Vertical Video: Just say No!

[David Lawrence]

Vertical video? Horizontal video? Bah! So yesterday.

CIRCULAR video is the new black! ????

https://www.spectacles.com

_______________________
David Lawrence
art~media~design~research

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[Ned Miller]

Hi Paul,

Judging from the production still, it seems you are using the type of camera stand found in professional still photography studios, correct?If not, how did you get the camera to lay on its side, also, what were you using as an EVF? It looks like a phone.

Thanks,

Ned

Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com

[Jeff Kirkland]

This article may be of interest. The BBC are now supporting vertical video in their phone app because it provides a better user experience for the 60% of viewers who consume it on a mobile phone.

https://www.newsshooter.com/2016/11/25/bbc-news-app-launches-vertical-video-is-the-joke-on-us/

—-
Jeff Kirkland | Video Producer & Cinematographer
Hobart, Tasmania | Twitter: @jeffkirkland

[Dave Haynie]

Well, you know, you’re all wrong.. the future is in triangular video. We’ve known this a long, long time.

But seriously, vertical video is at best special-purpose. Sure, there are a few vertical video kiosks and ads that mandate a vertical crop. Mobile devices are mobile device… they work exactly as well as horizontal devices as they do vertical devices. On the other hand, the two 16:9 monitors and one 21:9 monitor on my desk, my 70″, 55″, and 32″ 16:9 televisions, etc. are all inherently horizontal. That’s going to be the standard delivery format going forward.

And of course, if you’re somehow compelled to worship Satan by delivering vertical content for mobile devices, you can always crop from horizontal. Sure, my phone has a 2560 x 1440 display, but I’m not likely to notice a huge problem after all the other evils I’m going to subject my video to in order to get it on that tiny screen anyway.

-Dave

[Paul Neumann]

Shot on a C100 and those EVFs are of the camera and the Ninja. The real high-tech part was the earbuds draped over the monitor to show us how the screen would be split since half of it would be red and half of it blue.

[Paul Neumann]

Snapchat was pretty specific. 1080×1920. And for monitoring purposes (lowest common denominator being all the agency people who showed up for the food) it was best just to turn everything on its side and get to work.

[Bill Davis]

[Paul Neumann] “it was best just to turn everything on its side and get to work.”

This is inarguably the correct answer.

Doesn’t matter what you did before. My presumption is always that the client knows something I don’t because they’ve had to sit through all those horrible corporate planning meetings – which (thank god) I didn’t have to.

I was DEAD SET against vertical video in exactly the same way I was DEAD SET against considering a professional commercial as anything but 29.5 or 59.5 seconds. Period.

Then I met the internet. And clients with money who wanted to create content for it. And were totally fine with a 2.07 “commercial” for the web.

And I had to change.

And so it goes.

Creator of XinTwo – https://www.xintwo.com
The shortest path to FCP X mastery.

[Ned Miller]

“Furthermore, we’ve been told to assume that users won’t be listening to the audio.”

Slightly off thread but I have been asked to do a lot of audio independent videos lately. Usually they will be heavy on text treatment. Several reasons:

• People in an open office environment or cubicles keep their sound turned off.
• Videos for trade shows or public areas, even corporate lobbies, the employees mute the audio because they will go nuts.
• Videos for international consumption, they don’t want English narration or talking heads because they want to be able to do other language versions cheaply.

Online at CNN you’ll see a lot of these infographics type videos where you get the gist with the audio off.

Brave New World.

Ned Miller
Chicago Videographer
http://www.nedmiller.com

[Duke Sweden]

I guess you never heard of a little site called YOUTUBE!!!! 😉

[Tim Wilson]

[Dave LaRonde] “For station promos going to social media, the Home Office mandates SQUARE video. 720×720. Furthermore, we’ve been told to assume that users won’t be listening to the audio. We’re reduced to thinking like DW Griffith in the silent movie era.”

Exactly. Vertical is rapidly expanding, and increasingly becoming the default, but for now, the major platforms for video – Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat – default to square, and muted. It’s one reason that Premiere has been really highlighting the OPEN captioning/subtitling features in recent releases. If you have a message that requires words in addition to pictures, write ’em out.

Advertisers are among the first folks figuring out that vertical (and square) video is not only not a problem, it’s a SOLUTION. When presented with widescreen content, fewer than a third of device users actually rotate their devices. As a result, they rarely even both watching the widescreen content — which now, on an unrotated device, isn’t widescreen at all! It’s tiny, cramped, and the producers look like idiots because they failed to create content for the screen it’s being viewed on.

Even accounting for the people who DO rotate their phones (again, less than a third of them), vertical video is NINE TIMES more likely to be watched all the way through to the end. Why? Because even if you DO rotate your phone to watch the video, it’s not how the phone was designed to be held for long. Phones are meant to be held vertically because of how our hands are shaped.

So stop turning your phone sideways! You’re holding it wrong. ????????????

And that 9x engagement for vertical video stat is from 2015. I bet it’s even higher now, especially since FBook, Snapchat and Instagram are that much bigger now….

Also worth noting: Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat as the deluxe platforms for video? Those apps are vertical. Look at the best-selling apps. The ones on top are almost all vertical, almost all of the time, and most of the biggest, ONLY vertical. Not even a horizontal option.

[Dave LaRonde] “The only holdouts seem to be those in the motion picture industry. Imagine going to the movies and walking in to see a 1 : 2.35 vertical screen.”

I agree on movie theaters, but those aren’t the only places one might watch a movie. This is from a vertical film festival being held in a cathedral. A horizontal screen would have been positively sinful. ????

This is obviously a special case, but certainly a nifty way to underscore the value of matching content and context.

In fact, seeing how much advertising energy is building around vertical orientation, and looking at people like NBC and Discover creating original Snapchat programming in vertical, I’m willing to guess that we’re going to be seeing at least square trailers soon. I don’t think medium-vertical trailers (say, 3:4 rather than a full 9:16) are that far off either.