Vertical Cinema!

Cinema viewing format always associated with either Box mode or Landscape Mode.

Recently a short film made by Oscar Award winner Damien Chazelle in a Vertical Viewing Format is making news also knocking the doors to experiment a new method of cinematic composition.

Vertical films is been in news for some years, there was even a film festival for this adventurous format.

The Vertical Film Festival (VFF) was established in 2014 as the world’s first international competition for vertical videos: short films created and edited portrait orientation (9:16) for tall-screen projection in front of an audience. Regardless of theme or genre, the VFF is a showcase for artist-filmmakers who are exploring the creative potential of the vertical format while its visual language is still taking shape.

Vertical format composition is very much familiar in still photography but when it comes to cinema it was purely a horizontal viewing plane.

There were some early experiments in the formats that made to bring a standard aspect ratio across the world.

As cinema developed in the early 1900s , the intrusion of a new optical soundtrack onto the filmstrip pushed cinema’s width-to-height ratio close to square at one point (Fritz Lang’s 1931 film M was 1.19:1 for example). Faced with multitudinous formats, Hollywood engineers of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences met in 1930, determined to set a new standard.

Russian filmmaker-theorist Sergei Eisenstein was against standardising horizontal format..he saw the horizontal rectangle as a throwback to the theatrical proscenium. Addressing the Academy he argued passionately for the possibilities of DYNAMIC SQUARE format calling for cinema to remain flexible to a variety of geometries.

Coming back to recent short film by Damien Chazelle  “The Stunt Double” is a recollection of  movies through silent film, Westerns, action flicks, musicals, romance, and more.

The whole 9 minute short film “Shot on iPhone”… Here, Chazelle highlights ‌iPhone‌ features like extended dynamic range, video stabilization, and the ultra-wide-angle lens, all things you get standard on the iPhone 11 Pro.

Apple also shared a behind-the-scenes video titled “Making Vertical Cinema,” in which Chazelle described his process and his excitement in experimenting with vertical aspect ratio. The behind-the-scenes video also features interviews with Oscar-winning cinematographer Linus Sandgren, BAFTA-winning production designer designer Shane Valentino, costume designer April Napier, and more, and gives some tips on filming with a wide angle lens and “how to compose shots for the vertical screen.”

Vertical composition works well with composition revealing height and characters of top to bottom movements as opposed to left to right in regular landscape format.

Care has to be taken while composing close ups of faces and conversation between two characters, the negative space it creates can be balanced using visual elements.

Now in Chennai there is a post production studio for Vertical film making…details yet to be made official.

C.J.Rajkumar

Author/Cinematographer.