Practical uses for vertical video?

[Stephen Coates]

Like many people, I've hated vertical video from the moment it started to become popular, which is many years ago now. So, I'm just wondering, has anyone here come up with any actual good uses for vertical?

I think the best use case I've seen so far was at a gym I used to go to, where they had vertically mounted TV sets displaying both videos and information. I thought the 9:16 aspect worked really well for this.

But that's about it. I've tried doing bits of vertical video myself for YouTube Shorts etc and most of the time it just doesn't work. Occasionally the subject matter will fit better into a 9:16 frame, or something can be cropped out of a 16:9 frame, but mostly... just... no.

I've been at two events recently where some people had rather convoluted rigs with 90 degree mounted cameras and monitors. Seemed a bit far fetched but I can only assume either someone was paying them for vertical videos, or they were very enthusiastic.

I think the old Glove and Boots video from donkeys years ago is still true:

. Funnily enough they mention about letterboxing widescreen video into vertical. ITV News seem to enjoy doing this now on YouTube .

 

[Peter C.]

I don't shoot vertical but that's because my work doesn't go on social media. So you don't have to do it if it doesn't make sense for what you're doing. As far as setup cameras that offer open gate capture the entire sensor giving you a more square (4x3) image that then can be cropped in post later for horizontal or vertical. This is easier to do for vlogging type stuff that you can easily crop yourself either way.

 

[briandrys1]

Social media would be the main outlet. However, the portrait aspect ratio is commonly used for advertising at various entertainment/sporting venues, retail outlets, transport hubs/shelters and street furniture, where it fits nicely into the architecture.

 

[morgan_moore]

Starting in stills vertical format is clearly logical for some subjects. Typically fashion (folk in clothes) and maybe even talking heads.

It is interesting to not the DOF effect, if you frame head to shoulders in a 235 as pect with a 50 you are 5 foot back and head to shoulders with a 50 in a 9-16 format you are 2.5 foot back with resultant super skinny dof. If you are delivering vertical shooting vertical tends to deliver more pleasing images.

 

[paulears]

I hate it with a passion (and am in the middle of an edit using it at the moment), but I do have to use it for stage side screens sometimes, or for on stage legs - the masking at the side of stages. These were usually black wool serge or Bolton twill, but sometimes now it will be a stacked array of video screens - maybe 1m, or 1.5m wide and 3-5m tall. Images of various stuff or people in music shows - often old photos of Elvis or Billy Fury - while the band and a performer or two do their stuff on stage. Occasionally even scenic elements like Grecian columns - or foliage etc. That I don't mind, but the project I'm editing now is a choir, shot mistakenly by somebody in portrait. Two versions - the portrait one and a cropped landscape. Horrible. Church vaulted ceilings and loads of people and a nice landscape portion in the middle of the choir!!!

 

[NorBro]

Used to strongly dislike it 10 years ago.

Today, can't watch horizontal anymore, just doesn't seem right.

Things change. Not for everyone, and not everyone, but things change.

 

[paulears]

The snag, i think is the split in consumers. One group with bigger and bigger screens, with wonderful sound, but the rest watching on phones. So annoying to constantly have to consider the end group. Portrait does work when the subject material matches. In my own world, a guitar tuition video has to be landscape, because the critical part of the image are the left and right hands, yet saxophone is better portrait. In landscape mode on a big tv, the empty space can contain stuff that would normally have to go over the image? A whole new world for me to think about. The current project is paying a little more because of the extra time too……..