Anamorphic lens

A normal widescreen frame is a crop, with the top and bottom thrown away. An anamorphic instead compresses a wider view horizontally onto the full height of the sensor, and the footage is de-squeezed in post. Squeeze factors of 1.33x, 1.5x and 2x are the common ones. The setting has to match in the edit or everybody comes out thin.

The look is why people buy them: oval out-of-focus highlights, long horizontal flares off any bright source, and a distinctive falloff. The costs are real too. They are heavy, expensive, often slow to focus and unforgiving at close range. For talking-head work, a good spherical lens does more for the picture.