Basic trope: Anamorphically squishing or stretching an image to a different aspect ratio
- Straight:
- A 4:3 image stretched to 16:9 or visa versa (1.33x compression)
- 35mm anamorphic film with a 2.39:1 aspect ratio (2x compression)
- Exaggerated:
- Vertical video stretched to 16:9
- 2.39:1 video squished to 4:3note
- Downplayed:
- Screens with near-square pixel aspect ratios, such as 1366x768 in a 16:9 display
- Use of a 1.25x compression factor, like Ultra Panavision 70mm.
- Inverted: A 4096x2160 image (1.90:1 Aspect Ratio) is stretched vertically 33% to 1:43:1.note
- Lampshaded: "You look fat like that"
- Discussed: "Wait a minute, why is everything wide all of a sudden?"
- Conversed: "Gotta love the look of anamorphic lenses"
- Justified: It's a Dream Sequence, an Impairment Shot, or it's a surrealist film.
- Enforced: The director wants their movie to be released on home video squished, and provides glasses that unsqueeze the image for the viewer.
- Subverted: Anamorphic 35mm squishes the image on the film, but the projector un-squishes it for projection, making it look normal.
- Double Subverted: There is a 35mm presentation that combined anamorphic and spherical film. No matter what lens the projector uses, some of it will appear squished or stretched.
- Parodied:
- A video conversion suite keeps stretching Bob's VHS transfers to 16:9, and he doesn't notice.
- Zig-Zagged: The film is presented in a mixture of anamorphic and spherical lenses.
- Averted: A spherical lens is used with film, or the digital files always have square pixels.
- Played for Laughs: The image is stretched to make it feel more like a meme, a la wide Putin
- Played for Horror: The stretching causes Body Horror.
- Exploited:
- The 35mm anamorphic process is invented to get widescreen footage on existing 35mm film, thus leaving 99% of the filmmaking and distribution process unchanged (which is exactly what happened in The '50s and beyond)
- DVD can only have one resolution but must support two aspect ratios: 4:3 and 16:9. To do this, they compromise on 720x480 (3:2 in square pixels), then use software to squish 4:3 content and stretch 16:9 content to the proper ratio.
