Vertical video: rupturing the aesthetic paradigm

The History of the Horizontal

The aspect ratio is defined as ‘the relationship of screen width to screen height’ (Zettl, 2005: 83). In film, television, and computer screens there are four standard ratios that are oriented on a horizontal plane, where the width is larger than the height: 4:3 (alternately referred to as 1.33:1, found in standard television, older computer screens, and early motion pictures); 16:9 (1.78:1, HDTV and laptop/newer screens); 5.55:3 (1.85:1, widescreen motion pictures); and 7:3 (2.35:1, anamorphic formats such as Panavision 35 or CinemaScope). Zettl says the horizontal orientations (especially widescreen and anamorphic formats) allow the viewers to use peripheral vision when viewing the image, looking at one section of the screen but seeing other areas indirectly before settling on one spot or another for deeper reflection (p. 84).

Lev Manovich (2001) dubs these viewing surfaces ‘dynamic screens’, different from the previous screens (e.g. a painting) because the image held within it changes. It moves and transforms over time in a way that is entirely plausible:

A screen’s image strives for complete illusions and visual plenitude while the viewer is asked to suspend disbelief and to identify with the image. Although the screen in reality is only a window of limited dimensions positioned inside the physical space of the viewer, the latter is supposed to completely concentrate on what is seen in the window, focusing attention on the representation and disregarding the physical space outside. (p. 96)

In television and film, except for rare moments (such as letterboxing and pillarboxing, the use of black bars on the upper/lower or left/right edges of screen images to make them fit in broadcast or cinema dimensions), the image fills the entirety of the screen. It is all the viewer sees, furthering the illusion of reality and encouraging the use of peripheral vision.

The horizontal dynamic screen not only makes use of our peripheral vision, but it also may enhance the way we ‘read’ an image. Zettl (2005: 107) calls this ‘screen-left’ and ‘screen-right’ asymmetry. While, as viewers, we are initially drawn to the upper-left quadrant of the screen (the ‘pull of the top edge’), Zettl contends our eyes and brains pay more attention to the information in the lower right quadrant. This area anchors the image, so to speak, and could be a place for more important information (p. 110). But other studies contradict this sort of eye movement pattern, in part eroding (or at least complicating) the naturalization of the horizontal screen for optional understanding. Eye tracking studies of computer screens demonstrate that the top left portion of the screen or the center of the screen may be the areas upon which users focus (Graham and Jeffery, 2001; Josephenson and Holmes, 2002). Film analyses indicate that while some viewers may cluster around the center of the frame, the action taking place on screen is a larger factor in driving sight to one area or another (Marchant et al., 2009). In addition, ‘movement, color, and the presence of a human face will attract the human gaze’, regardless of where on the screen the action or character is located (Trueting, 2006: 39). This has implications for vertical viewing as it is the image, and not screen orientation, that is important; images that make use of the screen effectively will draw the eyes to the action or thing itself.

Early films were shot in the squat, squarish rectangle that results from the 4:3 framing. In 1892, film pioneers Thomas Edison and William Kennedy-Laurie Dickson ‘recommended that a film frame be the height of four perforations of a strip of 35mm film’ (Brooke, 2012/2013). This seemingly arbitrary decision was largely made for economic reasons: the film then in use was twice the size of 35mm film and, by effectively cutting it in half, it allowed more film stock to be available for cinematic experimentations (Cossar, 2011: 28). But it also provided a relatively standard projection gauge for film exhibition (Friedberg, 2009: 131). The decision led to other filmmakers eventually using 35mm film for movie production.

By 1930, this shooting model for the exhibition print became standardized, a decision (again) largely made for economic reasons. Mandated by the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, the 4:3 frame became known as the ‘Academy Ratio’. The 4:3 ratio offered a consistent screening format for motion picture theaters as films evolved from silent films to ‘talkies’, eliminating variations in formats from competing studios or rogue projectionists who would blow up square aspect ratio films to fit on standard size theater screens (sometimes cutting off heads of actors in the process (Belton, 1992: 44). It also provided enough room for a soundtrack to be attached to the films. There were some notable exceptions: films shot using the Movietone process (mostly newsreels) used an almost-square 1.19:1 aspect ratio to help accommodate the optical soundtracks that were part of the film (Brooke, 2012/2013). But, for the most part, films were rectangular.

The economic practicalities of the Academy Ratio left some celebrated filmmakers rather underwhelmed. Russian Sergei Eisenstein argued instead for what he called the ‘dynamic square’, a screen as tall as it was wide. He claimed ‘the square was modern, charged with productive machine force’, and was more accommodating than the 4:3 ratio because it was ‘capable of hosting images composed for planes that were either horizontal or vertical’ (Wasson, 2012: 141). His missive to the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences, via first a speech and later an article, was ‘not only a reflection on the relation of the screen’s aspect ration, but also a speculation on the broader implications of its otherwise unquestioned horizontality’ (Friedberg, 2009: 130). For Eisenstein, cinematic flexibility trumped economics.

When television developed in the pre- and post-World War II years, it too adopted the Academy Ratio, again for practical (e.g. economic) reasons. The FCC, through the National Television Standards Committee (NTSC), developed national standards for television broadcast which included the 4:3 aspect ratio as the norm (Fink, 1955), effectively eliminating such experiments as round screen or ‘porthole’ televisions. Meanwhile, film during this era began to differentiate itself from the in-home medium. In the 1950s, widescreen and anamorphic formats became the standard in movie theaters, and would remain the standard to this day. As with the earlier Academy ration, the drive was to a large degree economic. Studios and theaters believed a desire to see the new (i.e. ‘different than television’) and wider screens would drive people into theaters, while at the same time combatting social factors such as urban flight, television, the baby boom, etc. which caused theatergoing to drop from its earlier norms (Cossar, 2011: 96). While widescreen signaled ‘different from television’, the extended horizontality of the anamorphic images offered an even grander draw: expansive spectacles which promised audiences that they were, as one 1956 CinemaScope film was so appropriately titled, Bigger Than Life.

The move to anamorphic films, specifically, offered more than just financial incentives to studios. There were also aesthetic innovations that came with the wider screen. In Marshall Beutelbaum’s (2003) dissection of anamorphic composition, he found that basic principles of composition differed from those found in the 4:3 or even widescreen standard. In the Cinema Scope and Panavision anamorphic films, the screen itself was divided into four equally-spaced vertical quadrants. The quadrants were largely invisible to the viewer, often consisting of architectural components within the film set (p. 73). What is striking is that the quartered frame of the wide-screen films, when taken as individual pieces, echo the dimensions of the smartphone screen: a landscape turned the ‘wrong’ direction. Nonetheless, the quartered screen is still meant to be ‘read’ as a whole.

Of course, this orientation itself has limits. It does enable the screen/image maker to explore wide vistas effectively, such as horizons or spectacular scenes with multiple subjects. Filmmakers specifically changed their shooting style, especially within the exaggerated dimensions of the anamorphic films ‘to accentuate the horizontality of the new format’ (Cossar, 2011: 257). However, the formats do make it more difficult to frame vertically-oriented scenes, such as a tower in a cityscape, the high crags of mountains, or tall trees. As Zettl (2005: 89) notes, ‘On long shots you end up with an inordinate amount of space to fill on both sides. When using closer shots, you need to decide to show either the top or bottom of the tall object.’ In order to show the entire object, the videographer or cinematographer is forced to frame the image diagonally across the screen, tilting the perspective.

This division between the cinematic widescreen and anamorphic perspectives and the 4:3 television/computer screen norm would remain until the digital/HDTV revolution of the early 20th century. While HDTV existed before then – television station WRAL (Raleigh, NC) received the first experimental HDTV license in the United States in June 1986 and began transmitting a month later (WRAL-TV, 2011) – HDTV became a cost-effective reality for producers in 2007, when cameras became cheaper. ¹ Standard HD has a resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels, with a 16:9 aspect ratio; most broadcasters, cable channels, and cable systems distribute HD programming in 1280 x 720 pixels (Flaxton, 2009/2010: 46). Discussions of HDTV tend to focus on the quality of the detail in the images produced and its technological precision and ‘cleanness’ when compared to film (p. 51). Aside from the occasional upended monitor at trade fairs or in retail stores, or the use of a tablet device for reading/writing in portrait mode, there has been little thought as to the orientation of the screen. Film, television, and computer screens continued to use the horizontal paradigm first established in film over 100 years earlier.

Photographic Conventions

The photographer, in contrast to the cinematographer or videographer, does not have this sort of institutionally-mandated spatial limitation when shooting vertically oriented subjects. The solution is simple: rotate the camera 90 degrees. For photographers, the bigger issue is what the image demands; as photographer Fritz Henle (1974: 133) put it, ‘The right angle is the one which pictures the reality of a subject – its real essence.’ Henle praises a vertically-oriented photograph shot from a low angle looking up stone stairs because the ‘low angle increases the feeling of [the] viewer being led to the rather mysterious darkened doorway’, which is located in the upper third of the image. The verticality of the photograph serves its subject matter, and the decision to shoot horizontal or video is driven by aesthetics rather than economics.

Photographic instructional guides echo this sentiment. Famed photographer Berenice Abbott (1941: 95) says that ‘for practical purposes this decision [to shoot vertical or horizontal] is made by factors inherent in the subject itself, that is, the dominant direction made by the lines in the picture’. Landscape master Ansel Adams does not even discuss camera orientation; instead, he recommends that photographers should learn how to visualize the image before even shooting. Figuring out how to orient the camera is a simple choice, he advises (Adams and Baker, 1980: 96). More difficult is learning the minute differences between individual cameras and film formats, and how they transform the photographic image: ‘The camera imparts its own level of abstraction (“departure from reality” as we see it with our eyes) to the photograph, lending qualities of shape and scale, for example, that frequently differ from our visual perception’ (p. 3). Photographer Konrad Cramer (1974: 891) worries that, ‘If there really existed valid and permanent laws of composition, all pictorial efforts would be sired by the same set of rules and with all pictures having a sameness that would be unbearable.’

More important is that photographers learn to, in the words of photographer Edward Weston (1980: 173), see photographically. This means that the photographer ‘learns to see his subject matter in terms of the capacities of his tools and processes, so that he can instantaneously translate the elements and values in a scene before him into the photograph he wants to make’. Weston argues that, by changing the camera angle and/or moving the camera position (among other adjustments), the photographer can find a wide variety of compositions in a single topic. The subject matter itself is transformed by the choices the image maker selects in the creation of the image. Following preset rules of composition (i.e. ‘humans don’t see in a horizontal aspect ratio’) results in ‘a tedious repetition of pictorial cliches’ (p. 175).

Phenomenologically, the photograph calls attention to what is not there, the world that exists beyond its frame, while at the same time demanding that the viewer ignore what is missing (Berger, 1980). It is engaged in an ‘ideological struggle’ (p. 294) between what the image portrays and what it does not. On the one hand the photograph demonstrates what Vivian Sobchack (1990: 52) calls an act of ‘visual possession … capturing aspects of “life itself” in a “real” object that can be possessed, copied, circulated, and saved as the currency of experience.’ It revels in Henri Cartier Bresson’s (1952) decisive moment, and seeks to prick us with the lasting imprint of Roland Barthes’ (1981) punctum – the viewer sees, and often is drawn to, a specific point in time as captured by the photographer. The framing, the composition, the orientation of the shot all exist to not only draw the viewer into the photograph, but also to keep the eye ‘there as it ranges over the selected elements … reducing the world to the photographer’s image’ (Caujolie, 2004: 186). But, on the other hand, in order to make sense of the photograph, the viewer must understand that ‘all its references are external to itself’ (Berger, 1980: 293). Drawing from Berger, for the viewer, a photograph of the racehorse American Pharaoh winning the Belmont Stakes is not simply the scene portrayed (a thoroughbred crossing the finish line, his jockey punching the air with a single hand in victory), but it is also embedded with the (made invisible) knowledge of other things related to the image (the horses finishing behind the victor, the margin of victory, the fact that by winning the horse was crowned the first American Triple Crown winner since 1978, etc.).

It is important to remember that the viewing experience of the photograph is unlike that of television or film. Film demands that the audience attend a darkened theater in a communal setting to watch images on a larger-than-life screen – by nature, it invites a sense of or illusion of immersion in the on-screen world. By contrast, televisions reside in a home environment, but the thin panels and improved screen resolutions of HDTV allow for a larger, high-quality, viewing experience. CNET recommends an HDTV with a 65 to 90 inch diagonal screen for optimal viewing and experience, based on an average viewer sitting 9 feet from the set (Morrison, 2012). While photographs can be large (as of 2016, the 365 gigapixel image of Mont Blanc is considered the largest photograph in the world), ² consumer photographs were usually printed to 4 x 6 inches or smaller, and more commonly viewed on a computer or cellphone screen today. The images by nature are intimate, able to be held in the hand and distinctly not immersive.

Like film, the photograph developed technological standards, such as specific film formats, photographic papers embedded with emulsions, and cameras. But even some of the earliest photographic cameras, unlike those for motion pictures, were designed for spatial flexibility. The folding bed view cameras of the late 1800s were too heavy to be moved from location to location easily, but did provide the ability to readily shift from the horizontal to vertical orientation (Rosenblum, 1997: 443). The handles on many of these cameras were positioned in such a way that vertical was the default. The 20th century’s lightweight single lens reflex (SLR) cameras took that spatial flexibility one step further: the cameras could be used either handheld or on a tripod and were adopted by both professional photojournalists and amateur photo enthusiasts (Rosenblum, 1997: 625). The 35mm rectangular negative/print has an aspect ratio similar to that of the widescreen film or HDTV, a ratio that would be echoed in the digital SLR cameras and smartphones of the 21st century. On the low-end mass market front, a number of cameras printed images in a square, or near-square, format, such as the fixed-focus Kodak Brownie (which uses 120 film), the Polaroid (an instant-print camera), and the 1960s-era Kodak Instamatic (a film-based drop-in cartridge system where users never touch the film). This square format has been adopted by the social media platform Instagram.

The orientation of the photograph (vertical, horizontal, square) may very well change its mood. Abbott (1941: 99) offers as an example Weston’s Dunes at Oceano, a nearly-monochrome black and white photograph where the intricate patterns of sand dunes almost blend into the small sliver of sky located in the top eighth of the frame. A vertical orientation, she argues, ‘would bring in a much greater proportion of sky, establish an active relation between the sky and the earth, and change the meaning of the photograph’. By contrast, she says William Vandivert’s vertically-oriented image of an old man resting in a rocking chair in his living room might have made a better horizontal photograph. In this case, the wider photo would have revealed more of the man’s room, and would have enhanced the contemplation the image inspired. Vertical images, she contends, convey a message of strength and dignity, while horizontal ones leave the viewer with a sense of calm and provoke a mood of repose or contemplation (p. 95).

Applied Media Aesthetics

Aesthetics in and of itself is a thorny area of philosophical debate. While largely thought to deal with issues of beauty (appreciation and judgement of), it can be more generally considered to be that thing within an object/image which brings about pleasure in the viewer, and is frequently linked to philosophy of art (Janaway, 1995: 14). Zettl (2005) positions applied media aesthetics as something different. Rather than questions about the meaning of beauty and notions of truth, applied media aesthetics ‘considers art and life as mutually dependent and essentially interconnected … [it is] a process in which we examine a number of media elements, such as lighting and picture composition, how they interact, and our perceptual reactions to them’ (p. 4). This perspective thus releases applied media aesthetics from the limits of ‘mere’ beauty: the ugly and the mundane have an equally important role to play within the construction of, and the pleasure derived from, media imagery. It is composed of five fundamental ‘image elements’ that interact together in the horizontal screen: light and color, two-dimensional space (area), three-dimensional space (depth of field), time/motion, and sound (Zettl, 2005: 13). Within this screen are also vectors, which add to the viewer’s aesthetic pleasure. Vectors can imply motion or depth, and can use focus (or lack thereof) to draw viewers toward a specific section of the screen.

Traditionally, television and computer screens were at a disadvantage when compared with film. While, in this era of HDTV and retina displays, in-home screens can offer resolution and detail comparable to the wide expanses of film (and a screen size which pushes the horizontal plane), earlier television and computer screens did not have those same characteristics. Television and computer screens were a low-resolution medium, better suited to detail shots and close ups than broad panoramas. Even though the smaller cameras of the smartphone may have the technological sophistication to rival cutting edge video technology, ³ the screen size nonetheless presents limitations; it can be hard to be overwhelmed by the battling armies in Game of Thrones or The Lord of the Rings on a screen that is only a few inches wide.

However, the small screen does offer what Tom Gunning (2006: 382) dubbed the cinema of attraction(s). At its simplest, the cinema of attraction(s) is moving images that not only show something, but also intentionally ‘rupture the self-enclosed … world for a chance to solicit the attention of the spectator’. The traditional fourth wall between the spectator and moving image, if not ruptured, is at least seriously frayed.

This is demonstrated in the rise of videos created for and on the smartphone screen. Consider the rise of social networking video apps like Vine (defunct as of 2016), Snapchat, or Instagram. Viewers post clips (0:02–1:00 in length), taken on IOS, Android, and Windows devices, and edited using the app’s built-in technology. This is short, often non-linear, storytelling. While some of these videos do use wide/establishing shots, others use sequences of quick, close-up, abstracted shots that force the viewer to create meaning, or include out of context sentence fragments spoken by the video creator/talent in a type of on-screen confessional. The sequences are then replayed on a continuous loop. The result is often referred to as ‘addictive’. ⁴

The clips are also embedded with the hallmarks of the cinema of attraction(s). Not only do they actively rupture the fourth wall, but the clips’ addictive draw on viewers serves much the same sort of function as the close-ups Gunning observed in early cinema: ‘an attraction in its own right’, unrelated to any narrative functions (p. 384). The apps, smoothly integrated with smart phones, themselves offer for users some of the technological ‘attraction’ and wonder of early cinema. They do not follow the conventions of television or film aspect ratios that viewers have come to expect. Instead of a 16:9 or even 4:3 aspect ratio, the videos on Vine and Instagram are cropped to 1.19:1 (echoing the old Movietone newsreels and square format photographs like Polaroids); Snapchat uses vertical video. These aspect ratios are ideal for playback not on computer or television screens, but on the small screens of smartphones. The square is flexible enough to incorporate videos shot in either portrait or landscape mode. Snapchat’s head of content Nick Bell, meanwhile, says they are just giving viewers what they want: ‘We’ve seen a nine times higher engagement rate with vertical rather than horizontal video’ (Graham, 2015). The apps acknowledge that the smartphone video exists in a different world than other forms of moving images.

New Visual Paradigms: The Smartphone Aesthetic

In 1998, six years before the founding of YouTube and Vimeo and nearly a decade before the release of the first iPhone, Neal Gabler (1998: 229) was ruminating on the idea of the mediated self. This was a trait of modern society that accelerated during the latter decades of the 20th century: the idea that life was not ‘real’ or ‘valuable’ unless it was mediated (through home video, photographs, etc.); we, in effect, are all actors on our own self-created stage. In the self-confessional/self-mediated social media era, it would seem this trend has mushroomed, helped by the ubiquitous camera-equipped cell phone. Ingrid Richardson (2005) talks about how mobile devices are so entwined in our lives (the device itself and the uses of it), that we can’t live without it. She writes, ‘The handset or portable console becomes an incorporative aspect of the hand, a body-part in itself of some consequence as a mutable and world-shaping device.’ The phone is a part of us – a necessary accoutrement that enables us to remain on stage documenting the life-movie.

This is not necessarily an evil. Harvey May and Greg Hearn (2005: 205) offer that the camera-equipped mobile phone’s ability to capture ‘the “fleeting and unexpected” in the everyday may actually invigorate a sense of social sharing in spontaneous ways’ not available in previous mediated formats. While the mediated life has become firmly embedded in the instant-gratification nature of smartphone technology, this mediation can enable us to reinforce connections with others. Lisa Gye (2007: 281) contends ‘exchanging and sharing personal photographs [via cell phones] is integral for the maintenance of relationships’, because the images serve as an aid in not only storytelling but in shared memories. She says that while there can be dangers (the trivialization of life to ‘pictureworthy’ moments), ‘camera phones … extend our way of looking at the world photographically and in so doing bring changes to how we understand ourselves and that world’ (p. 287). With the rise of high-quality videos within the smartphone, the moving image has become a part of these ‘pitctureworthy’ moments.

Filmmaker Max Schleser (see Baker et al., 2009: 105) refers to this as ‘Keitai aesthetic’. He is drawing from the Japanese concept that embraces the small and portable/hand-held. The aesthetic includes the phone’s compression of moving images, how smartphones have transformed body language (and how the body views the mobile device), and how mobile media

… operate in-between photography, video and the internet, while simultaneously establishing new links … The mobile device is a case of media converging in a spectacle of information/data, where the division between the media forms seems blurred, but where the location of consumption emphasizes the original experience. Mobile devices push the media experience into a new domain.

In other words, it is a hybrid, and one that demands to be judged not only by the standard of older media forms (which it borrows from and transforms), but rather on its own terms, borrowing from and transforming past standards

Manovich (2006) takes this human/phone relationship one step further, arguing that the interaction itself is an aesthetic event. By this, he means that the design of the product demands that it should be used in a certain way, and that specific usage is part of the enjoyment we get in our interactions with the product. It is not enough to just share those pictureworthy moments, but the very taking of the moment on the smartphone is ‘the stage for delivering rich sensorial and often seductive experiences’ (p. 6). So, when discussing the orientation of video shot on smartphones, it becomes important to consider the pleasure the user derives from the act of shooting, and how the device is typically used. The smartphone is designed to be held in one hand in a vertical position; a horizontal orientation feels odd or requires two hands to stabilize the device (which is taller than it is wide). Horizontal shooting minimizes the seductive experience. Likewise, when viewing back images within the smartphone, the vertically-oriented video takes up the entire screen when the device is oriented vertically, just as the horizontal image does when the phone is oriented horizontally. Both landscape and portrait videos appear equally distorted, equally wrong, when viewed in their non-native orientation.

This poses a problem for YouTube, Vimeo, and other web-based video file sharing services. Vimeo (2004) and YouTube (2005) debuted before the widespread adoption of cellphone-based cameras. As a result, the video orientation on the sites conformed to television and film standards. The sites are wildly popular: as of October 2013, YouTube has about 4.8 billion users and Vimeo about 14 million users worldwide. This dominance led both YouTube and Vimeo to became embedded as the default ‘share’ functions for video on many smartphone operating systems. But, initially, neither site responded to the challenge of vertical video; even though both sites had smartphone apps (which oriented vertically within phone screen), for years neither offered the option to view portrait videos in a vertical mode. Instead, the video was pushed into the horizontal orientation, even when watched inside the smartphone, with large black pillarboxes on either side of the footage. This served to call attention to its ‘wrongness’. The seductive experience was interrupted.

Richardson (2005) says this sort of pushback is a characteristic within the adoption of new technology. Usually, the pushback comes from the user:

While a reciprocity between tool and body drives the technical specifications and ergonomic development of every apparatus, there is often resistance, in the interstices of our many technosomatic assemblages. The materialities of human bodies and nonhuman bodies are often in ontic conflict, and ensuing material–semiotic compromises are deeply embedded in the trajectories of body–tool relations.

A too-large or too-small keyboard on a laptop or tablet, for instance, will not resonate with users who cannot type with ease even if it is technologically possible. Similarly, large-screen smartphones like the Samsung Note 8 or the iPhone 8s Plus exist not because the devices require larger hardware components, but because people want bigger screens for viewing video and typing messages. The mobile phone is no longer something where we just make telephone calls; it is now a handheld all-purpose multimedia and messaging center.

What is odd in the case of vertical video is that these roles are reversed. The online video sharing services joined the users critical of vertical video syndrome in resisting the new technology and transformed aesthetic. They are in ontic conflict with innovations (smartphone viewing of video) and user practices (producing vertical video), seemingly unable to reconcile the traditional way of viewing video with the new demands caused by smartphone use. Despite their integration into the new (smartphone apps, smartphone use), the websites (and critics) clung to the aesthetic of the old.

Embracing Vertical Video Syndrome

It is a testament to the power of vertical video that in the summer of 2015, YouTube finally joined the growing ranks of companies to embrace them, adding an update to its Android and iOS apps to allow vertical videos to be displayed full-screen on phones and tablets without pillar-boxing (as of this writing, Vimeo still maintains a horizontal-only orientation, which makes sense given its film-centric focus). A recent article in The New York Times noted that several traditional media corporations (including The Times) are experimenting with vertical video storytelling (see Manjoo, 2015). A new app, Vervid, also hit the market, billed as a showcase for tall videos. John Whaley, one of Vervid’s co-creators, told The New York Times: ‘Think of a baby’s first steps. The baby is vertical for the first time ever and the best way to capture that whole body is vertically.’

The vertical video of smartphones offers a rupture of the viewing paradigm, similar to how Eisenstein described the move from the Academy Ratio to widescreen/anamorphic films during the mid-20th century. These ruptures, as Harpar Cossar (2011: 5) contends, ‘challenge traditional conceptions’ and lead to ‘stylistic and aesthetic adjustments that follow its introduction’. What results is a new way of seeing and experiencing the media because of the visual/spatial innovations. Much as Eisenstein challenged the visual hegemony of the Academy Standard in feature film via the dynamic square, the orientation flexibility of the smartphone provides ‘a screen with changeable proportions of the projected picture’ (Friedberg, 2009: 131): the image and device dictate whether screen orientation should be horizontal or vertical. While Vine and Instagram have, in part, adjusted to the rupture (through offering the compromise of almost-square aspect ratio for all videos), and Snapchat embraces the rupture (by offering vertical videos), YouTube and Vimeo have not.

The smartphone is, first and foremost, what Mark Hanson (2004) describes as an ‘embodied’ device, or a technological innovation that is appropriated for something other than a utilitarian purpose. The technology embedded in the smartphone is used by the body ‘to experience itself as ‘more than itself’ and thus to deploy its sensorimotor power to create the unpredictable, the experimental, the new’ (p. 7). It is a catalyst for self-transformation, but also for what Jay David Bolter and Richard Brusin (1999) have dubbed ‘remediations’: the appropriation of the past to create a new paradigm and aesthetic. For smartphone videos, that aesthetic is as much influenced by feature films and television as it is by photography and cinematic experimentations outside of traditional film production. It makes radically visible not only parts of the frame normally invisible in horizontal orientations, but also the artifice of the horizontal perspective itself. The demands of the video, and the pleasure of the user, shape image orientation.

Thus, within the vertical orientation of the smartphone screen, applied media aesthetics are transformed. Rather than one standard for all moving images, vertical video on smartphones demands that standards of ‘right’ or ‘good’ need to be adapted depending upon the intended viewing platform. It is a cinema of attraction(s) at the most personal and intimate level. An individual captures a personal moment (a day at the beach, a child’s first walk, a video selfie) designed not for screening on the ‘bigger’ screens of television, computers or film, but for the self-contained screen of the smartphone, perhaps shared with family and friends. Camera motion and screen action, more than vectors, draw viewers into the image. The video produced is more akin to a snapshot than an edited production, driven by artistic considerations rather than the practicality of economic standardization.

Vertical video also displays aspects of Sobchack’s ‘embodied existence … it is an exchange between two bodies’ (Marks, 2000: 149); but, more than an exchange between viewer and film, it is an exchange between creator and device. It is small-screen image making, where expansive horizons lose detail and clarity, and the intimate and the personal rule. In the latest IOS, iPhone users can even lock the phone into portrait orientation, further emphasizing the ‘wrongness’ of the landscape mode; the device itself reaffirms the technological attraction(s) that vertical video offers. In the intertwining of art and life that Zettl (2005) says are the hallmarks of applied media aesthetics, the pleasure the user derives from the use of the phone in the vertical orientation (which is, in effect, an extension of the hand) demands being accorded equal weight as the construction of the image.

The smartphone is exhibiting a characteristic of new media: it is changing the notion of screen orientation within applied media aesthetics into ‘an unsettling and generative process, which continually breaks free of their previous context and recombines them in different ways’ (Rutsky, 1999: 8). The smartphone video references film and television at times, but the portability of the camera also echoes the ability of photography to capture the ‘decisive moment’. The vertical orientation of some videos provides the modernist tension Eisenstein advocated for in the dynamic square, while at the same time inviting the user/viewer to ‘step into’ a scene to the proverbial shadowed doorway in the background. It can shoot in the traditional orientation of the big screen, but it also embraces the intimacy of the printed photograph. It uses the Ketai aesthetic to rupture traditional viewing paradigms. It calls our attention to the arbitrariness of film, television, and computer orientation, and pushes back at the economic choices that demanded video and film standardization.

Users don’t make vertical video because they are somehow ignorant of traditional video orientation. They don’t make vertical video because they are too lazy to rotate the phone 90 degrees into a ‘proper’ video orientation. Users make vertical video because it makes sense within the technology. In so doing, they are transforming the aesthetic of the moving image.