Mon 29 Dec 2025
Following my review of Accused of Murder, Richard Ness left the following question as a comment there:
I have a bit of a mystery regarding Accused of Murder. A few years ago I bought a 16mm scope print of it, but it is in black and white. I believe it was not uncommon to make black and white prints of color films for television broadcast in the days before color TV became the norm, but no TV station would have run a scope print. So what would these prints have been made for and where would they have been shown.
By the way, seeing it in black and white gives it a bit more of a noir feeling, but I still would not consider it film noir.
Questions such as this are way beyond what I know about the making and production of movies, which is close to zero. In fact, I suspect the people who could answer this inquiry are no longer with us. If anyone today knows, however, I suspect they could be reading this now. You, perhaps?
December 29th, 2025 at 2:59 pm
I have no firm knowledge either, though I do wonder if his assumption that this sort of “scope print” would not ever be used in television is mistaken…given how wooly things could get in the syndication “bicycling” years of the 1960s (when films and tapes would be circulated from station to station till they wore out/fell apart). That there appear to be multiple definitions of “scope print” if one goes back far enough in the history of the industry probably also doesn’t help, at least in researching the question (I imagine the definition of SP he’s using is the one that might most readily be referred to today among, at very least, film collectors). For example, kinescope prints, rather than Cinemascope prints.
December 29th, 2025 at 3:55 pm
I don’t know if this was also true in the USA, but over fifty years ago I came across a b&w “scope” film on BBC TV and missed a lot of it because I thought the set needed adjusting to get rid of the blank spaces at the top and bottom of the screen.
December 29th, 2025 at 4:49 pm
https://ausfilm.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/cinemascope.pdf
CINEMASCOPE (16mm)
(as per “Dr. Film”)
16mm film stock has a frame aspect ratio of 1.33:1 That is, the width of the frame is 1.33 x’s the size of
the height. So if you project a 16mm image that is 1′ in height, then it will be 1.33′ wide.
Wide screen or “scope” titles can be printed on 16mm. in one of three ways. It can be done “flat”, that
is, the entire 1.33:1 frame is printed with a picture that is approx. 1/2 (actually 57%) of the original
2.35:1 scope picture. A flat print is usually made with an attempt to keep the important story visual
information within the 16mm frame… doing a “pan & scan”.
Second, a widescreen picture (2.35:1) can be “letterboxed” into the 1.33:1 16 mm frame…. this is called
“adapted scope”. The widescreen picture appears in the frame with an upper and lower black margin.
Third, as is done on 35mm film, the width of the widescreen image is optically squeezed down into the
frame and when projected the operator places a “scope” lens in front of the projector which unsqueezes
the image to it’s proper width. A 16mm scope lens will expand the width 2 x’s, which makes the image
a 2.66:1 picture.
A magnificent history, explanation and pictorials of 35mm widescreen film can be found at American
Widescreen Museum. A wonderful 70mm widescreen website is hosted by Stefan Adler at: [an apparently dead link]