This simple trick will improve your cell phone videos 100%

[William Seger]

Turn the damned thing sideways before you start shooting!

[PJMcK]

1. Right?!

Why don't people get this? Don't they ever go to the movies? Don't they ever play DVDs or BlueRay disks?

Strange.

[LuckyCharms]

2. Turn what thing sideways?

[bearssoapbox]

3. Makes sense to me.

Sideways has always been my best side.

[hunter]

4. If computer screens were round this wouldn't be a problem.

The first Kodak photographs were round, as were many early computer graphics monitors.



https://www.computerhistory.org/pdp-1/01e7643ee535276917bb52962a0292ab/

There's nothing sacred about 16 X 9 rectangular horizontal aspect ratios.

Phones and tablets work either way.

[William Seger]

5. 16:9 is fine; 9:16 is good for photographing lampposts.

[hunter]

6. 16:9 is fine for car chases.

But not for space battles.

The common 4:3 aspect ratio of early movies and television was supposedly the "scientific" optimum in terms of economy and resolution, somewhat matching our field of vision when our eyes are still.

But humans have a preference for scanning side-to-side in our vision. We don't pay much attention to the sky above, or the ground below.

Looking up at the sky or down at the ground while someone is speaking is considered rude.

This preference to scan our eyes along the horizon, and at faces level with ours, is what makes wide screen appealing.

I still think complaints about vertical videos are silly. If I'm watching a video made by a cell phone on a cell phone or tablet I can simply turn the device to match the video.

If I was rewriting YouTube or any other video sharing site I'd make it so it did not favor one aspect ratio over the other.

[William Seger]

7. Well, that's the problem

... (besides the bad framing for most subjects): They look bad when shared on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, etc. or especially if they end up on the nightly news.

[hunter]

9. I don't watch any television news so I wouldn't know.

"Portrait" or "Landscape" mode photos are easily embedded in web pages, like this:

Extinct parrots






https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parrot


There's no longer any technical reason for the aspect ratios of embedded videos to be fixed.

[whistler162]

8. But then I keep falling on my side.

[Generic Brad]

10. Or we could just film good looking people

But if we did that, I would never appear on video.