High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Anamorphic format is a term normally used for: the cinematography technique of shooting a widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film or other visual recording media with a non-widescreen native aspect ratio; or the projection format in which a distorted image is `stretched` by an anamorphic projection lens to recreate the original aspect ratio on the viewing screen. (It should not be confused with anamorphic widescreen, a different video encoding concept that uses similar principles but different means.) The word "anamorphic" and its derivatives stem from the Greek words meaning formed again.