VistaVision is a higher resolution, widescreen variant of the 35 mm motion picture film format which was created by engineers at Paramount Pictures in 1954. Paramount never used anamorphic processes such as 2.55: 1, CinemaScope but refined the quality of its flat widescreen system by orienting the 35 mm negative horizontally in the camera gate and shooting onto a big area, which yielded the finer-grained projection print. As finer-grained film stocks appeared on the market, VistaVision became obsolete. Paramount dropped the format just after seven years, although for 40 more years the format was used by some European and Japanese producers for movies, and by USA movies such as the first three Star Wars films for high-resolution special effects sequences. In many ways, VistaVision became the testing ground for every cinematography idea that evolved into 70 mm IMAX and OMNIMAX film formats in the 1970s. Both IMAX and OMNIMAX are oriented sideways, like VistaVision. History As a response to an industry recession brought about by the popularity of television, the Hollywood studios turned to large format movies in order to regain audience attendance. The first of these, Cinerama, debuted in September 1952, and consisted of three strips of 35 mm film projected side-by-side onto a giant, curved screen, augmented by seven channels of stereophonic sound. Five months later, in February 1953, Twentieth Century Fox announced that they would soon be introducing a simpler version of Cinerama using anamorphic lenses instead of multiple film strips; a widescreen process that soon became known to the public as CinemaScope. As a response, Paramount Pictures devised its own system the following month to augment its 3-D process known as Paravision. This process utilized a screen size that yielded an aspect ratio of 5 units wide by 3 units high, or 1.66:1. By using a different sized aperture plate and wider lens, a normal Academy ratio film could be soft matted to this or any other aspect ratio. Shortly thereafter, it was announced that all of the studio's productions would be shot in this ratio. The VistaVision fanfare, used on most of the films produced in this ratio, was written by film, television, and radio composer and orchestrator Nathan Van Cleave. This "flat" widescreen process was adopted by other studios and by the end of 1953, more than half of the theaters in America had installed wide screens. However, there were drawbacks: because a smaller