Godzilla 1998 Open Matte ((new)) Today

Because these areas weren't meant to be seen, open matte versions can occasionally reveal production equipment, like boom mics or light stands, at the very edges of the frame.

For the 1998 Godzilla , the "Full Screen" DVD was a pan-and-scan job (where the editor chooses which 1.33 portion of the 2.39 image to show). Instead, Sony Pictures chose to produce an Open Matte transfer. They went back to the original camera negative and scanned the full 1.33:1 frame as it was shot, then simply centered it for 4:3 televisions. Godzilla 1998 Open Matte

The Open Matte version emphasizes how much of the film relies on humor and human reaction shots. Because you see more of the ground, you see more New Yorkers running. Because you see more sky, you see more of the military helicopters. Some argue this makes the film feel more like Emmerich’s Independence Day (a disaster film) than a traditional Kaiju film. Because these areas weren't meant to be seen,

When they finally met in a coffee shop that smelled of bitter beans and late deadlines, Naomi’s hands were stained with film grain, her eyes rimmed red as if she’d been watching too long. She told Lina a different story from Marcus’s. “They told us to shoot the spectacle,” Naomi said. “But we shot the edges too. You don’t film a city without filming what holds it up. The open matte was for the future. For someone who would want to remember the ordinary people when the ordinary became history.” They went back to the original camera negative

This article is your complete guide to what Open Matte is, why the 1998 film is the perfect example of its potential, where to find it, and why it might be the superior way to watch Nick Tatopoulos outrun a mutated iguana.

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This is the most fascinating technical aspect. Godzilla (1998) used CGI for the monster. In the theatrical 2.39 version, the visual effects artists rendered Godzilla to fit the wide frame perfectly. In the Open Matte, you sometimes see the "edge" of the CGI work—where the digital monster ends and the blank background begins, or strange scaling issues where the monster looks slightly too small for the frame because he was rendered for a crop.