Widescreen or Fullscreen?

A widescreen film gives 100% of the director's artistic vision. It is usually about a 16x9 aspect ratio (a wide, beautiful rectangle). Most TVs are 4x3 (close to a square). When an image of the 16x9 aspect ratio is applied to a 4x3 monitor, everything becomes completely distorted, so, they have two black bars across the top and bottom of the screen to balance the picture.

As a director, I despise fullscreen. When people watch Fullscreen, I see it as disrespectful. According to my theory, earlier in the film industry, someone encountered a problem with the wide films and the square televisions (obviously we had not yet invented the revolutionary black bars). So some wiseguy said, "Hey, why don't we just cut half of the movie OUT and then we can jam what's left into 4x3!"

So they did. In a fullscreen film, you are zoomed up into the film to balance the image. When something important is happening on what would be the left and right sides of the screen in a Widescreen film, Fullscreen viewers are zoomed up. So they do what is known as "PAN and SCAN" or "CLAMSHELL", in which the screen moves left and right over and over so that you can see the action, but you will no-doubtedly miss some. I've watched movies that were on FULLSCREEN VHS and I had no Idea what was going on untill I saw the Widescreen DVD, because some important things were happening on the sides of the film that you cannot see in fullscreen versions.