There is a reason that video has traditionally been landscape rather than portrait mode. This is because the two actors have to talk to each other, and they do this while arrayed horizontally. I will admit that sometimes, it’s nice to be able to shoot video vertically, but having the phones do it by default is just bad judgement on the part of the designers.
I grew up in Queens. Same shenanigans there.
We also used to test one another’s nerve by riding the el between cars. Terrifyingly exhilarating stuff.
Video is traditionally landscape because it is emulating movie film.
Movie film went from the mostly-square rectangle we know and love (4:3, or a full 35mm film frame with an aspect ratio of 1.33) to the various widescreen landscape formats (ratios like 1.77, 1.85 and even the truly stupendous Cinemascope frames ranging from 2.35 up to 2.6 aspect ratios) as a defense against the home television set, which was (barely) 4:3. Movie studios needed a way to put seats in butts, and realized if they ran the same 35mm film through the camera sideways and tweaked the optics they could print wider frames on the same film stock and give a new experience unavailable to home viewers.
Filmmaking techniques (two shots, over the shoulders, wide angle landscape establishing shots) adapted to the technology, not the other way round.
Digital has given us amazing freedom to ignore many of the strictures of the analog world, and maybe the best aspect ratio is the one native to the device and not native to our habits. Phone sales outstrip traditional desktop computers by a large margin, and the switch to mobile is only accelerating.
Also, the kid doing the recording? He used framing perfectly to capture the action and include his commentary in one well composed frame, and I don’t see any diagetic need for horizontal framing.
(Sorry, I don’t get to actually use my film degrees very often.)
We rode 'tween the cars also. I stopped doing that at ~12 y.o., I think.
Regional Parity Sanity Check: Did you guys have a sidewalk game called “box-ball”? (SoCal crowd here had nothing resembling it.)
Box ball, punch ball, stick ball, all with the prized and cherished candy store spaldeen (Spaulding). Pink, bouncy and fragrant. Ahhhhh…
and then the other inevitable question… who cares?
Guessing that is India. My first visit there, I couldn’t handle looking out the front window of my cab, so I would look out the side. Eventually that was ruined too when I saw a bus wayyyy over capacity like this train, people hanging out the windows and everything trying to subvert the traffic jam on the highway. Driving at ~45mph. In the oncoming lane. Honking the horn constantly to let everyone know he was coming through. Holy shit.
It generally matters if whats being recorded would benefit from being framed horizontally. I often see vertical videos that barely captures whats going on, and landscape videos that don’t really need all that space. For the video in question, of the guy clinging to the subway, i think it’s totally fine being recorded vertically.
yes i understand how aspect ratio works. i understand that we interact with a mostly horizontal world. but often the response is so disproportionate that the video dares to be vertical… like maybe i wanted to carry something with my other hand.
The Pensy Pinky was the one used in my neighborhood. Relative cheapness was the attraction. Beautiful when new; filthy very soon afterward. P-Ps also had a certain fragrance… and I’m reminded now about our occasional super-anal focus on acquiring verifiably fresh balls for some of the games (for predictable bounces). P’Ps had a short life.
There was one game you likely didn’t play (unless it escaped our particular neighborhood and spread out from there): We called it ‘Gutter Golf’. As 8th grade parochial school crossing guards, Joe, Ralph, Sal and I came up with it to while away the 15 free minute periods afforded us and bracketing the end of school day outflow. The object was to get a suitably sized pebble onto a street sewer grating without the pebble falling into the sewer. Our feet were the clubs, and we had to accomplish a ‘grate’ with as few attempts as possible, so it required subtly, planning, and luck. It was indescribably addictive, and way too many times distracted us from handling the school traffic. The game usually made us laugh because of the ultra-rare ‘grate-in-ones’ and many screw-ups. Sal was so bad at it that I inferred (by dubbing him “Round Shoes”) that the bottom of his shoes were not flat-bottomed, and therefore prevented him from properly gauging the amount of shoe he put on the pebble. It was all good.
The rare, worthwhile use of vertical video format is dwarfed by the lazy, inappropriate application of that aspect ratio. Context, and other interesting and related aspects (such as bystanders’ reactions) are overwhelmingly likely to be located to either side of the action, and only rarely above or below it. These people using their phones to record in vertical video are generally not making artistic decisions, they’re just being lazy.
right, and i think being lazy is OK.
If you’ve ever ridden the New York subway system you know there isn’t a lot of room on the outside of the train. What kind of idiot does this?
I feel very sorry for the poor guy. Usually, when teenagers go to such extremes to prove themselves, it’s because they have low self-estime and great trouble in climbing the social order. Often, it’s those who get pecked on who do such foolish things, so I don’t believe it’s much of a laughing matter.
It’s because it’s a rule people picked up for no particular reason and think people who ignore it are ignorant of the rule rather than know it perfectly fine and don’t care. See also things like socks with sandals as being an awful trait. Or eating food normally eaten without utensils with a knife and fork.
Although I don’t think that moving 35mm film through the camera sideways was ever a common format. I think sideways film is pretty much limited to (real) IMAX which uses larger film. OTOH three cameras simultaneously recording was used in Cinerama.
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