Shooting in 9x16

I recently operated a food commercial intended for online distribution - the whole thing was shot 4:5 on a pair of Alexa Minis. The rental house had some hefty L-brackets - I would think it's quite easy to get someone to weld a steel bracket together.

Whilst I'm not particularly fond of the idea of narrative work in a vertical aspect ratio, as far as commercial/fashion/music promos go, so much content these days is watched on phones and tablets, and isn't it our responsibility to consider the audience when creating work? I don't get the idea of a blanket aversion to it. Choosing the right format for the project is still possible.
 
This past weekend I've been shooting some stuff with friends, and one of them asked me about some instagram photos from celebrities and singers she follows: she wanted to know how they were taken (she's starting as a photog). They had a very harsh look that she called "kidnap photo look", but they were still pretty nice pics in general. After looking at several of them, checking eye reflections, shadows, etc, we concluded that those celebrities, who sell several million records per year, were posting "phone pics taken by a knowledgeable person with a lot of intent" on their official sites.

My point is: I see a place for vertical video if the target devide is a phone, because people hold those vertically. But in most of those cases people already have expectations about the qualities of the image they'll get, the production value, etc. I'd shoot it with a phone and I'd make it look like it was not a big production but a more casual thing.
 
9x16 for a vertical display is fine, but when it is requested as an addition to regular formats it's a massive PITA.

I'm currently in the middle of a global shoot which is destined for multiple distribution platforms; TV, Twitter, FB, Website etc. We are shooting with 2:1, 16:9, Square and 4:5 ratios in mind. We've now ben asked to supply 9x16 for instagram which is a compromise too far for me, it's going to ruin so many compositions... ...hey bloody ho...
 
Do people not realize that their phones and tablets support horizontal landscape mode? My pocket PC from the early 2000s supported landscape mode, as well as every mobile device I've had since. These days it's as simple as rotating your device, in the old days you had to dig through the settings or set a custom hot key to switch to landscape mode.
 
I did a gig for a major hotel chain and shot 4k(UHD) normal landscape and their editors finished in 1080p 9:16

The reason I didn't shoot 'sideways' is that the tilt head I rented + cam lens was too heavy for the gimbal by far (tilt head is super heavy metal)

So we decided to just shoot normally with an eye on keeping what's integral to each shot in a vertal 'slice' on the monitor. It had to be shot on gimbal because the whole thing is supposed to be POV.

Hope that helps - The advantage to this is that even if your slice is off a bit - you can 'pan and scan' to fix it.

It was an interesting challenge/experience, but I'm not all that stoked to do it again - and to the questions about realizing phones can shoot landsape - the big answer is that these ads play back full-screen in portrait on phones which is a major big deal to them.

Almost everyone opens instagram holding their phone in a portrait orientation, so the best way to 'fill' the screen is to deliver in that aspect ratio.
 
It's one thing to shoot vertically for a specialized application(like vertical signage, installed applications, etc.), but something totally different to shoot, narrative, news, sports, etc. in a vertical format. It's a complete waste. Your "horizontal" field of view is sh!t. You're losing ~44% of your horizontal frame. I HATE watching the news and they have some video that was shot by some lazy/ignorant jack-@$$, vertically, and you can't see anything, because half of the normal frame is "gone". And asking someone to compose a shot to work in 16:9 and 9:16 at the same time?! What a waste.
 
Here is one good reason for '8k' !

Basically shoot for some 4k 16.9 marks and then keep more space around the edges for further formats - loads of skinny wides onthe web too - the opposite of 9-16

I used to have a mamiya digiback* that was super high res (for the time), and shooting stock I would use the centre square (35mm of the 6.6 full frame) for the subject and try and have blurred lookspace on all sides, both horizontal and vertical.

Shooting stills for my current fashion client I always get an image that will crop to square as that is their default.

* https://luminous-landscape.com/kodak-dcs-pro-back/
 
morgan_moore said:
Here is one good reason for '8k' !

Basically shoot for some 4k 16.9 marks and then keep more space around the edges for further formats - loads of skinny wides onthe web too - the opposite of 9-16

I used to have a mamiya digiback* that was super high res (for the time), and shooting stock I would use the centre square (35mm of the 6.6 full frame) for the subject and try and have blurred lookspace on all sides, both horizontal and vertical.

Shooting stills for my current fashion client I always get an image that will crop to square as that is their default.

* https://luminous-landscape.com/kodak-dcs-pro-back/
Click to expand...

Doesn't work like that Sam. You cannot cater for 9:16 f you have any normal formats to deliver. Compositionally, it will rarely work.
 
I assume the original question probably has something to do with the introduction of IGTV - and while I applaud those who are happy to tackle a whole new format, I just realised yesterday mid-conversation with a client who was asking about it, that there's no reason you can't post regular 16:9 videos. Of course, you'll need to re-encode them as 1080x1920 so IG will accept the files, and people will have to turn their phone sideways (just like they do when they fullscreen any other video content), but IGTV essentially gives us all another - very accessible - platform for long-form work, even if that's not exactly what it is designed for.
 
^ indeed, that works

About people turning their phones: I'm always surprised at how many youngsters have the automatic orientation feature disabled in their phones. It must be because they use the phones a lot in bed or something, because I find the feature a no-brainer, but whatever the reason, the result is: if I send them 16x9 videos, 95% of the time they'll watch them letterboxed, with the phone held vertically. Only if they need to see some details will they go into the settings and turn auto orientation on for that particular video.
 
Samuel H said:
^ indeed, that works

About people turning their phones: I'm always surprised at how many youngsters have the automatic orientation feature disabled in their phones. It must be because they use the phones a lot in bed or something, because I find the feature a no-brainer, but whatever the reason, the result is: if I send them 16x9 videos, 95% of the time they'll watch them letterboxed, with the phone held vertically. Only if they need to see some details will they go into the settings and turn auto orientation on for that particular video.
Click to expand...


There's an old saying, "You can't fix stupid"...
 
I never meant to call anybody stupid. They know better than myself how to configure a phone, and prefer to have it that way, so it's probably just that they use their phones in a different way (they probably use them on bed -where this setting is actually annoying- every day, but need to see details in a horizontal video just once a week or less).

The weirdest part is: on my youtube channel, looking at stats from the past 30 days, 66% of the views come from phones, 21% from tablets, and only 11% from computers (the remaining 2% is TVs and game consoles). So I guess "tiny letterboxed format in an already tiny screen" is how my videos get seen today. No need for 8k for me I guess XDDDD
 
I prefer to keep my iPhone in locked portrait orientation. I use it more for productivity than media consumption, and I don't like using the keyboard in landscape. I do also use it in bed, where auto-switching to landscape would be annoying.

However, I discovered that the YouTube iOS app will playback videos in full landscape mode when you expand a video to full screen, even with my phone in locked portrait mode. So I get the best of both worlds!
 
^ I just checked and on android the YT app does that too. But whatsapp doesn't, and same for downloaded videos or stuff shot with the phone itself.

But it's very good news: it means my YT videos are probably not being watched letterboxed XD
 
Samuel H said:
^ indeed, that works

About people turning their phones: I'm always surprised at how many youngsters have the automatic orientation feature disabled in their phones. It must be because they use the phones a lot in bed or something, because I find the feature a no-brainer, but whatever the reason, the result is: if I send them 16x9 videos, 95% of the time they'll watch them letterboxed, with the phone held vertically. Only if they need to see some details will they go into the settings and turn auto orientation on for that particular video.
Click to expand...

I'm not exactly a youngster any longer, as well into my 30's, but that is exactly the way I use my cellphone.
 
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