The set of reels that was distributed to the movie theaters included a computer written, photocopied note from
David Lynch himself giving special instructions to the projectionists worldwide. Specifically, he didn't want the movie to be centered vertically on the screen but rather to "allow more overhead" as the term in projectionist's slang, that is to let the top part of the frame be more visible than the bottom part. This is because the film was originally made for TV, with an aspect ratio of 1:1,78 (or 16:9) in mind - without the projectionists' manual correction, the aspect ratio of the theatrical release (1:1,85) would have resulted in heads being cut of at the top of the silver screen. Lynch also asked to raise the volume of the theater's sound system by 2 decibel when the film was playing. The note ended with the words "Your friend, David Lynch".
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