[quote name=\'DjohnsonCB\' date=\'Jul 19 2003, 10:39 AM\'] I feel the best way to adapt this game to those wider dimensions would be to use a lot of split-screen shots, with the entire board taking up the left two-thirds of the picture and a player calling numbers on the far right. [/quote]
You can't do that, though. At least not for a few years, and especially not while the 4x3 normal television is still prevalent.
You're not shooting the show with two different sets of cameras, so you can't block (technical term: to \"block\" a show means \"to design how the camera shots are going to be done\") the show one way for widescreen and another for 4x3. Every shot has to work with BOTH, 'cuz yer shooting with the same camera, which means the pertinent information has to be in that 4x3 window in the middle of the widescreen shot. The stuff on the ends has to be inoffensive to a widescreen shot, but also unimportant if it should be cut off, which it would be on a 4x3 TV. Your shot would have half the board on the left side and half of the contestant's head on the right, which is worthless.
Again, this is why a show like this runs into blocking problems when you insist on separating the host and the contestants, because unless their parts of the set are way out in the parking lot, you can't get a widescreen shot of the board that doesn't have contestants or a host poking in from the sides, and that's a bad shot.