematographers to compose images so that no important action would be lost during projection. By 1956, the studios had decided unofficially upon 1.85:1 as the standard [in the USA] for this masked widescreen method.

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