After successfully releasing A Bug’s Life in 1998, Pixar had a major problem on how to work on the film for home video releases. In theaters worldwide, the film was shot in a widescreen format known as CinemaScope, which we still use today. Back in the 90s and early 2000s, television sets had square screens, so it might be hard to fit a widescreen motion picture into a square screen.

One day, Pixar finally figured out a way to fit A Bug’s Life into a square screen. They developed a very special project called reframing. It took a group of animators to make various edits on how to make a home video version of a CinemaScope film. To reframe A Bug’s Life, the filmmakers used four processes:

• Restage is the process where characters are moved closer together. For example, two young ants are getting a higher view of a band playing music for the circus bugs.
• Frame Height is where filmmakers keep the original frame intact and add to the picture on the top and bottom of the frame to make it square. The bloopers in the VHS version is an example of Frame Height.
• Crop is where filmmakers cut the left, right, or both edges of the frame with no camera movement. Today, we use the crop tool to edit photos on electronic devices.
• Scan is similar to Crop except the camera moves or slides to the side. The filmmakers used a red box as a movie camera to focus on one character or another.

In 2003, the 2-disc collector’s edition DVD had a featurette on how reframing was done. Kids today don’t even know what A Bug’s Life looked like in a square aspect ratio similar to Disney Afternoon shows like Darkwing Duck. Disney needs to put that featurette on Disney Plus; that way, kids will know that A Bug’s Life was the first film to be reframed by Pixar.