Upscaling Television Aesthetics and the Cinematic Analogy

Michael Z. Newman, UW-Milwaukee

Console-ing Passions April 2008, Santa Barbara, CA

We might think of the upscaling of American television in the post-network era in two

distinct but related senses. In the first, upscaling is a product of market fragmentation.

This should be understood in terms of the audience’s class: shows like Mad Men and

channels like HBO successfully appeal to an affluent niche. Not surprisingly, this has

raised TV in cultural status, especially among cultural élites. Thus the recent

proclamations in the pages of the New York Times and its ilk that television is in a Golden

Age and is essential for cultural literacy.1 As Christopher Anderson writes, television is

increasingly being considered from an aesthetic disposition, and artistic and social status

tend to follow one another.2

But a second sense of upscaling, which is more centrally the topic of this paper,

refers to the aesthetics of the television text, and in particular the forms of TV typically

considered in aesthetic terms: prime-time comedies and dramas. One way of making TV

appeal to an upscale consumer has been to upgrade conventions of production, visual

style and storytelling. Or more precisely, to create an impression of an upgrade, through

textual strategies but also rhetorically, through contextual discourses like comments

writers and producers make to reporters and in supplementary features on DVD. All

together, these constitute an effort at the cultural legitimation of television.

When an artform rises in status, it often does so by positioning itself in relation to

other legitimated or delegitimated ones, as photography once did by aligning itself with

painting, and as cinema once did by contrasting itself against TV.3 Central to television’s

upscaling, both textual and contextual, is an association between certain kinds of TV and
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cinema, and also between more and less legitimated kinds of TV. For instance, critics

and TV industry professionals often say that The Sopranos was as good as anything at the

multiplex. By routinely making a cinematic analogy, television culture has been working

to legitimate the medium and improve its status. Two developments of the past decade

have been especially important in this regard: the move toward widescreen television

images and the fashion for single-camera comedies. In both cases, technological,

economic, and cultural forces have all contributed to the cinematization of television.

The move toward widescreen TV must be seen within a number of contexts. One

is technology: television programming shot on film or high-def video can be framed in a

number of aspect ratios, most commonly the 4:3 of NTSC and the 16:9 of HDTV.

Actually most programming shot today for 16:9 is also “protected” for 4:3, meaning that

the production is framing for multiple aspect ratios. Another context is economic:

television producers since the late 90s have seen the 16:9 framing as “protecting their

future” (i.e., producing content for eventual syndication and DVD sales at a time when

the 16:9 set is standard) while appealing to a desirable audience. Within the culture of TV

production, many creatives (directors, cinematographers) prefer to shoot widescreen

because this aspect ratio is closer to that of contemporary films. Indeed, the 16x9 HD

frame was designed to fit widescreen films on TV (ironic, since Hollywood adopted

widescreen to distinguish its image from television’s) and is always promoted as more

movie-like. Within the culture of TV consumption, many viewers prefer to see

widescreen images that fill their new 16x9 sets. But the distinction between squarish 4:3

and widescreen 16:9 is one centrally defined as a contest of connotations: the old, boxy

image is televisual; the new, expansive one is cinematic. Cinematic here means classy,
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artistic, and sophisticated. Although there is nothing inherently better or worse about

either ratio, in the discourse surrounding the move to widescreen TV, one rarely hears a

kind word about 4:3.

Widescreen TV images appeared in the U.S. before the wide adoption of

widescreen TV sets, spurred by the popularizing of letterboxed movie images on DVD.

ER was in its seventh season in November, 2000, when it became NBC’s first program to

air in a widescreen aspect ratio, with horizontal black stripes along the top and bottom of

the standard-definition picture.4 In describing the difference between the conventional 4:3

frame and the wider frame within the frame, the Washington Post’s Tom Shales explained

that many viewers would be familiar with the new format from watching widescreen

movies on DVD, laser disc, and VHS. (The black stripes would not appear on HD sets,

which few viewers owned in 2000 but which promised to become increasingly popular

within a few years.) Shales made clear an aesthetic preference for the wider ratio,

asserting that it “is more satisfying and compelling to the eye, perhaps simply because it’s

closer to the human field of vision.” 5

ER was not the first television show to switch to a widescreen format for

broadcasting. It was preceded by a number of programs, including The X-Files, which

aired an episode in 1998 with split-screen and other sequences in widescreen evoking the

visual style of its cinematic spin-off of that summer.6 Even if some were not yet familiar

with widescreen video versions of movies, television viewers at the turn of the

millennium were certainly becoming familiar with the letterbox look from advertising

and music videos.7 In 1999, Advertising Age described the letterbox as advertising’s

“look du jour” and explained its appeal by evoking associations with foreign,
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independent, and “important” films.

One of the main motivations, agency creatives say, is that it makes their

work more “cinematic” -- that is, it imbues the spot with the look and feel

of a feature film.8

In all of these examples, letterboxing is motivated by a connection between the shape and

framing of the image and the quality of the content. Even as some kinds of programming

were going widesceen, the vast majority of TV shows at time—talk, news, sports,

sitcoms, cartoons—were filling the traditional 4:3 frame, and letterboxing was a way of

distinguishing quality programs from the rest of the schedule.

The emergence of widescreen television was part of a larger phenomenon of

rising public awareness of aspect ratios and the desirability of their preservation in

transfer of films to video. The introduction of DVDs into the American market in 1997

was attended by considerable publicity and promotion touting the advantages of the new

technology. DVD “extras” would often include commentaries, like laser discs. In many

ways, the DVD format allowed for the spread of the laser disc’s mode of appreciative

consumption beyond its devoted cinephile and technophile audience. This included the

discursive construction of the letterboxed image more common on DVD than VHS as

culturally distinguished and aesthetically superior. Thus the televisual adoption of

letterboxing—especially for shows addressed at upper- and middle-class, adult, male

viewers—functions ideologically, privileging masculine and upscale tastes.

Around the same time that 16x9 TV sets were becoming widely available to

consumers, television productions started to shift toward more widescreen compositions,

though networks were exceedingly cautious about airing widescreen images in standard
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definition broadcasts. It became a norm in quality TV production to frame for multiple

ratios to give the network options. Cinematographers and television showrunners alike

tended to prefer widescreen, but networks were reluctant to letterbox. The Sopranos aired

fullframe at first until David Chase prevailed upon HBO to letterbox the series.9 HBO’s

viewer surveys had convinced them that the audience was opposed to letterboxing in

1999; perhaps that had changed by 2001.10 Alias, which debuted in 2001, was framed in

16:9 but broadcast in 4:3. Everyone involved behind-the-scenes in making the show,

from editors to network executives, watched its rough cuts and final masters in a

letterbox format, but the home audience saw a squarish frame because ABC would not air

a widescreen version.11 Similarly, creatives on quality dramas of the period like Felicity,

The West Wing, and Boston Public advocated for widescreen composition but were

constrained by their networks from doing so out of a fear of annoying and alienating

consumers.12 Bob Zitter, an HBO Vice-President, told Variety in 2001 that “People don’t

like smaller pictures.”13

Those shows that did air with the black bands were the ones successful enough to

risk turning some viewers off, and also those with an audience deemed sophisticated

enough to understand the upscale significance of widescreen. Jeff Zucker said that NBC

could get away with a letterboxed ER because the show is “in a class by itself.”14 John

Wells (its showrunner), said letterboxing marked his program as classy and distinguished,

an effect that contemporaneous advertising achieved using the same device.15 (Aside

here on the “shoot-and-protect” multiple aspect ratio framing, illustrated by the two

frames from the first season: the point is, there is nothing inherently more or less

artistic about either one; it’s more a matter of connotation.) The West Wing began to
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air letterboxed in 2001, as did Angel. It is significant here that it is not just the

composition of the image in a different shape that marks the improvement in status, but

the legitimating reshaping of the television frame with black bands, an effect more

noticeable to most viewers, implying a deficiency in 4:3 sets as a technology. The

letterbox, now familiar from DVDs, carried cultural legitimacy.

Around the same time that TV drama was going wide, another genre of quality

programming was upscaling in its own way, also abetted by the discourse of

cinematization. Beginning around 2000, the situation comedy showed changes in some

of its most basic conventions, even as it suffered declines in the Nielsen ratings. The

traditional sit-com since I Love Lucy had followed a fairly set format: a three-wall set;

multiple cameras recording film or tape in front of a live audience who laugh and

applaud; a theatrical style of performance punctuating the dramatic progression with

entrances and exits; and humor relying on a pattern of setup-punchline, verbal wit, and

often physical comedy. Shows like Malcolm in the Middle, the lone new hit sitcom of the

2000 season, would reject many of these conventions and prove that a single-camera

show could succeed on a network.16 (Others over the course of the decade would include

Arrested Development, Scrubs, and 30 Rock; Wikipedia lists nearly 100 of these, most

from the 2000s.17) In place of the live audience (or laugh track), single-camera comedies

punctuate their humor with aggressive musical cues and use voice-over narration, often

ironically. By filming in four-wall sets with a single camera, these programs can shoot

from more angles and can more easily insert frequent cuts to goofy subjective sequences,

like flashbacks and fantasies. (In Scrubs, JD imagines being greeted as he enters the

hospital as though he were a pimp, and we cut to a quick “punch-in” shot literalizing his
 7

fantasy; in 30 Rock, Tracy’s old novelty hit “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah” is made into more

than just a verbal joke when we get six seconds of a music video punched in, a technique

unthinkable in a traditional show like All in the Family.) Some of these new sitcoms

break the fourth wall, as when Malcolm addresses the camera directly and when the

characters in The Office give their mock interviews.

The TV industry and the critical establishment seized on the distinction between

traditional, multi-camera sitcoms and the new, single-camera sitcoms as one not only of

stylistic progress and innovation (despite the existence of single-camera shows for

decades) but also of preferring a more culturally legitimate alternative—and one deemed

cinematic. Invariably in descriptions of single-camera shows, cast members, producers,

network executives, and journalists explain the style as being “like a movie”: each shot

has its own setup and the shooting schedule is thus longer and complexified. Greg

Garcia, the creator of My Name is Earl, makes clear this logic: “We try to give it a look

that feels more like an independent feature film. To the extent that we’re successful doing

that, it feels like a movie rather than a TV show.” Making clear that the single-camera

style is not merely an alternative to the traditional sitcom, but a rejection of its premises,

Garcia says, “It’s a comedy that comes out of character and not out of a set-up and a

punchline.”18

Using editing and music to signal humor is deemed more cinematic than using

verbal jokes and pratfalls, and perhaps the stylistic departure most welcome within the

discourse of upscaling television is the absence of a laugh track. The explanation for this

is always put in terms of respect for the audience, which is complimented for being smart

enough not to need to be told when to laugh.19

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However, the putative sophistication of the single-camera sitcom audience may

also be the obstacle to these shows breaking through in the ratings. Two and a Half Men,

a traditional multi-camera show, has been a hit for CBS, but no single-camera program

has approached its ratings. The sitcoms that win accolades and awards tend to be single-

camera shows, including premium cable programs. Since 1999, a number of single-

camera shows have won the outstanding comedy Emmy, including Ally McBeal, Sex and

the City, Arrested Development, The Office and 30 Rock.

Industry professionals believe that critics tend to favor single-camera shows

because of their preference the sophisticated; their role demands discernment and

fashionable taste; it is probably harder for a multi-camera pilot to get a positive review.

According to industry conventional wisdom, audiences generally are not aware of a

stylistic difference between traditional and new sitcom styles, and yet large audiences

still seem more likely to find the traditional style appealing. The single-camera shows are

constructed within contextual discourses as edgy and smart, but as Variety reported in

2007, “edgy may find critics, but it often struggles to build an aud of significant size.”20

A similar distinction between multi-camera shows as “mass” and single-camera shows as

“class” obtains in the creative side of the industry as well, as cinematographers, directors,

and many actors claim to prefer shooting “like a movie.” For the cinematographers,

single-camera shooting allows for more careful lighting and allows them to avoid the flat,

even illumination that multi-camera shooting demands.21 The look of a single-camera

comedy is typically still bright, colorful, even cartoonish, but the possibilities of

expression in this style appeal more to the aspirations of craft professionals whose

identities depend on displaying technical skill and artistry. The budgets are higher for
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single-camera shows and the shooting schedules longer and more complicated, and more

like the typical feature film shoot than a live-to-film TV production.

Like the move toward widescreen images, the cinematization of TV comedy is the

product of a number of contextual forces. The economics of the post-network industry

allows for programming to target niche audiences, including upscale demographics. The

culture of consumption on DVRs and DVDs affords a kind of ultraclever comedy that

encourages repeat viewing. High-def video cameras and digital postproduction make

shooting more footage in more setups than sitcoms traditionally would affordable and

manageable. But one thing these two developments share is their mobilization of

aesthetic signifiers to cultivate modalities of taste. As Bourdieu argues, taste preferences

require the negation of distastes, of rejected styles unworthy of the status pursued by the

taste culture.22 In both of my examples, the elevation of one aesthetic comes at the

expense of another. Widescreen is the enemy of fullscreen, just as single-cam is the

antidote to multi-cam. In elevating some television to the level of the cinematic, the

discourse of recent and contemporary American TV requires the presence of the

traditionally televisual as a negated Other, a mark against which to judge itself.

1
Alessandra Stanley, “You Are What You Watch,” New York Times (23 September 2007); Heather
Havrilesky, “TV’s Golden Age,” Salon (21 August 2006),
http://www.salon.com/ent/feature/2006/08/21/golden_age/ ; James Poniewozik, “JP Radio: Say It
Loud: I Watch TV and I’m Proud” Tuned In (27 September 2007), http://time-
blog.com/tuned_in/2007/09/jp_radio_say_it_loud_i_watch_t.html.
2
Christopher Anderson, “Producing an Aristocracy of Culture in American Television,” in Gary R.
Edgerton and Jeffrey P. Jones, eds., The Essential HBO Reader (Lexington: U of Kentucky P, 2008),
23-41.
3
Richard Christopherson, “From Folk Art to Fine Art: A Transformation in the Meaning of
Photographic Work,” Urban Life and Culture 3 (1974), 123-57; Shyon Baumann, Hollywood
Highbrow: From Entertainment to Art (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2007).
4

This episode was “The Visit,” originally aired 16 November 2000.

5
Tom Shales, “Vital Signs: ‘ER’ Still Full of Life” Washington Post (16 November 2000), C01.
6
Bill Carter, “’X-Files’ Tries to Keep Its Murky Promise,” New York Times (7 November 1998), B7.
7
MTV videos were often letterboxed in the 1990s. Ann Sherber, “Letterboxing Spreads Its Horizons
Studios Find Growing Acceptance Of Format” Billboard (25 January 1997). See for instance, Beck’s
video for “Devil’s Haircut” (1997), available online http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YG3sS8RBdms
(accessed 28 April 2008).
8
Anthony Vagnoni, “Out of the Box” Advertising Age 70 (8 November 1999).
9
John Dempsey, “Letterboxing format a d.p.’s delight” Variety (18 April 2001).
10

Eric Rudolph, “Mob Psychology,” American Cinematographer 80 (October 1999), 62-4.

11
Jean Oppenheimer, “Espionage 101,” American Cinematographer 83 (November 2002), 84-9.
12
Stephanie Argy, “Big City Girl,” American Cinematographer 80 (February 1999), 76-8; Jean
Oppenheimer, “The Halls of Power,” American Cinematographer 81 (October 2000), 74-83; Dempsey
(n. xx).
13
Dempsey.
14
Ibid.
15
Eriq Gardner, “Open Wide: Why The Sopranos and ER Put Those Black Bands Across Your Screen,”
Slate (6 February 2002), http://www.slate.com/id/2061664/.
16
Bernard Weintraub, “The ‘Malcolm’ Sensibility: New Sitcom’s Early Success May Spawn Host of
Imitators” New York Times (24 January 2000).
17
Wikipedia, “List of single-camera sitcoms” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_single-
camera_sitcoms.
18
Deborah Eckerling, “The Small Screen: My Name is Earl” Scr(i)pt (January/February 2007), 76-81.
19
For an example listen to the DVD commentary track on the pilot episode of Malcolm in the Middle.
20
Nicole Laporte, “Why Don’t Smart Comedies Build Big Audiences?” Variety (12 June 2007).
21
Jon Silberg, “Making Sitcoms ‘Sexy,’” American Cinematographer 89 (March 2008), 58-65.
22
Pierre Bourdieu, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, trans. Richard Nice
(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1984), 56.