Vertical Videos

[Maxx 1]

Hello,

As Instastories/InstagramTV and other apps with vertical endformats are skyrocketing with usage we also have to adapt somehow. Tandem-customers are sharing their videos online and most of their views will be done by a mobile device with a vertical screen.
No one wants to turn their mobile anymore or wants to see videos which just fill 1/3 of the screen in the middle. Sure, you can just crop it, but then a lot of resolution and 2/3 of the picture gets lost.
I filmed some skydives in vertical orientation and found out, that it works quite well for: Tandems, tracking jumps, small vertical (haha) groups like Headdown 2 or 3 ways and for sure anything with a handmounted cam (being it just a selfie perspective on any jump or even a tandem-hc)

What is your opinion on that?
Just an ugly trend which will go away or something we have to take serious?
Having said that - did anyone see a gopro-case with a mount on the short side to mount it vertical? I use a small pivot angle to change it, but that's not the "clean" solution...

Best,
Max

[Khouji 0]

Do you have any sample videos so that I can see it?

[mbohu 77]

I must be completely out of touch, because I'm thinking: Can't they just turn their stupid phones sideways to watch videos? I mean: We used to have to set up a projector, carry out the heavy box with the projection screen, roll it out, fiddle with getting the super-8 roll into the projector, etc.--now we can't even turn our wrist 90degrees to watch a video???!

[Westerly 61]

Filming in a vertical orientation is sloppy and unprofessional. Kids do it because they are idiots and don’t know how to use a camera properly. Go ask this question on a professional Videographers forum and see what kind of answer you get... Also mobile phones are the minority. Most YouTube users are watching on a computer and nothing says ‘I don’t know jack about cameras’ like loading up a YouTube video filmed in the wrong aspect ratio.

[dynamite 1]

Westerly, If you believe this then I think that you are a little out of touch with reality!

Professionals are not always right.

We all need to embrace the future. Sadly I think that the short term future is small screen, portrait and handheld.

Who knows what the long term future will bring.

[gowlerk 1,903]

dynamite

Westerly, If you believe this then I think that you are a little out of touch with reality!

Professionals are not always right.

We all need to embrace the future. Sadly I think that the short term future is small screen, portrait and handheld.

Who knows what the long term future will bring.

What you need to understand is simple human anatomy. Look in the mirror at your head. You will see that you have two eyes, arranged side by side and not one above the other. This is related to the fact that we live on the Earth and deal with the horizon. Along the lines of the horizon we will find most of our food and most of our dangers.

Because of this simple fact, movies are both shot and viewed in a ratio with the longer side arranged horizontally. To match the way we see. Just because cell phones are best handheld in a vertical orientation does not change this basic fact. That's why they automatically rotate by default. To accommodate the human visual system.

In reality, the best use of sensors and lenses would be to have a round screen. Lenses are normally round because that is the easiest way to make them.

Westerly is correct, for more reasons than he listed.

[Pobrause 6]

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA#fauxfullscreen

Say NO! to vertical videos.

-------------------------------------------------------

To absent friends

[Skwrl 56]

Skwrl Productions - Wingsuit Photography

Northeast Bird School - Chief Logistics Guy and Video Dork

[OldGregg 1]

I enjoyed the video on VVS and pic

I was intrigued so read some articles. It would seem like there is a niche market for vertical videos but it is toward short clips and carefully controlled shots (kinda marketing centric). If you're shooting where the horizon and horizontal movement are important, then horizontal makes more sense. And in the sense of ESPN's VV SportsCenter broadcast, the audio is actually the content people are consuming, the video is just there as background entertainment.

There is some use for vertical stills in pro photography, mainly shooting something very tall, buildings, mountains, etc.

The only useful skydiving application I could see is for swooping, to keep the ground in frame the whole time, but again, would require a carefully controlled shot. Or, if you had a very tech-savvy DZ (lol right) they could make a short mobile only clip (or vertical slide show) for advertising purposes. But that's about it.

You'd need a market analysis on how most tandem vids are being shared (and viewed) to determine if there was enough demand for VV. But my guess would be FaceBook, so horizontal would be more relevant. For tandem stills you could always offer to crop a few for Snapchat or backgrounds if you wanted.

All in all, I think the disappointment of having a VV on a TV or computer screen would outweigh the convenience of it for sharing on Snapchat for most customers at this point, and doing both would probably be more of a pain than most videographers are willing to deal with.

As for the eyes thing, pupils have more effect on perception of V vs H, and ours are round. But our skulls do offer more peripheral than vertical angle of view, and it would make sense that our brains are more wired to perceive the world that way. If we lived in a world where we were being attacked by pterodactyls or falling into holes all the time, then things might be different. A common example are herbivores, goats, cows, horses, etc that have wide flat pupils; wide peripheral vision provides better predator detection (pterodactyls excluded).

Additional reading