newatlas.com: Over the past decade smartphones have increasingly normalized vertical videos, yet most content is still produced using horizontal frames. Is it time to turn your TV on its side and embrace the future? Or is vertical video just a passing trend, fundamentally unsuited to how we want to watch things?
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This article was incredibly interesting, because as someone who has grown up on platforms like Youtube and Instagram, I’m used to seeing creators who care about the quality of work they present to viewers. Some videos would apologize if a vlogger was using their phone and filmed vertically, contrasting with the regular, more aesthetically pleasing - horizontal video. In my head it’s always been just easier to take the video the way the phone is naturally oriented. I didn’t realize how much work had gone into this commonly agreed upon standard for media. I know that some people prefer fullscreen as opposed to widescreen because they don’t like the black bars and feel that it inhibits their viewing experience. For this reason, myself and many others are probably not drawn to vertical entertainment. One comment on this article that really got me thinking was about how vertical video forces a focus - it might be an interesting challenge for cinematographers to experiment with using both vertical and horizontal video effectively in a project. However, I think for my own viewing pleasure I will continue watching horizontal media.
This is a really interesting debate that I have been vaguely conscious of over the past ten years or so. I have always been annoyed when I feel like an image or video is “the wrong way” for how I want to be viewing it, but this goes both ways. If I am looking at something on Instagram or snapchat that is horizontal, I just don’t get it. I feel like there is definitely room for both of these styles to be relevant without there needing to be a “right way” though. I will be surprised if TVs start to be vertically oriented, but I know that some people already use a second or third monitor at their computer that is vertically oriented. I like the idea of having footage that is specifically designed for smartphones, and I feel like platforms like youtube could start to utilize this more in the same way that snapchat or tiktok have. This discussion could be pushed even further though. Why not round videos? I mean our eyes are round, camera lenses are round, so that seems to be a logical step to me. There is no reason to limit this kind of thing, because there is only convention, not right or wrong.
The first thing that comes to mind when I read this, is Tik Tok. I think of this because recently, there has been an increase in content that the app gives me that requires me to flip my phone horizontally instead of vertically. Most times, I just tilt my head to the side instead of flipping my phone because I'm usually too lazy, unless it's a tutorial that I'm trying to see full details of. However these videos are a minute and don't really strain my hand from holding my phone. While this article does raise good points and views, to me there is a difference in media and screen presentation. If I'm going to be watching a YouTube video just for audio, I'm not going to flip my phone. If I want to watch it to watch it, then I'll flip it. Prime Video automatically had horizontal orientation, which I don't mind. The phrase "it does suggest many are not ready to consume all content on tall smartphone or tablet screens" really stands out to me because, to me, there is a very distinctive difference between content that I watch that is horizontal and that is vertical. Lastly, if I am working on my computer and want to watch a movie on my phone, having the orientation horizontal takes up less of my working screen space than having it be vertical. Paired with that, newer iPhones have the charging port/headphone jack write in the middle of the phone, which would make this difficult after a while.
This "horizontal vs. vertical" debate is something that is more prevalent in some minds than others. I can see how people who are avid users of TikTok would be more willing to accept the vertical media format, coming from a vertical video that takes up an entire 9:16 phone screen, but the divide between a traditional film and TikTok content is still too wide. Even professional films produced for a smartphone occupy an entirely different genre than movies as we know them now. I personally believe that there will always be a divide between a personal handheld device and dedicated TV, given that both produce different types of media. However, media creators, to some degree, must bend to the will of the manufacturers that produce the media-sharing devices. Seeing, at the end of this article, that Samsung has developed a vertical QLED TV is the only thing that could shake my faith that horizontal film will remain prevalent, but for now we have to wait and see.
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