Tall Tales Ancestry and Artistry of Vertical Video

Mats Ulenius

Department of Media Studies

Bachelor Thesis, 15 HE Credits

Cinema Studies

Spring Term 2018

Supervisors: Nadi Tofighian & Patrick Vonderau

Tall Tales

Ancestry and Artistry of Vertical Video

Mats Ulenius

Abstract Since the beginning of the 2010’s, consumers have increasingly picked up the habit of using smartphones to shoot and watch video in portrait mode – vertical video. The format has also spread to professional film making in the form of advertising, fiction film and other genres produced for viewing on vertically oriented screens – especially smartphone screens. This rise of the vertical format can be attributed to digital conversion and new social habits of video communication via social media; in other words, the so called digital – or mobile – revolution.

However, neither vertical media nor vertical film is actually new. In this paper, a media archaeological approach is used to show that vertical media is as old as human art, and that audiences have enjoyed vertical moving images at least since the 1830’s. For example, many early optical images and the first television images in the 1920’s were vertical. This paper is an elaboration on an archaeology of vertical video, inspired by the methods of media archaeologists Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka and the visual arts perspective of Anne Friedberg.

Apart from the ancestry of the vertical frame, this paper also includes an analysis of what is inside the tall frame – a study on vertical shot composition. Focusing on eleven short films in competition at the 2016 Vertical Film Festival near Sydney, the analysis focuses especially on camera movement, scale of shot and editing. Using formal style analysis, as well as statistical style analysis, this paper defines characteristics of vertical shot composition; these include a frequent use of both long shots and tilt shots, and a general experimental playfulness in shot composition and in editing. By tracing the ancestry of – and analyzing the artistry of – portrait mode video, the purpose of this paper is to contribute to a deeper understanding of the vertical video format and its renewed popularity in recent years.

Keywords

vertical video, portrait mode, media archaeology, history of film style, shot composition

Contents Preface .............................................................................................................. 4

1.   Introduction .......................................................................... 5  

1.1   Purpose ................................................................................................... 5  1.2   Theoretical Framework and Method............................................................. 6  1.3   Source Material ........................................................................................ 8  1.4   Limitations and Risks ................................................................................ 9

2.   Archeology of Vertical Video ............................................... 10  

2.1   Vertical Art and Photography.................................................................... 10  2.2   Optical Machines .................................................................................... 13  2.3   Cinema ................................................................................................. 15  2.4   Television and Other Stationary Screens .................................................... 20  2.5   Mobile Vertical Video ............................................................................... 23  2.6   Film Genres ........................................................................................... 27  2.7   Controversy around Vertical Video ............................................................ 32

3.   Vertical Style ....................................................................... 33  

3.1   Short Presentation of the Films Studied ..................................................... 34  3.2   Movement of Characters and Camera ........................................................ 39  3.3   Shot Composition ................................................................................... 42  3.4   Editing and Effects .................................................................................. 44

4.   Conclusions ......................................................................... 45 References................................................................................... 47  

Literature and Magazines ................................................................................... 47  Online Sources ................................................................................................. 50  Film and Video ................................................................................................. 52

Appendix: Source Material Film Facts .................................................................. 54  

4

Preface In my daytime job as head of an inhouse film team producing travel commercials, I never used to question the horizontality of the film frame; landscape mode was a given. My only professional experience with the vertical format was from the odd project producing a video ad for outdoor billboards. In my spare time I was, like many others, video calling and video messaging in portrait mode, but this I saw as something separate from my professional work.

Then, in the spring of 2017, both Snapchat and Instagram introduced vertical video ads in their smartphone apps; suddenly I was overwhelmed by requests for tall videos. Not everybody in my team was excited; some classically trained film workers felt that the vertical frame was unnatural, unaesthetic, unprofessional. But we started to reframe some existing footage, plan some vertical shoots and – above all – experiment. It was fun and challenging, posing many questions. How do you tell a story in portrait mode? How do you frame your shots, especially when the character and the camera are moving? Do you need to tell different kinds of stories? The sudden demand for vertical video spurred my interest in the format’s creative possibilities.

I have also experienced that there is a strong hype around vertical video. Many in advertising see it as something completely revolutionary – the format of a new, mobile generation. According to this hype, the horizontal frame is now something old school, used mainly for old folks’ media like television and movie theaters.

I wanted to understand the tall format better, and that is why – for this paper – I started to research the history and style of vertical media. I found interesting examples of early vertical media, and Patrick Vonderau, my supervisor, pointed out to me that I was doing media archaeology. Patrick introduced me to the writings of Erkki Huhtamo, who inspired me to question the hype and presumed “newness” of vertical video. Nadi Tofighian, who took over as my supervisor in the new term, helped me organize and finalize my paper in a presentable format. I would like to thank both Patrick and Nadi for their invaluable help and supervision during my work on this paper.

5

1.   Introduction In this paper I focus on a film format that has become more widely used in the 2010's, especially among consumers using smartphones: vertical video.1 By this I mean moving images screened in a vertical aspect ratio – i.e. in “portrait orientation.”

Joshua Malitsky has pointed out that political revolutions are often followed by periods of creative experimentation. In other words, new social orders often come with the invention of new forms of expression and new ways of telling stories.2 While Malitsky exemplifies this with the political revolutions in Russia and Cuba, the innovative film mode treated in this paper – vertical video – has emerged through a “revolution” that is not political but instead technical and social: the so called “digital revolution” or “mobile revolution.”

I will not go into the discussion of whether the digital revolution is a true revolution or not, which is still under debate.3 It is however clear that digital convergence and, more specifically, the popularization of mobile phone video cameras has changed the way people produce and consume video. This is the revolutionary backdrop of a newly popular video format, with new artistic limitations and opportunities, that is the subject of this paper.

I want to contribute to our understanding of the vertical video format, and its recent rise in viewership. I want to do this by outlining an archaeology of vertical video – from its ancient roots to its popularization via smartphone apps – by mapping past media practices and technological innovations that have paved its way. I also want to contribute with a deeper understanding of stylistic characteristics of the format.

1.1 Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a deeper understanding of the vertical video format, including both its history and its renewed popularity in recent years. First, I aim to trace the ancestry of vertical media from a media archaeological perspective. Second, I aim to outline stylistic characteristics of vertical video. The research questions I focus on are:

1.   What past media practices is vertical video related to?

2.   What technologies and media practices have contributed to the spread of mobile vertical video in the 2010’s?

3.   What distinguishing characteristics can be found in the style of vertical video – exemplified by a sample of live action short film – especially with regards to camera movement, shot composition and editing?

1 Snapchat alone claim to have grown their number of (vertical) video views from zero in 2012 to 4 billion in

April 2015 and then over 10 billion views per day in April 2016; Hilary Brueck. "Here's How Snapchat Might Be Beating Facebook", Fortune.com (29 April 2016).

2 Joshua Malitsky, Post-Revolution Nonfiction Film (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013), 2ff. 3 André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion, The End of Cinema? A Medium in Crisis in the Digital Age (New

York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 4ff.

6

1.2 Theoretical Framework and Method Since very little literature has been published on the specific topic of vertical video, I will apply more general theories to define vertical video and carry out my analysis. As my theoretical framework and approach, I use media archaeology, as defined in literature by media theorists Siegfried Zielinski4 and media archaeologists Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka.5

According to Huhtamo and Parikka, the word archaeology has been used in the field of film studies since the 1960’s by for example archaeologist C.W. Ceram (1965)6 and media theorists Jacques Perriault (1981)7, Friedrich Kittler (1985)8 and Laurent Mannoni (1995)9 to describe the history – or rather the prehistory – of cinema in the form of earlier media practices.10

According to Huhtamo and Parikka, their brand of media archaeology attempts to question the hype and “newness” of so called new media and demonstrate how past media practices live on in the present. This way, they claim, media archaeology can more accurately pinpoint actual novelties and innovations.11 The basic question of media archaeology, in a context such as vertical video would according to them be: What are its conditions of existence? This definition shows that media archaeology is also related to Michel Foucault’s writings on the archaeology of knowledge from 1972.12

One of Zielinski’s main points is that the history of a media is not a linear and progressive development from a primitive to a more advanced status, but rather an “anarchic” history of breakthroughs and setbacks, alternative paths and crucial events he calls “cuts.” Failed technologies, and even imaginary media, may be as important and relevant as those that were

4 Siegfried Zielinski. Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by Technical Means

(Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2006). 5 Erkki Huhtamo and Jussi Parikka, ed. Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications

(Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011); Jussi Parikka. What is Media Archeology? (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2012).

6 C.W. Ceram. Archaeology of the Cinema (New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965). 7 Jacques Perriault. Mémoires de l’ombre et du son: une archéologie de l’audio-visuel (Paris: Flammarion,

1981). 8 Friedrich Kittler. Grammophon Film Typewriter (Berlin: Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose, 1986); Huhtamo and

Parikka, Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, 8-9; Andreas Fickers and Annie Van den Oeven. "Experimental Media Archaeology: A Plea for New Directions", in Annie Van den Oeven, ed. Techné/Technology: Researching Cinema and Media Technologies, their Development, Use and Impact (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014), 272; Erkki Huhtamo. "Screenology; or, Media Archaeology of the Screen", in: Stephen Monteiro, ed. The Screen Media Reader (New York/London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 80.

9 Laurent Mannoni. Le grand art de la lumière et de l’ombre: archéologie du cinéma (Paris: Nathan, 1995). 10 Huhtamo and Parikka, Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications, 2-5. 11 Ibid, 14. 12 Michel Foucault. The Archaeology of Knowledge (New York: Pantheon Books, 1972); Jussi Parikka. What is

Media Archeology? (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2012), 18; Simone Natale. "Understanding Media Archaeology", Canadian Journal of Communication 37 (2012): 524.

7

universally adopted. For this reason, Zielinski coined the neologism “anarcheology,” alluding to a need for openness in media archaeology.13

Taking Zielinski’s lead, in my analysis I trace the archaeology – or anarcheology – of vertical video, focusing on “cuts” and including media practices whose relation to vertical video may not be obvious at first. Worth noting is that the topic of vertical video inevitably refers to certain screening practices – on some kind of vertical screen. My analysis therefore borders to a more specific field of research that Huhtamo has proposed to create: screenology. By this he means “a specific branch within media studies focusing on screens as ‘information surfaces,’”14 or “media archaeology of the screen.”15 Tracing vertical video’s ancestry back to vertical art, I often return to Anne Friedberg’s visual arts perspective.16

In my analysis I also investigate the implication of the vertical frame, or vertical screen, on film form. For this analysis I combine my media archaeological perspective with tools from the – also historically oriented – field of history of film styles, as researched by film historians such as Kristin Thompson, David Bordwell and Barry Salt.17 One of their main research tools is formal analysis of films, which can assign films to – or distinguish them from – certain artistic traditions. In other words, history of film styles attempts to explain stylistic continuity and change over time. While formal analysis of films is often qualitative, film historian Barry Salt has introduced what he calls statistical style analysis of motion pictures; here he uses statistical data such as average shot length, shot scale, and camera movement to define stylistic traditions.18

I analyze the style of vertical video, focusing on camera movement, shot composition and editing. My analysis is qualitative as well as supported by statistical style analysis. As my source material I use eleven works in competition at the 2016 Vertical Film Festival in Australia (more on this in chapter 1.3). In summary, with this paper I wish to contribute with an archaeology of vertical video, and an analysis on compositional features in early vertical short film.19

13 Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media, 22; Natale, 525-526. 14 Huhtamo, Erkki. "Elements of Screenology: Toward an Archaeology of the Screen." ICONICS: International

Studies of the Modern Image 7 (Tokyo: The Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences, 2004), 31-82. 15 Huhtamo. "Screenology; or, Media Archaeology of the Screen", 78. 16 Anne Friedberg. The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft (Cambridge; USA: MIT Press, 2006). 17 Kristin Thompson and David Bordwell. Film History: An Introduction, 3rd Ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010);

David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction (New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2015); Barry Salt. Moving into Pictures: More on Film History, Style, and Analysis (London: Starword, 2006); Barry Salt. Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis, 3rd Ed. (London: Starword, 2009).

18 Salt. Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis. 19 I am not aware of any published media archaeological study of vertical video; there is however a filmed

speech by Erkki Huhtamo: "Up and Down the Shaft of Time." Speech arranged by Sonic Acts at the 2014 International Film Festival Rotterdam, 23 January 2014.

8

1.3 Source Material The kind of vertical film I have chosen to study is live action fiction short film. The reason is that the vertical short film genre is more vital and widespread than that of vertical feature-length movies – I have actually only found one vertical, live-action feature film.20

Vertical short film is more common and is – since a few years – showcased at several niche film festivals around the world. These include the 9:16 Film Festival section at the Adelaide Film Festival (2014, 2015, 2017), Vertical Film Festival near Sydney (2014 and 2016), Verti Films in the Czech Republic (2016), Die Erste Vertikale in Bad Gastein, Austria (2015, 2016, 2017) and Slim Cinema in New York City (2016 and 2017).21 Also, several film festivals have screened a pre-packaged art film project called Vertical Cinema (more on this in chapter 2.6). All these festivals screen the short films in a cinema-style setting – on a large, vertical cinema screen, using a projector.

Out of the festivals that show vertical short films, Sydney's Vertical Film Festival is one of the most international, in the sense that it features film makers from many different countries. That is why I have chosen – as my source material – the eleven live action short films selected for competition at the 2016 Vertical Film Festival.22 These films were selected by a jury “among dozens of submissions,” according to the festival organizers.23 While this implies a certain level of professionality in production, most of them are still low budget films. Being selected for competition and having been made by so many different film makers, I believe that these films allow me to make assumptions about early vertical short film. The eleven short films I analyze – the “tall tales” in question – are:

•   Addendum (Ferenc Kiss, Hungary, 2016) •   Alia (Matias Martinez, Chile, 2016) •   Along the Lines (Antonella Lauria and Susanna Vicentini, Italy, 2016) •   Eiland (Kuesti Fraun, Germany, 2016) •   Impact (Jean-Charles Granjon, France, 2015) •   Passages (Mila Turajlic, Serbia, 2016) •   Stork Story (Francesco Mattuzzi, Italy, 2016) •   Theo (Cédric Martin, France, 2016) •   Tried (Charles Williams, Australia, 2015) •   Turuu (Joerg Locher and Jeremias Heppeler, Germany, 2016) •   Umwelt (Yoshiyuki Katayama, Japan, 2015)

20 The feature film is Youth on the March (Mike Retter, 2017). 21 Adelaide Film Festival website, 2018; Vertical Film Festival website, 2018; Verti Films festival website, 2018;

Die Erste Vertikale festival Facebook page, 2018; Slim Cinema festival website, 2018.

22 In the same competition there was also one animated film, Thing (Luca De Salvia, 2016), and two stop-motion films, Basket Case (James Bedford, 2016) and Lost Postcards (Tamara Scherbak, 2016). I have excluded these three films from my study, because of their lack of live action mise-en-scène.

23 Vertical Film Festival website, 2018.

9

My analysis of style in these films is found in chapter three, and more film production data can be found in an appendix.

1.4 Limitations and Risks This paper is an elaboration on a media archaeology of vertical video. My focus is on media with a vertical aspect ratio; I do not attempt to cover media where only the movement inside the frame is vertical, even if such cases are sometimes mentioned to provide context.

In my study on archaeology – in chapter two – I do not go into an analysis of the different dispositifs of the different media forms, with the exception of mobile vertical video, watched on smartphone screens. This is the most common viewing situation for vertical video, with a unique dispositif brought about by the combination of verticality and mobility. When specifically referring to smartphone screening in this paper, I use the term “mobile vertical video.”

For my study on vertical style – in chapter three – I have chosen the short film genre, and I have chosen to study films selected for competition at a festival. There is a risk that these works are not representative of the bulk of vertical video produced internationally, or for other film genres. Due to time constraints, my analysis focuses on certain compositional features: movement of characters and camera, shot composition, editing and effects. Despite these limitations, I believe that my analysis – of all films in competition at one of the better known vertical film festivals – does give insight into a film format where today’s films can still be considered “early works.”

I would like to add one more comment about terminology in this paper. I generally use the term “vertical video” for present-day media, rather than the longer expression “vertical film and video.” The shorter expression feels justified, since digital technology heavily dominates both production and screening of vertical media today.

10

2.   Archeology of Vertical Video In this chapter, I outline an archaeology of vertical video from its distant roots in ancient art to current channels, such as Snapchat and Instagram Stories.

2.1 Vertical Art and Photography Humans have created and enjoyed vertically oriented artworks and images for tens of thousands of years. Apart from three-dimensional architectural elements such as towers, columns and sculptures, there are countless examples of two-dimensional vertical art, including church windows and portrait photography.

Vertical art

The world’s oldest known pieces of human art are elongated and vertical; nearly 100,000-years-old engraved blocks of red ochre found in South Africa, probably used as crayons for body-painting.24 The oldest paintings, such as the 36,000 years old scenes in the Chauvet cave in France, include art of different shapes and forms. Vivid artworks, depicting animals and lava eruptions, have been drawn in overlapping versions, evoking a sense of movement. Werner Herzog has called it “a form of proto-cinema”; ancient art researcher Marc Azéma even claims that the wall paintings – at the time when they were made – were given additional movement by moving torches of light; “a real ‘pre-history’ of cinema.”25 In that case – even if much of the cave art is horizontal – it also includes pre-historic equivalents to vertical video.

24 Christopher S. Henshilwood, Francesco d’Errico and Ian Watts. "Engraved Ochres from the Middle Stone Age

Levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa", Journal of Human Evolution 57, no. 1 (July 2009): 27-47; Marilyn Stockstad and Michael W. Cothren, Art History, 4th Ed. (Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2011), 4.

25 Marc Azéma and Florent Rivière. "Animation in Palaeolithic art: a Pre-echo of Cinema." Antiquity 86, No 332 (June 2012): 316-324; Mauro Carbone. "Thematizing the Arche-Screen through its Variations", in Dominique Chateau and José Moure, ed. Screens (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016), 65.

Fig. 2.1: The prophet Daniel in Augsburg Cathedral (1065)

Photo from The Yorck Project: Meisterwerke der Malerei, Directmedia Publishing GmbH; Wikimedia Commons

Fig. 2.2: Vlogger Alfie Deyes on Snapchat (2016)

Screenshot from Snapchat

11

Later examples of ancient vertical art are ancient Chinese silk roll paintings and medieval church windows, such as those in the Augsburg Cathedral (1065).26 Religious imagery is often vertical; just think of themes of heaven and hell, of heavenly ascent, and the theme of Jacob’s ladder from the Old Testament.

When Leon Battista Alberti wrote in 1435 about his famous aperta finestra, the open window as a metaphor for the painting, he was open to any aspect ratio; “a rectangle of whatever size I want,” he specified.27 In line with this, painters have always chosen the aspect ratio they have deemed suitable for their images; horizontal, vertical or square. There wasn’t any standard aspect ratio.28 One genre of painting where the vertical format dominates is portraiture. Portraiture in the form of vertical paintings and mosaics has existed at least as far back as ancient Greece, ancient Rome and, as already mentioned, ancient Egypt.29

A special case is the self-portrait, which was uncommon before the 16th century, because it was considered inappropriate to glorify oneself. One painter who broke this rule is Albrecht Dürer, who in 1500 painted himself in a Christ-like pose, directly facing the viewer in a nobleman’s fur coat; apart from demonstrating his skills as a painter, possibly he also wanted to elevate the status of the artist by presenting himself as a superior being.30 Dürer’s self-portrait could be considered an antecedent of present-day “selfies” and “velfies” (video selfies), carefully prepared to present the subject in the best possible light. Catharina 26 Stockstad and Cothren, 79, 497, 325ff. 27 Friedberg, 30. 28 Huhtamo, "Screenology; or, Media Archaeology of the Screen", 81.

29 Shearer West, Portraiture (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 14. 30 Shearer West, 163, 167-168.

Fig. 2.5: Hanging silk scroll "Listening to the wind" by Ma Lin (1246 CE)

National Palace Museum, Iaipei

Fig. 2.6: Le songe de Jakob by Nicolas Dipre (1500)

Musée du petit palais; Wikimedia Commons

Fig. 2.3: Engraved red ochre block (70-100,000 BCE)

Photo by Christopher S. Henshilwood; Wikimedia commons

Fig. 2.4: Herzog and his team in front of vertically placed animal paintings in the Chauvet cave, in Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog, 2010).

The film frame is cropped.

12

Hemessen produced the earliest known self-portrait of an artist at work at the easel; a vertical frame within a vertical frame from 1548.31

Portrait-mode photography

Photography was developed in parallel by many inventors, but it was Frenchman Louis Daguerre’s newly invented silver plate cameras – daguerreotypes – that made photography available to a wider international audience around 1839-1840. Daguerre did have his own camera design, the Giroux daguerreotype, which was designed mainly for landscape photography, since its optics required exposures around ten minutes.32 The French government bought the rights to the invention and allowed other makers to produce their own cameras, which led to a rapid spread of photography internationally.33 Due to the popular demand for portraits, many camera models were soon fitted with lenses more appropriate for portraiture – giving sharper portraits with shorter exposure times, but also limiting plate size.34 Plates used in daguerreotypes were rectangular; the aspect ratio was usually around 3:4. Daguerre’s Giroux camera could handle even the biggest plates, so called “full plates” measuring 16.5×21.5 cm,35 while the first specialized portrait cameras that came out in the US in 1840 used plates as small as 5×6.5 cm.36 Photographers could still use their camera for both portrait and landscape images, either by turning the plate holder at the back, or by turning the entire camera box on its side.

Portrait mode is of course still very much used in still photography, where the photographer can choose a different orientation for each shot; photographs can be turned when viewing them – as opposed to film and video, which is shown on a screen and has to be shot to fit the screen. Portrait mode photography is for example very suitable for shots that are meant to be

31 Shearer West, 171-172 32 Michael Robinson, "The Techniques and Material Aesthetics of the Daguerreotype" (PhD. Diss., Photographic

Research Centre, De Montfort University, 2017), 255-256. 33 Michael R. Peres, ed. The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography (Abingdon, UK: Tyler & Francis, 2013), 30;

Janet E. Buerger, French Daguerrotypes (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 3. 34 M. Susan Barger and William B. White. The Daguerreotype: Nineteenth-Century Technology and Modern

Science (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2000), 29.

35 Buerger, 197. 36 Robinson, 255-257.

Fig. 2.7: Mummy portrait from Faiyum, Egypt (around 200 CE)

Egyptian wood panel painting in Medelhavsmuseet, Stockholm; Photo by Mats Ulenius

Fig. 2.8: Self-portrait by Albrecht Dürer (1500).

Oil on canvas in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich; Wikimedia Commons

Fig. 2.9: Self-portrait by Catharina van Hemessen (1548).

Tempera on oak panel, Kunstmuseum Basel; Wikimedia Commons

13

on a poster, a book or magazine cover. Written media and printed matter in general tend to be vertically shaped.

2.2 Optical Machines Projection practices such as magic lanterns and Phantasmagorias of the 19th century usually employed paintings – and later photographs – on circular glass plates.37 It was the Phantasmagoria’s imagery that most often tended to look vertical to the viewer; its imagery often depicted people, ghosts and other upright characters without any background, since the surface surrounding the character was painted opaque.38 Movement was sometimes added by using multiple projectors, by moving the projectors or by adding moving parts to the plates.

An individual viewing device, the Stereoscope, was introduced to the public at the Crystal Palace Exhibition in 1851; it displayed vertical images, since two images had to be fitted side by side – one for each eye.39

37 Charles Musser. "The Stereopticon and Cinema", in François Albera and Maria Tortajada, ed. Cine-

Dispositives: Essays in Epistemology Across Media (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015), 137. 38 In magic lantern displays, the image was usually round rather than vertical because the entire circle of light

was visible to the viewer; Huhtamo, "Screenology; or, Media Archaeology of the Screen", 86. Another device, the moving panorama, in some cases employed tall paintings that were rolled vertically to reveal vertical action such as a mountain ascent. However, the frame seen – at any moment in time – was horizontal; Erkki Huhtamo. “Up and Down the Shaft of Time”. Speech arranged by Sonic Acts at the 2014 International Film Festival Rotterdam, 23 January 2014.

39 Huhtamo, "Screenology; or, Media Archaeology of the Screen", 93-95.

Fig. 2.13: Phantasmagoria show by Etienne Gaspard-Robertson around 1802

Anonymous artist; public domain image Fig. 2.14: Stereoscope designed by David Brewster in 1849

Public domain image; Wikimedia Commons

Fig. 2.10: Daguerreotype portrait of Louis Daguerre (1844)

By Jean-Baptiste Sabatier-Blot, in the George Eastman Museum, Rochester, NY; public domain image from Wikimedia Commons Fig. 2.11: Samuel Morse with a Daguerreotype camera turned on its side (1871)

Photo by A Bogardus; public domain image from eBay

Fig. 2.12: Actress Margot Robbie on the cover of ELLE (2018)

Photo by Alexi Lubomirski

14

Early moving picture devices such as Phenakistiscopes and Zoetropes, invented in the 1830’s, used a series of drawings to create an illusion of movement.40 Many of them used portrait mode images depicting upright characters. One benefit of this, is that more images can fit if they are vertical; this makes it easier to show 16 images per second, which is the speed needed to create a convincing illusion of movement.41 The Praxinoscope, invented in 1877 by Émile Reynaud, was similar to the Zoetrope but used mirrors at the center of the drum to show moving images – often vertical.42 The Zoopraxiscope, conceived by Eadweard Muybridge in 1879, was a projector with photographs – or drawings of photographs – portraying movement. While Muybridge’s horizontal horse images are famous, much of his work is made up of vertical portraits of people, often naked, dancing or moving.43

Parikka points out that many of these early devices, such as Zoetropes, are very hands-on and therefore can be considered interactive.44 This indicates that the combination of interactivity and moving vertical images dates back at least to the Zoetrope and the 1830's.

40 Benoît Turquety. "Forms of Machines, Forms of Movement", in François Albera and Maria Tortajada, ed. Cine-

Dispositives: Essays in Epistemology Across Media (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015), 277-285; Thompson and Bordwell, 4.

41 Thompson and Bordwell, 4. 42 Turquety, 285-292; Thompson and Bordwell, 6. 43 Laurent Guido. "Between Paradoxical Spectacles and Technical Dispositives", in François Albera and Maria

Tortajada, ed. Cine-Dispositives: Essays in Epistemology Across Media (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015), 258-262.

44 Parikka, 28-29.

Fig. 2.15: Phenakistiscope disc with portrait mode images by inventor Joseph Plateu (1832)

Public domain image; Wikimedia Commons Fig. 2.16: Zoetrope with portrait mode images

Public domain image; unknown artist Fig. 2.17: Frame from one of Eadward Muybridge's studies of movement (1887)

Public domain image; Wikimedia Commons

15

2.3 Cinema The first commercially available photographic film, introduced by the Eastman Company in 1888, was paper-backed.45 Still pictures taken with the first Kodak cameras, using this film stock, were round in shape and printed on paper that was slightly vertical. Some early films were shot using this paper-backed still picture film stock, for example Augustin Le Prince’s Roundhay Garden Scene (1888) and Wordsworth Donisthorpe and W.C. Crofts’ Trafalgar Square scene (1889).46 These pioneers used their own camera designs, that masked the frame differently; Le Prince’s footage is square while Donisthorpe’s and Crofts’ shows a round image.

At the end of the 1880’s, several companies were experimenting with celluloid film stock. Celluloid, the first man-made plastic, was invented some thirty years earlier, but various companies were still experimenting with different formulas.47 While most celluloid film came in sheets, in 1889 the Eastman Company made their transparent still picture stock available in long strips and rolls.48 At this time, Thomas Edison and his assistant William K.L. Dickson – who did much of the work – were developing their Kinetograph film camera and Kinetoscope viewing device in New Jersey. The oldest remaining negatives show that at first – at least until 1891 – Dickson was using a film strip that moved sideways, with the shots next to each other, and a circular image format. The image was round because that was the shape of the lens. Well-known scenes such as Monkeyshines (several versions 1889-1891), Men boxing (1891) and Dickson Greeting (1891), famously shown at a women’s club meeting in 1891, have a circular image

45 Deac Rossel. "Celluloid." In Richard Abel, ed. Encyclopedia of Early Cinema (Abingdon, UK: Taylor & Francis,

2005), 106; Huhtamo, "Screenology; or, Media Archaeology of the Screen", 103. 46 Colin Harding. "Celluloid and photography, part 3: The beginnings of cinema." Website of the National

Science and Media Museum, Bradford, UK, 17 November 2012. 47 Rossel, 106-107. 48 Paul Spehr. The Man Who Made Movies: W.K.L. Dickson (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008), 151.

Fig. 2.18: Le Prince’s Roundhay Garden Scene (1888) was filmed in a nearly square aspect ratio

Public domain image

Fig. 2.19: Donisthorpe’s and Crofts’ Trafalgar Square Scene (1890) has a round image

Public domain image; Wikimedia Commons

Fig. 2.20: Film strip showing the round images of Men boxing (William K.L. Dickson and William Heise, 1891)

Public domain image

16

Dickson was a photographer himself and was used to work with different aspect ratios; his correspondence from 1891 shows that he had not yet decided on the final shape of the film frames. Even the patent application drawings from the same year are ambiguous; the image frames look more vertical than horizontal.49 But Edison and Dickson were developing their camera in parallel with their viewing device; for the Kinetoscope they needed a lens that was easy to use for casual users. Dickson deemed binocular lenses too complicated to use, so he settled for a wide lens that the user could simply look through with both eyes to see an enlarged image.50 Considering this viewing situation, with one wide lens close to the eyes, it may have come naturally to opt for a landscape image format.

When sourcing a lens for the Kinetograph, Dickson specified that he wanted it to produce a sharp image 1 inch wide and ¾ inch tall; he eventually accepted a lens that produced a slightly larger image, but instead used a frame inside the camera to crop the image.51 By 1892 Dickson’s camera design fed the film vertically, with the images over each other. The image itself was horizontal and the size Dickson wanted it: 1 inch wide and ¾ inch tall – a 4:3 aspect ratio. When the space for 4 perforations on each side of each image was added, the result was a film strip 1 3/8 inches wide – 35 mm.52 While Eastman’s standard photographic film was 70 mm, Dickson cut it in half; later he ordered custom-width film that was also thicker than normal, to stand the stress of the intermittent movement in their Kinetograph camera.53

Edison’s and Dickson’s film format was adopted by other film pioneers, including the Lumière brothers; their 1895 Cinématograph also used 35 mm film and could function both as a film camera and a projector. In the U.S. the format was also protected by a cartel of patent-holding companies; aggressive marketing and trade wars helped secure its dominance.54 With time the film format became a universal standard, known as “35 mm.”55 Unlike painting and photography, where the film just had to fit in the camera, filmmakers had to make sure their

49 Spehr, 240. 50 Ibid, 243-244. 51 Ibid, 243. 52 Ibid, 236-237. 53 Rossel, 107. 54 Leo Enticknap. Moving Image Technology: From Zoetrope to Digital (London: Wallflower Press, 2005), 30 55 Spehr, 236-237; Thompson and Bordwell, 7.

Fig. 2.21: The viewing situation of the Kinetoscope may explain Edison’s and Dickson’s preference for horizontal images

Public domain image; photographer unknown

17

film stock’s aspect ratio would match projectors and movie screens. This explains why there was a strong consistency in sticking to the 4:3 aspect ratio, which soon became the de facto standard for film.56 Dickson’s experimentation with celluloid film stock had resulted in a cinema dominated by the horizontal mode. As Dickson himself commented in 1933: “This standardized film size […] has remained, with only minor variations unaltered to date.”57

On a side note, the human field of vision is – as we know – also rather horizontal. When using both eyes, humans see about 200 degrees wide and 135 degrees tall; roughly a 3:2 format, but without any sharp edges.58 It is also slightly easier for humans to move the head – and the eyes – sideways, compared to moving them up and down. This may have some importance when the goal is to achieve an immersive experience by filling the viewer’s field of vision.

Early vignetting and variation

While 4:3 was a de facto film standard, some experimentation was still going on in the years to come. Directors like D.W. Griffith often used camera gate masks to mask off parts of the image to highlight the action. The most well-known type of masking is the round iris effect, which Griffith used again and again, for example in The Birth of a Nation (1915). But Griffith also used so called pillar boxing technique to show vertical images, for example in Intolerance (1916). Camera maker Bell & Howell actually sold 52 differently shaped mattes and vignetting devices, including several that produced vertical images.59

Italian filmmaker Pietro Silvio Rivetta argued as early as 1918 for the use of different framings for different film scenes – and for different dramatic effects. He wrote that, for example, “an erected rectangle [...] seems to me the only possible shape for framing the view of a staircase, of a thin tower, of a flame, or of a feminine slenderness....” He even argued, tongue-in-cheek, that different shapes of frames may correspond to different moods: “Who knows what corresponds to the rectangle – maybe only laziness.”60

56 Friedberg, 131. 57 Spehr, 236-237. 58 Marilyn E. Schneck and Dagnelie Gislin. "Prostethic Vision Assessment", in Dagnelie, Gislin, ed. Visual

Prosthetics: Physiology, Bioengineering, Rehabilitation (New York: Springer Science+Business Media LLC, 2011), 398.

59 Ibid, 67. 60 Pietro Silvio Rivetta ("Toddi"), "Rectangle-Film [25×19]", in Dominique Chateau and José Moure, ed. Screens

(Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016), 25-28.

Fig. 2.22: Pillar boxed shot in Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916)

18

In 1928, architect Frederick Kiesler designed the Screen-o-scope movie theater for the Film Arts Guild in New York. Here, curtains in the form of a vertical cat’s eye opened up to a screen that could be reframed in any aspect ratio using black masks (see fig. 2.23).61

Eisenstein's “dinamic square”

In 1930, the newly formed Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences in Hollywood was working on their standard for film aspect ratio, which needed some small alterations due to the introduction of a soundtrack along the film roll. To help with this, the Kodak Research Department made a study on classic art and concluded that – among horizontal artworks – the average aspect ratio was actually near 4:3 (vertical formats were not even considered in this study).62

In a speech to the Academy’s technicians branch, Sergei Eisenstein got into the discussion by proposing that cinema screening should allow for both horizontal and vertical framing. He proposed that the movie screen should be a “dinamic square,” so that filmmakers could decide themselves how to frame their works – using any aspect ratio. Eisenstein specifically argued for the use of vertical framings. He claimed that the fixed, horizontal aspect rations “for thirty years [...have] bent us and obliged us to passive horizontalism”; he pointed out that vertical images make up “50 percent of compositional possibilities exiled from the light of the screen.”63 Apart from pure artistic reasons, Eisenstein argued that humans have always aimed for verticality; that our ancestors started to walk upright, erected obelisks, towers and skyscrapers. He argued that humans, in general terms, have always aimed upwards.64

However, the Academy did not respond to Eisenstein's ideas. In 1932 the horizontal 4:3 format became the official “Academy ratio,” only slightly adjusted to 1.37:1 to allow for a sound track along the edge of the film roll. This aspect ratio was then used for cameras, projectors and movie screens worldwide until the introduction of television.65

61 Huhtamo, "Screenology; or, Media Archaeology of the Screen", 103. 62 Grant Lobban. "Film formats: All shapes and sizes." Cinema Technology 26, no. 1 (March 2013), 66.

63 Friedberg, 129. 64 Ibid, 132. 65 Friedberg, 132; Thompson and Bordwell, 301-306.

Fig. 2.23: Frederick Kiesler’s Screen-o-scope movie theater in New York (1929)

Photo by Frederick Kiesler

Fig. 2.24: Sergei Eisenstein argued for a "dinamic square"

Illustration by Mats Ulenius, based on a public domain image from the 1910’s; photographer unknown

19

Vertical frames in frames

In response to the competition from television in the 1950’s, movies became more colorful and more horizontal. Many competing widescreen formats were launched, including CinemaScope.66 Since the mid-1960’s and still today, two horizontal aspect ratios dominate cinema screening. The first is “standard widescreen format” (1.85:1), which is only slightly narrower than the format used for HD television and HD video (16:9 / 1.77:1). The second, wider cinema format is often called just ’Scope (2:35:1 or 2.39:1).67

Horizontal screens have dominated in film screenings for over 120 years. There have been filmmakers who – like Eisenstein – have wanted to experiment with vertical framings. But they’ve had to do it by using inset frames, split-screens, and “shots within the shot.”68 Split screens of different shapes, including vertical portraits, are used to show simultaneous actions in different locations in The Thomas Crown Affair (Norman Jewison, 1968). Similarly, art documentarists Henri Storck and Paul Haesaerts use vertically split screens to compare different styles of painting in art documentaries such as Rubens (Storck/Haesaerts, 1948) and De Rénoir à Picasso (Haesaerts, 1950).69

The creation of vertical frames within the frame can also be achieved already on the set; it is common that filmmakers use doorways or windows to create frames where the action centers. Two examples are The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) and Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968), full of vertical frames in the form of door openings. Another way to fit a vertical shot into a horizontal movie screen, is the use of 90-degree angle shots. Here, the camera is held sideways to film vertically; the shot then is turned 90 degrees in the editing. This technique is used for example in 2001: A Space Odyssey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968).

66 Friedberg, 175; Thompson and Bordwell, 302. 67 Thompson and Bordwell, 304f.

68 Friedberg, 201. Friedberg refers to writings by Gilles Deleuze on the screen as the frame of frames. 69 Jacobs, Steven. Framing Pictures: Film and the Visual Arts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,

2012.

Fig. 2.25: Split screen in The Thomas Crown Affair (Norman Jewison, 1968)

Fig. 2.26: Art by Renoir, Seurat and Picasso side by side in De Renoir à Picasso (Paul Haesaerts, 1950)

Fig. 2.27: Vertical "shot within the shot" in Rosemary's Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968)

Fig. 2.28: 90 degree angle shot in 2001: A Space Oddesey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968)

20

2.4 Television and Other Stationary Screens

When we think of stationary displays, such as television and computer screens, many of us think of horizontal equipment. But digging deeper, we find that many early designs were actually designed for portrait mode. One should remember that using a media archaeological approach, visions and ideas – alternative histories – can be as important as a successful product that eventually sets a standard.70 For example, long before television became a reality, Albert Robida illustrated his visions of the future in works like Le Vingtième Siècle (1883).71 Robida’s Telephonoscope, a combined television and video conferencing system, appeared in different shapes – but often as a vertical oval.

Television starts out in portrait mode

British inventor John Logie Baird demonstrated the first working television transmitter and receiver in the UK in 1925.72 Baird’s goal was to be able to transmit the face of a person talking – or singing in direct – but the image quality was not yet good enough. In 1926 Baird demonstrated the first grayscale moving images of faces; the aspect ratio at this time was 3:5 to 3:6. Baird realized that to transmit television over existing radio channels, as he wanted, he could only transmit images low in details. He has later explained that he wanted to transmit single person views of an announcer, actor, singer or dancer – in close-ups and ideally also in medium shots and full shots. He did not want to show the environment around the person, which he – with the transmission limitations he faced – considered “waste space.” By 1929 Baird had therefore settled for an aspect ratio that was even more vertical than before: 3:7.73 In 1929 the first commercially sold Baird Televisors – and the first BBC programming – became available. 70 Zielinski, Deep Time of the Media, 22; Parikka, 12-14; Natale, 525-526. 71 Albert Robida. Le Vingtième Siècle (Paris: George Decaux, 1883); José Moure. "Archaic Paradigms of the

Screen and it's Images", in Dominique Chateau and José Moure, ed. Screens (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016), 58-59.

72 Russel Burns, John Logie Baird: Television Pioneer (London: The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2000), 103.

73 Donald F. McLean. Restoring Baird's Image (Stevenage, UK: Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2000), 41-44.

Fig. 2.29: Robida's 1883 visions of a Telephonoscope

Illustration by Albert Robida / Public domain image.

Fig. 2.30: The televised face of Baird’s business partner Oliver Hutchinson (1926)

Image from Wikimedia Commons

Fig. 2.31: Advertisement for the Baird Televisor (1930)

Public domain image; used with additional permission from the Early Television Museum, Hillard, Ohio

21

Around the same time, many other television pioneers were also experimenting. In 1927, Herbert Ives at AT&T Bell Labs in New York demonstrated a television transmission of Herbert Hoover; the screen was in portrait mode – two inches by three inches.74 For AT&T as a telecommunications company, it was natural to focus on the user’s face, and portrait mode. In 1930 AT&T also demonstrated a two-way television system, an early version of the videophone – also with a portrait mode screen. Meanwhile, AT&T’s American rivals, General Electric, focused more on entertainment. GE’s Ernst Alexandersson designed a television set with a square display and televised the first ever TV drama in 1928.75 From the mid 1930’s, new television systems instead adopted the 4:3 format from cinema. By the time television had its big breakthrough in the 1950’s, a considerable part of television programming was made up old and new movies.76

Computer monitors and game machines

One of the first personal computers, the Zerox Alto introduced in 1973, had a vertical monitor. Focus was on desktop publishing and the screen was the size of a “U.S. letter” paper (8.5×11 inches).77 Some early Apple computers, such as the Macintosh IIcx (1989), came with a Portrait Display with a 640×870 resolution, equivalent to roughly a 3:4 aspect ratio. The idea was that the screen should be able to display an A4 or US Letter format document. This monitor type was discontinued by Apple in 1992, but there were still third-party portrait mode monitors available in the market.78 Actually, portrait mode computer screens are still quite common today, since many modern flat-screen monitors can be turned either direction, enabling programmers, designers and other professionals to turn their screens the way they wish.

74 Gary Edgerton. The Columbia History of American Television (New York: Columbia University Press, 2010),

31. 75 Edgerton, 32-36. 76 Thompson and Bordwell, 306. 77 Gerard O'Reagan. Introduction to the History of Computing (Zug: Springer, 2016), 128. 78 Lauren Black and Elizabeth S. Eva. "Pixels at an exhibition: InfoWorld tests 3 portrait monochrome displays

for the Mac II." "MacIntosh Supplement," InfoWorld 11, no 42 (16 October 1989): S1-S8.

Fig. 2.32: Xerox Alto computer (1973-1977)

Copyright Mark Richards; courtesy of the Computer History Museum, Mountain View, California

Fig. 2.33: Advertisement for the Apple Macintosh IIcx with a Macintosh Portrait Display (1989)

Copyright Apple Inc.

22

In the world of arcade games, portrait mode screens are common; well-known early examples are Space Invaders (Taito Corporation, 1978) and Pac-man (Namco Ltd., 1980), both first released in Japan. A home video console that had a built-in vertical monitor is the Vectrex (Western Technologies/Smith Engineering, 1982); its monitor was monochrome but had plastic screen overlays to simulate color.

Outdoor advertising screens

Advertising is one of the oldest film genres, and that includes outdoor advertising. Stereopticons, or magic lanterns, were used from the 1870’s to project advertising slideshows outdoors.79 The projected images were often round, but sometimes they had a vertical format.

A lot of print outdoor advertising – in the form of posters and billboards – is vertical, to take up less space for example on walls and sidewalks. In recent years, in some cities traditional advertising billboards are being replaced by vertical video screens. This makes it possible to use moving images, rotate various videos, and update the videos remotely.

79 Charles Musser. "Early Advertising and Promotional Films, 1893-1900: Edison Montion Pictures as a Case

Study." In Bo Florin, Nico de Klerk and Patrick Vonderau. Films that Sell. London: BFI Publishing, 2016, 87; Erkki Huhtamo. "Messages on the Wall: An Archaeology of Public Media Displays." In: Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin and Sabine Niederer, ed. Urban Screens Reader (Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2009), 23-25.

Fig. 2.36: Vertical outdoor projection in New York (1896)

Newspaper illustration "Election Night in New York City" by Charles Graham; Library of Congress, USA

Fig. 2.37: Outdoor video advertising screen in Stockholm (2017)

Photo by Mats Ulenius

Fig. 2.34: Pac-man arcade game (1980)

Copyright Namco Ltd.

Fig. 2.35: Vectrex home video console (1982)

Spelmuseet, Stockholm; photo by Mats Ulenius

23

2.5 Mobile Vertical Video The first mobile phones with still picture cameras and rudimentary video cameras were made commercially available in 2000 in Japan and South Korea.80 Some models had the camera on the back, intended to photograph the environment, while other models had a user-facing camera for selfies. Better and better cameras and video cameras followed. Around 2005, the Nokia N70 – with its square screen – was considered a high-end video phone, and Nokia was sponsoring a short film award at the British Independent Film Awards.81 In 2010 Apple introduced the iPhone4 model, which had both front- and back facing cameras as well as the new FaceTime app for video calls.82 By controlling both hardware and software, Apple were able to simplify the production and viewing of video for their users. The company provided a unified platform, which soon attracted big numbers of third party app developers.83 Smartphone users gradually started to use video apps, hold up their phone with one hand and film vertically.

As of 2018, about one third of the world population has a smartphone, which means they always carry around a video camera and a screen.84 Mobile phone video cameras have the camera mounted in a way, so that its aspect ratio matches the screen layout. This means that if the user holds the phone upright while filming, the video comes out in portrait mode.

Most smartphone screens today have an aspect ratio of 9:16; it is the vertical equivalent to the 16:9 format used for televisions, computer monitors, and the “Full HD” video format. Some smartphone models from Samsung and LG have an even taller screen – 9:18. But the explanation is horizontal. If you turn these phones sideways, their screens match the Univisium 2:1 format that cinematographer Vittorio Storaro has proposed – and used – since 1998; Storaro wants to see it as a unified format for both television and movie theaters.85 I have not found any videos created in a vertical equivalent to Univisium, to be watched by using the new phones vertically.

80 Peres, 313. 81 Kim Louise Walden. "Archaeology of Mobile Film: Blink, Bluevend, and the Pocket Shorts." In Pepita

Hesselberth and Maria Poulaki, ed. Compact Cinematics: The Moving Image in the Age of Bit-sized Media (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 134-135.

82 Apple Inc., "Identify your iPhone model", Website of Apple Inc., 2018. 83 Pelle Snickars. "A Walled Garden Turned Into a Rain Forest", in Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau. Moving

Data: The iPhone and the Future of Media (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), 155-168; Snickars and Vonderau, 2-3.

84 Statista, Inc. "Number of smartphone users worldwide from 2014 to 2020." Website of Statista Inc., 2017.

85 Vittorio Storaro. "What is Univisium". Blog post, 4 March 2007; David Nield. "Here's Why The Displays In New Phones Are So Weird And Wide." Gizmodo Australia. April 3, 2017.

24

Vertical video apps

Through the popularity of Snapchat and other smartphone apps, many consumers today shoot and share video on a daily basis. The convenience of holding the phone upright – combined with the popularity of apps that favor the use of portrait mode – has made vertical video a common format. Key drivers have been new technology, convenience, and the human interest in self-portraiture. Some of the most popular apps introduced in the 2010’s include:

•   Snapchat; the app was launched in 2011 and got video functionality in 2012.86 It features video messaging, video publishing and video chat – all in a vertical format. Snapchat has been a driver in the adoption of vertical video and has influenced competitors – especially Facebook and Instagram – to follow their lead.87

•   Facebook has had video functionality since 2007 but made a big push into video around 2014. Facebook also offers video calling and launched its Facebook Live video streaming function for consumers – operating largely in portrait mode – in 2016.88

•   Instagram added support for square videos in 2013 and started allowing vertical video uploads in 2015. In 2016 a vertical-only function called Instagram Stories, widely seen as a copy of Snapchat, was introduced.89 Instagram is owned by Facebook.

•   WhatsApp is another Facebook-owned app that introduced video calling in 2016.90 •   FaceTime is, as already mentioned, Apple’s video calling app launched in 2010.91 •   YouTube has been slow to support portrait mode, but vertical videos now play full

screen – on Android phones since 2015 and on iPhones since 2017. YouTube is also testing a function called YouTube Reels, similar to Snapchat and Instagram Stories.92

•   Musical.ly is an app for creating and sharing vertical music videos, launched in 2014.93

86 J.J. Colao "Snapchat Adds Video, Now Seeing 50 Million Photos A Day." Forbes, 20 December 2012. 87 Jon Fingas. "Zuckerberg reportedly asked Instagram to copy Snapchat Stories". Engadget, 10 April 2018. 88 Carissa Bell. "Facebook's live videos can now be twice as long." Mashable, 21 July 2016. 89 Robinson Meyer. "It's No Longer Hip to Be Square—on Instagram, At Least." The Atlantic, 25 August 2015;

Josh Constine. "Instagram launches 'Stories,' a Snapchatty feature for imperfect sharing". TechCrunch, 2 August 2016.

90 Josh Constine and Sarah Perez. "WhatsApp launches video calling for everyone." TechCrunch, 15 November 2016.

91 Apple Inc. 92 Jakob Kastrenakes. "YouTube now properly displays vertical videos on iOS." The Verge, 21 December 2017;

Sarah Perez. "YouTube is launching its own take on Stories with a new video format called ‘Reels’". TechCrunch, 29 November 2017.

93 Dan Rys. "Fresh Off a Big Funding Round, Musical.ly Signs Its First Major Label Deal with Warner Music."

Billboard, 29 June 2016.

Fig. 2.38: Filming vertically

Photo licensed from iStock

25

Dispositif of mobile vertical video

While vertical media is not new, the viewing situation – especially for mobile vertical video – does distinguish it from other film forms. Digitalization of film can be more or less apparent to the viewer. At the movie theaters, no matter how much has changed behind the scenes, many viewers feel that movies still look the same.94 When it comes to mobile vertical video, the dispositif is more strikingly new. While dispositif is not the focus of this paper, I will here elaborate a little on it – only for the special case of mobile vertical video. The following are seven distinct characteristics; a list I have compiled myself from different sources.

First, an obvious defining quality of mobile vertical video is that it is nomadic; we always carry our video screen in our pocket. We can put down our video, and pick it up again later, just like we read a book.95 André Gaudreault and Philippe Marion call this nomadic consumption.96 Anne Friedberg describes this as our mobile and pervasive virtual window.97

Second, the viewing situation is – due to the small and narrow frame – individual, in a physical sense. It could be seen as a return to the individual viewing situation of Edison’s Kinetocope.98 The wish for solitude can even be a reason for watching, for example to avoid eye contact with strangers on the subway.99

Third, mobile vertical video is self-centered in the sense that users film and watch themselves: their own portrait, their surroundings, their life. The often-used metaphor of the movie screen as a mirror becomes very literal. Gaudreault and Marion talk about spect-actors and Max Schleser uses the term micro-autobiographies (more on this in chapter 2.6).100 At the same time, video messaging and status updates could also be called social and communicative.

Fourth is an acute temporality. The whole video production chain – shooting and post-production – can be done in a matter of minutes, or even seconds. Distribution over the internet means a video can be viewed almost instantaneously. As of spring 2018, Snapchat video messages can only be viewed maximum twice by the recipient and are then automatically erased. One could argue that mobile vertical video shares the “liveness” of television,101 but is more personal; this liveness implies a more engaged, embodied spectator.102

94 André Gaudreault and Philippe Morion describe this as the parallel "continuity and discontinuity" of

digital cinema; Gaudreault and Marion, 8. 95 Ibid, 30. 96 Ibid, 129-130. 97 Friedberg, 87. 98 Ibid, 153, 164. 99 Pasi Väliaho. "Solitary Screens: On the Recurrence and Consumption of Images." In Pepita Hesselberth and

Maria Poulaki, ed. Compact Cinematics: The Moving Image in the Age of Bit-sized Media (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 123-129.

100 Gaudreault and Marion, 51; Max Schleser. "Connecting through Mobile Autobiographies: Self-Reflexive Mobile Filmmaking, Self-Representation, and Selfies." In Marsha Berry and Max Schleser, ed. Mobile Media Making in an Age of Smartphones (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 148-158.

101 Friedberg, 177. 102 Janna Houwen. Film and Video Intermediality: The Question of Medium Specificity in Contemporary Moving

Images (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 115.

26

Fifth, most mobile vertical video is distributed via apps, which makes it separate from other forms of film. Vertical content is less compatible with other, horizontal screens, so viewers need the appropriate equipment – such as a smartphone with the right app, and ideally headphones – to watch it.

Sixth, mobile vertical video is not only viewable, but also touchable. Huhtamo talks about a “touching practice,” where “a tactile relationship to the media machine [...] transforms the viewer into an ’interactor.’”103 This is not an entirely new practice; for example, it was common to touch the images of the camera obscura. But it is very different from the apparatus of the movie theatre.

Seventh, the dispositif of mobile vertical video is Brechtian. Susan Sontag has said, about watching a movie on television, that it’s “radically disrespectful of film [...] To be kidnapped, you have to be in a movie theater.”104 Then imagine a person watching video on a smartphone while walking on a sidewalk; light and sound conditions may be bad and the user has to avoid all kinds of dangers – in other words multitask.105 The screen is small and vertical, and the user doesn’t hold the screen upright – a golden rule of a believable immersive perspective since the Renaissance.106 The viewer is likely very aware of the frame of the screen; therefore mobile vertical video – because of its apparatus – is extremely non-immersive.107 Even non-mobile vertical video is likely to be non-immersive, because of the frame – if we remind ourselves that the human field of vision is horizontal (roughly 210×130 degrees).108 In other words the vertical screen comes with an inherent Brechtian estrangement effect.

103 Erkki Huhtamo. "The four practices? Challenges for an Archaeology of the Screen." In Chateau, Dominique

and José Moure, ed. Screens. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016, 116-117.

104 Gaudreault and Marion, 15. 105 Friedberg, 233-235; Kim Louise Walden. "Archaeology of Mobile Film: Blink, Bluevend, and the Pocket

Shorts." In Pepita Hesselberth and Maria Poulaki, ed. Compact Cinematics: The Moving Image in the Age of Bit-sized Media (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 134-142.

106 Friedberg, 26-48, 233-235. 107 Ibid, 11, 81, 156-157. 108 Schneck and Gislin, 398.

Fig. 2.39: The human field of vision is horizontal, which may help remind the viewer about the presence of the small, vertical frame.

Photo licensed from iStock; graphic overlay by Mats Ulenius.

27

2.6 Film Genres Many genres of film are produced in a vertical format – both by consumers and by professional filmmakers. In this chapter I elaborate on the main present-day genres of vertical video. One could argue however, that we are still at a stage of “early film” when it comes to vertical video; many new genres may still appear.

Micro-autobiographies

The use of smartphones has rapidly taught millions and millions of consumers how to produce simple – or advanced – videos. These creators can be described – with a term coined by Gaudreault and Marion – as spect-actors: active consumers viewing, producing and acting in videos.109 The main genre of vertical video today is “personal videos” in the form of video messaging, selfies and other kinds of micro-autobiographies, as Schleser calls them.110

Anne Friedberg and others have identified three dominating historic methaphors for the movie screen – the picture frame, the window and the mirror.111 When it comes to mobile vertical video screens, I find the mirror metaphor – described by Giovanni Papini already in 1907112 – to be very suitable; a mirror we use to look at our own lives.

The micro-autobiography format is closely associated with social media apps such as Snapchat and Instagram – apps that constantly bring out new, playful special effects and filters. This kind of video often uses digital layering, frontality and suppression of depth.113 When spect-actors experiment with the medium they use all kinds of available tricks and effects to create an effect on their viewers, their social media followers. In this sense the cinema of attractions of early film can be said to back; filmmakers don’t even need any compositing skills – everyone can be Méliès.114

109 Gaudreault and Marion, 51. 110 Max Schleser. "Connecting through Mobile Autobiographies: Self-Reflexive Mobile Filmmaking, Self-

Representation, and Selfies." In Marsha Berry and Max Schleser, ed. Mobile Media Making in an Age of Smartphones (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 148-158.

111 Friedberg, 16; Francesco Casetti. The Lumière Galaxy (New York: Columbia University Press, 2015), 158-159.

112 Giovanni Papini. "La filosofia del cinematografo," La Stampa (18 May 1907), 1-2.

113 Friedberg, 3; Andrew Wallenstein. "Snap Judgment." Variety 331, no. 8 (March 22, 2016): 34-39. 114 Tom Gunning, "The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde," Wide Angle

8, nos. 3-4 (1986); Gaudreault and Marion, 56.

Fig. 2.40: La Sirène (Georges Méliès, 1904)

Fig. 2.41: Mermaid filter on Snapchat (2016 )

28

While this playfulness is most typical of micro-autobiographies, it also influences other genres of vertical video. New Instagram effects such as the boomerang effect – where the shots are played forward and backwards – tend to spread to other genres. Many of the vertical short films I have studied also have something of a visual playfulness about them – more on this in chapter three.

Advertising

A second huge genre is advertising. Instagram and Snapchat are major advertising platforms for companies wishing to reach young customers. Snapchat started running vertical video ads for a few selected partner advertisers in 2016. Both Snapchat and Instagram made vertical video ads more broadly available for advertisers in the spring of 2017.115 Among products marketed with vertical commercials are of course blockbuster movies – where vertical ads are “pan-and-scans” from the originals.

Even in “horizontal advertising,” for example on television, there are examples where separate scenes are filmed in vertical format. The narrative may include a character shown filming with a mobile phone, subsequently cutting to the supposed “mobile footage”; the purpose of this could be to convey a feeling of temporality and authenticity, as in Your future starts here, a 2017 commercial on YouTube from EF Education First. In Portraits, a Jeep Super Bowl commercial from 2016, black-and-white photos in a vertical aspect ratio (7.7:9) – with black on the sides – are used to convey the brand’s heritage.

115 Ilyse Liffreing. "The year in Snapchat advertising," Digiday UK (27 December 2017); Instagram

Business Team. "Instagram Stories ads—now available for all businesses globally." Instagram Business Blog, 1 March 2017.

Fig. 2.42: Burberry Snapchat commercial.

Copyright Burberry Group PLC.

Fig. 2.43: Mobile vertical film trailer for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Zack Snyder, 2016)

Fig. 2.44: EF commercial including "mobile footage," made to look like it is filmed by the film character herself (2017)

Fig. 2.45: Jeep Super Bowl Commercal (2016)

29

News and TV style programming

On Snapchat there is a rapidly growing number of professional news channels and content providers publishing vertical programming on a daily basis under a tab called Snapchat Discovery. Snapchat has over 60 content partners including NBC News, New York Times, E! News, Discovery Channel, ESPN, Comedy Central, Sky and BBC.116 In New York, there is also a separate “mobile TV channel” called Dreams, transmitting exclusively vertical content for viewing on smartphones.117

Live video

All three before-mentioned genres – micro-autobiographies, advertising and news – are also produced in the form of live video. Many social media platforms, such as Facebook, Instagram, Periscope/Twitter and YouTube, offer live video functionality for its users. Often, for example in the Facebook app, the default aspect ratio is vertical.118

Animated film

Two of the most widely distributed vertical videos – outside social media – are animated. The Numberlys (William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg, 2013) was shortlisted for the 2015 Oscar for best animated short.119 The film has also been screened at many North American film festivals, including the 2014 Toronto International Film Festival, and has won several kids’ movie awards. Alicewinks (David Neal, 2012) uses classic illustrations by 12 different artists to tell the story of Alice in Wonderland; it’s creator claims that this 164-minute work is the world’s first feature-length vertical animated film.120

116 Andrew Wallenstein. "Snapchat Shows: Inside the Plan to Reimagine TV for the Mobile Era." Variety 336,

no. 3 (May 23, 2017): 46-49; Alex Farber. "Sky primes portrait video for Snapchat channel." Broadcast Magazine, April 7, 2016; Alex Farber. "Snapchat reveals content plans." Broadcast Magazine, August 23, 2017.

117 Jeff Baumgartner, "Mobile Video with a Vertical Hold," Multichannel News 38, no. 10, April 3, 2017, 18. 118 David Basulto. Life. Camera. Action.: How to Turn Your Mobile Device into a Filmmaking Powerhouse

(Austin: Lioncrest Publishing, 2016), 125-137; Joel Comm. Live Video Revolution (New York: Morgan James Publishing, 2017); Natt Garun. "Facebook Live now lets you add a friend to live stream together." The Verge, 23 May 2017.

119 Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, "10 Animated Shorts Advance in 2014 Oscar Race," Official Oscars website, 5 November 2014.

120 David Neal. "Vertical Video: A Retrospective. The First 10 Years (2007-2016)." Online document, revised 20th November 2017 (Buena Vista, Colorado, USA: Walrus & Carpenter Productions, 2017).

Fig. 2.46: The Numberlys (William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg, 2013)

Fig. 2.47: Alicewinks (David Neal, 2012)

30

Music videos

Artists targeting a young audience have started to produce portrait mode music videos for viewing on smartphones. For example, in 2017 Selena Gomez released her Bad Liar video via the Spotify app – only in vertical format.121 Other artists that have released similar videos include Taylor Swift, Ariana Grande, Sam Smith and Nicki Minaj.

Short film

With the proliferation of smart phones, there is an increasing number of short films produced in vertical format. I have already mentioned – in chapter 1.3 – five film festivals that focus on the short format. These festivals are typically small-scale and arranged by small groups of film enthusiasts. Screening is done cinema-style in high-ceiling meeting rooms, churches and the like, using modified projectors and vertically shaped screens (see figs. 2.52 and 3.1). Vertical short film is the main subject of my style analysis in chapter three.

Feature film

Youth on the March (Mike Retter, Australia, 2017) premiered as part of the official selection at the Adelaide Film Festival in October 2017. The director claims it is the world’s first feature film shot in vertical format.122 One other film that is right on the limit to the vertical – using a square 1:1 aspect ratio – is Mommy (Xavier Dolan, 2014). In this film the framing is used to get up-close and intimate with the characters. Mommy is not only experimental but also critically acclaimed; the film won the Cannes Jury Prize in 2014.123

Given the proliferation of short films and news produced for mobile vertical consumption, it seems likely that more feature films will soon appear. And for sure people will argue whether vertical films are “real films.” Proponents of an extendable conception of cinema will, like film researcher Philippe Dubois did about video, say: “Oui, c’est du cinema.”124

121 Lizzie Plaugic. "Selena Gomez releases new vertical music video you can only watch on Spotify’s mobile

app." The Verge, 18 May 2017. 122 John Dexter. "Rise of the Vertical Video." The Adelaide Review, 3 October 2017.

123 Festival de Cannes. Website of the 2014 Festival. 124 Gaudreault and Marion, 17-19.

Fig. 2.48: Opening titles of Youth on the March (Mike Retter, 2017)

Fig. 2.49: The moment before the frame changes aspect ratio in Mommy (Xavier Dolan, 2014)

31

Video art

Experimental filmmaker Paolo Gioli plays with verticality by exposing vertical photos across several film frames in works like Anonimatograph (1972); the viewer gets to see one part of the vertical photo at a time, in a jerky manner.125 Other video artists such as Bill Viola has long created films with actual vertical framing; these artists are not tied down by any movie theater apparatus and may prefer to disassociate themselves from cinema tradition. One well-known example of vertical video art is The Greeting (Bill Viola, 1995).126 In this work, Viola creates a modern-day version of Jacopo Pontormo’s renaissance painting – both versions show the characters in a portrait mode full shot.

An art project called Vertical Cinema premiered at the 2013 Kontraste art festival in Krems, Austria, and has been touring internationally since then. The artworks were shot in 35 mm vertical cinemascope, so when projected on a monumental vertical screen – using a modified projector – they are just slightly taller and narrower than a smartphone screen.127 Vertical Cinema has been screened at dozens of festivals and art events, including the 2014 International Film Festival Rotterdam and Leeds International Film Festival, the 2015 editions of SXSW in Austin, Glasgow Short Film Festival and Melbourne International Film Festival and – with some new artworks included – the 2017 Sonic Acts Festival in Amsterdam and the 2018 Göteborg Film Festival.128

125 David Bordwell. "Paolo Gioli’s Vertical Cinema." David Bordwell’s website on cinema, August 2009. 126 Huhtamo, "Up and Down the Shaft of Time"; Maria Donata Napoli. "The ‘Mobile Effect’ on Screen Format: the

Case of Vertical Videos." CITAR Journal 8, no. 2 (December 2016).

127 Vertical Cinema. Website of the art project, 2018. 128 Ibid.

Fig. 2.50: Visitazione by Jacopo Pontormo (1529)

Oil on panel altarpiece in the San Michele e San Francesco church in Carmignano, Tuscany; Wikimedia Commons.

Fig. 2.51: The Greeting by Bill Viola (1995)

Video installation at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth

Fig. 2.52: Screening of Pyramid Flare (Johann Lurf, 2013) at the Kontraste festival (2013)

Photo by Marcus Gradwohl; used with permission from Sonic Acts

Fig. 2.53: Screening of Colterrain (Tina Frank, 2013) at Göteborg Film Festival (2018)

Photo by Mikael Ringlander; used with permission

32

2.7 Controversy around Vertical Video Since vertical video took off with consumers in the early 2010’s, there has been a strong discourse – especially from classically schooled film makers – that the format is “wrong.” This discourse is evident online, in articles and internet forums for filmmakers.129 Youtubers who are used to filming and watching the 16:9 format have also weighed in against vertical video, often in a humorous tone. Filming vertically is likened with an amateur mistake, or an annoyance spreading among the unknowing masses – a “vertical video syndrome,” VVS.130

There has also been a counter-discourse among filmmakers who enjoy the challenge and the opportunities of the format.131 Media researcher Miriam Ross and her collaborators posted a Vertical Video Manifesto, defending the vertical format as feminist, while tying the horizontal film format to a male gaze.132 Later, Ross has said that the manifesto was partly satirical.133 Today it seems – from my experience – like many filmmakers have gotten more used to the vertical format; it seems less controversial and more filmmakers enjoy working with it. Especially those who work in advertising have realized that vertical video is something they need to champion to stay relevant; to be able to deliver content for the channels that – especially the younger – audiences watch.

129 David Neal. "Gunfight at the V.V. Corral: the shootout over vertical video." Online Journalism Blog, 15 June

2016; Nicole LaJeunesse. "New Views from Mobile Video: Vertical, Spherical, Live." Videomaker Magazine 31, no. 2, August 2016, 42-43; Andrew Liszewski. "Brilliant, overdue app forces your phone to take horizontal videos." Gizmodo, 15 January 2014; Ross Westaby. "Westaby Web Moment: Why are we still using vertical video?" FOX 17 WXMI-TV, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2 October 2015.

130 Damien Eckhardt-Jacobi and Vincent Bova. "Vertical Video Syndrome - A PSA." Glove and Boots YouTube channel, 5 June 2012; Franchesca Ramsey, Andrew Huang, Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart and and Nocola Foti. "Turn your phone!" Chescaleigh YouTube channel, 26 June 2013; Jonathan Mann. "Turn Your Phone! (Vertical Video PSA)." Jonathan Mann YouTube channel, 9 July 2013.

131 Wéland Bourne. "Is it time to accept vertical video?" Videomaker Magazine 30, no. 8, February 2016: 46; Zana Barakat. Filmmakers, Embrace Vertical!" JSK Stanford YouTube channel, 15 May 2015.

132 Miriam Ross and Maddy Glen. "Vertical Cinema Manifesto." Miriamruthross YouTube channel, 17 January 2013; Laura Mulvey. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Screen 16, No. 3 (1975), 6-18.

133 Miriam Ross and Maddy Glen. "Vertical Cinema: New Digital Possibilities." Rhizones, No. 26 (2014).

33

3. Vertical Style The vertical format is still new to many filmmakers; one could say that we are in a phase of “early cinema” for the vertical format. This chapter focuses on an analysis of compositional features in a sample of such “early films,” my source material: eleven vertical short films screened at the 2016 Vertical Film Festival in outside Sydney. The chapter begins with an introduction of each of the films. I then go into an analysis focusing first on movement of characters and camera, then on shot composition – especially scale of shot – and finally on editing and effects.

While overall in this paper I use a media archaeological approach, in this chapter I combine it with formal style analysis. This is a tool from the field of history of film styles – also called history of film form134 – used by film historians such as Kristin Thompson, David Bordwell and Barry Salt.135 One of their main research tools is formal analysis of films, which can assign films to – or distinguish them from – certain artistic traditions. In other words, history of film styles attempts to explain stylistic continuity and change over time.

Apart from a qualitative analysis, I also use a quantitative method inspired by Barry Salt, who calls his method statistical style analysis.136 By counting different kinds of shots in the source material films, actual numbers are used to back up the analysis. That said, one must keep in mind that sometimes outliers may skew the statistics. For example, one single film (Addendum) greatly increases the total number of vertical split screens in the film sample. This kind of considerations are taken into account in this elaboration on compositional features and style of vertical short film.

134 Adrian Martin. Mise en Scène and Film Style: From Classical Hollywood to New Media Art (New York:

Palgrave Macmillan, 2014). 135 Thompson and Bordwell; Bordwell and Thompson; Salt, Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis;

Salt, Moving into Pictures: More on Film History, Style, and Analysis. 136 Salt, Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis.

Fig. 3.1: Projection on a four meter tall screen at the 2016 Vertical Film Festival. Digitally  manipulated  photo  by  Adam  Sébire.  Used  with  permission.  

34

3.1 Short Presentation of the Films Studied Here I briefly introduce each of the eleven films that are the focus of my analysis, highlighting features interesting from a vertical video perspective. Many of the films are available to watch on the website of the Vertical Film Festival.137

Addendum

Addendum (Ferenc Kiss, Hungary, 2016) is a distinct montage film, straddling the border between art film and video art. There are no visible characters, but a lot of NASA footage. The film thematizes the vertical both through its subject – a rocket launch – and through artistic modes such as a 90-degree flipping of the horizon; this turns the horizontal into vertical. The film also includes seven mirror effect split screens, vertical, as well as shots of horizontal mirror effects.

Alia

Alia (Matias Martinez, Chile, 2016) is a fictional story of a girl and her terrorist brother. The film uses a mix of scenes filmed in studio and on location, in city streets; it is especially in the studio scenes that shot framings are clearly planned for the vertical format. For example, there is a two-shot of Aila and her brother, both fitting perfectly into the vertical frame.

137 Vertical Film Festival website: www.verticalfilmfestival.org/vff-2016/ [12 May 2018].

Fig. 3.2-3.4: Verticality in subject and in form in Addendum

Fig. 3.5-3.7: Vertical framing in the studio scenes of Aila

35

Along the Lines

Along the Lines (Antonella Lauria and Susanna Vicentini, Italy, 2016) is an intimate portrait of Italian mime artist Romano Rocchi. The framing focuses on the human subject, tightly framed from full shots to intimate close-ups, leaving out most of the surroundings. The film opens with a shot of Rocchi stretched out on his bed – flipped 90 degrees to fit into the vertical frame (see fig 3.35).

Eiland

Eiland (Kuesti Fraun, Germany, 2016) thematizes verticality; the film focuses on a man that climbs a ladder stretching up into the sky, in order to take down a kite. Almost every shot in the film seems to be planned specifically for a vertical screen; most shots are also relatively wide, keeping a distance from the film’s subject. Eiland’s footage has a fast and jerky look, as if some film frames are missing; the look is reminiscent of a silent-era film that is undercranked, played at a higher frame rate than it was filmed.

Fig. 3.8-3.10: Tight framings in Along the Lines

Fig. 3.11-3.13: Accentuated verticality in Eiland

36

Impact

Impact (Jean-Charles Granjon, France, 2015) is another film thematizing verticality, as it is about high-diving. World champion cliff diver Lionel Franc portrays himself as he prepares mentally for an enormous leap into the ocean. Filmed with high-end equipment in slow-motion and alternating wide and tight shots of the diver plunging into turquoise water, Impact highlights the beauty and the verticality of the scene. Even the title graphics have been set vertically within the frame. The film impressed the jury at the 2016 Vertical Film Festival, where it was awarded first prize.

Passages

Passages (Mira Turajlic, 2016) is an adaptation of a 1934 magazine article by F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, about a travelling couple. Turajlic has both directed and shot this film, possibly while out travelling on holiday herself. One third of the film’s shots are tracking shots – moving forward or moving sideways. Many shots give the impression of point-of-view; the viewer gets to look – across the train isle, out an airplane window, down at what the photographer’s own legs and feet, walking. There are also a couple of top shots and high angle shots; the purpose may be to give a feeling of distance, detachment; the characters remain mysterious, drifting, on the move around Europe.

Fig. 3.14-3.16: Slow-motion and vertical movement in Impact

Fig. 3.17-3.19: Top shots and high camera angles in Passages

37

Stork Story

Stork Story (Francesco Mattuzzi, Italy, 2016) is a story very suited to a vertical format, since the film is set in a church tower. When the bell ringer plays symphonies on the old bell piano, a stork – nesting in the tower above – answers with bill-clattering. The film is shot with a fixed camera, without any kind of camera movement. In one scene, where the bell ringer plays the piano, the photographer uses a top shot, looking directly down on the keys. Instead of using the bell player’s point-of-view, facing the keys, the shot is framed “sideways,” so the keys fit into the vertical frame.

Theo

In Theo (Cédric Martin, France, 2016), verticality is thematized; the characters are surrounded by tall trees, and the little boy falls down vertically into a pit cave. It’s also one of the two films that have vertically typeset title graphics. The film is dynamically shot with handheld, professional equipment; the camera tracks, pans, rises up, circles the characters. There are four top shots – looking down into, or up from, the pit cave – and twelve close ups and big close ups. Apart from the two main characters, the mother and the son, a deer appears as a third character in the story; a savior who shows a way out of the vertical trap that is the cave.

Fig. 3.20-3.22: Vertical shot compositions in Stork Story

Fig. 3.23-3.25: Vertical title graphics, trees and pit caves in Theo

38

Tried

Tried (Charles Williams, Australia, 2016) centers on a monologue about police violence by actor Abdul Hammoud. Shot partly with a mobile phone and partly with a high-end professional camera, the Arri Alexa, Tried includes only five shots. The film opens with a close-up of a hand holding a mobile phone; on the phone’s screen we see Hammoud getting filmed – a vertical frame-in-frame. Tried also includes a 75 second sideways tracking shot following the actor as he walks around holding his monologue, ending with a close-up.

Turuu

Turuu (Joerg Locher and Jeremias Heppeler, Germany, 2016) is a portrait of a nomad boy who trains horses in the Gobi Desert of Mongolia. Most of the film actually consists of split screens, made up of two or three horizontal frames arranged above each other to fill up the vertical screen. For example, in one part of the screen we see Turuu – or his mother – talk to the camera, while in the other part of the screen we see a wide shot of Turuu on his horse. In one shot involving two camels, both animals have been squeezed onto the screen by using a split screen, where the empty space between the camels has been eliminated.

Fig. 3.29-3.31: Vertical and horizontal split screens in Turuu

Fig. 3.26-3.28: Tried includes only five shots; one of them is a 75 second tracking shot

39

Umwelt

Umwelt (Yoshiyuki Katayama, Japan, 2015) is a montage of four different time-lapse shots of insects climbing on flowers; the camera is fixed, without any movement. In each scene, the flower has time to both bloom and wither – time-lapse style – while the insect climbs the plant in what seems like real-time. The effect is both aesthetically pleasing and intriguing, forcing the viewer to wonder how it was produced. Similar time-lapse shots of blooming flowers were used already in the 1920's and 1930's in experimental films such as From Bulb to Flower (Van bol tot bloem, Jan Cornelis Mol, 1931). Since the flower stems in Umwelt are tall and upright, the vertical framing is well adapted to the subject matter.

3.2 Movement of Characters and Camera Media theorists have pointed out how the introduction of smartphones – for filming and viewing – could bring new cinematic expressions, the same way the introduction of handheld cameras did in the 1940’s.138 That said, out of the eleven vertical short films analyzed in this paper, only three – Eiland, Passages and part of Tried – are actually filmed using a smartphone (see the appendix with film facts). However, about half of the films are shot with some kind of handheld camera, adding movement (see table 3.1).

Huhtamo has pointed out that in horizontal cinema, the action mainly plays out horizontally; vertical action is a “deviation from the normal.”139 In handbooks for filmmakers, it is explained that horizontal camera movements are more common than vertical.140 This is validated by the statistical style analysis carried out by Barry Salt on 125 horizontal feature

138 Maria Engberg and Jay David Bolter. "Mobile Cinematics," in Pepita Hesselberth and Maria Poulaki, ed.

Compact Cinematics: The Moving Image in the Age of Bit-sized Media (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017), 167; Dean Keep. "Artist with a Camera-Phone: A Decade of Mobile Photography," in Marsha Berry and Max Schleser, ed. Mobile Media Making in an Age of Smartphones (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 14-24.

139 Huhtamo, "Up and Down the Shaft of Time." In his speech, Huhtamo did mention some classic movie scenes famous for mastering vertical movement in a horizontal frame, such as the sequential fixed camera shots of Jack and the beanstalk (George Fleming and Edwin S. Porter, 1902) and the crane shots following Buster Keaton up and down the stairs in The Cameraman (Edward Sedgwick, 1928).

140 Daniel Arijon. Grammar of the Film Language. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1991.

Fig. 3.32-3.34: In Umwelt, a flower blooms and withers while an insect climbs up its stem

40

films: Salt’s statistics show that pan shots are almost five times more common than tilt shots; if we only look at films less than 20 years old, pan shots are still 3.3 times more common than tilts.141

This ratio is very different when looking at vertical short films; in my source material, tilt shots are actually more common than pan shots; the ratio is 10:7 (see table 3.1). Several of the films studied center around vertical action; a spaceship launch in Addendum, a man climbing a ladder in Eiland, climbing insects in Umwelt and cliff diving in Impact; there is also a child falling into a pit cave in Theo (even if this happens off-camera). In summary, a vertical frame seems to invite vertical action, as well as vertical camera movement.

An explanation why filmmakers avoid pan shots in the vertical frame could be that it quickly gets obvious to the viewer when a character is even just a little off-center. If the camera does not follow the character very smoothly, shot composition may feel unbalanced. It is also hard for the viewer to see where the character is heading, since the vertical frame shows little of the surroundings. I believe that these aesthetic considerations may discourage filmmakers from using horizontal movements – both for characters and for the camera. It is easier with long shots, when the character is smaller and further away from the edge of the frame. This seems to be confirmed by an analysis of the pan shots in my short film sample; altogether – in the eleven films – there are only seven vertically framed pan shots, and all of these are either long shots or do not include any characters at all.

As for camera tracking shots, my assumption was that the vertical frame would be more inviting to forward- and back tracking shots than to sideways tracking shots, since the vertical 141 Salt, "Data tables"

Table 3.1: Camera movement; statistical style analysis

41

frame shows so little on the sides. That can, however, not be concluded from my analysis of the vertical short films studied here; the number of forward/back tracking shots is actually exactly equal to the number of sideways tracks. I have not found any comparable data for horizontal film, so when it comes to tracking shots the results are inconclusive.

More related to camera position than camera movement, I would also like to point out two kinds of playful shots seen in the short films studied. First, both Addendum and Along the lines include 90-degree angle shots. In the latter film there is an interesting sequence with mime artist Romano Rocchi getting out of bed, where we see him stretched out – vertically – in bed. Second, another unusual angle – the top shot – is used in six out of eleven of the short films studied. This may indicate a certain playfulness in their film style.

Table 3.2: Unusual angles; statistical style analysis

Fig. 3.35-3.37: 90 degree angle shots in Along the Lines

42

3.3 Shot Composition When it comes to framing characters, the vertical format presents different challenges than the horizontal. While it is common in horizontal film to place characters off-center – according to the rule of thirds or the golden ratio142 – this kind of framing may not work as well in a very narrow frame, in my opinion. If the character gets too close to the edge of the frame, the composition may easily look unbalanced. Laya Maheswari also warns photographers, in an article in Filmmaker Magazine, not to use the rule of thirds vertically; the result can be “clumsy,” “jarring” and “off-putting,” she warns.143

Scale of shot

Since human faces and bodies have a vertical shape, when standing up or sitting, they fit neatly into a vertical frame – hence the name “portrait mode.” But while human subjects are shaped to fill a vertical frame, little of what’s located to the left or right in the surroundings can fit into same the frame; vertical shots of people tend to leave out most of the surroundings. To study shot scale in my selection of short vertical films, I focus on shots including one or several characters – humans or animals – and use the eight categories of scale of shot of Barry Salt: 144

•   Very long shot (VLS): the character is very small •   Long shot (LS): there’s plenty of room above or below the character •   Full shot (LS): the character fits vertically in the frame •   Medium long shot (MLS): from the knee up •   Medium shot (MS): from the hips up •   Medium Close up (MCU): from the waist up •   Close up (CU): from the chest/shoulders up •   Big close up (BCU): only the face, or part of it

While more basic categories, such as “bust,” were used already before 1919, Salt traces the use of categories similar to his back to at least the 1940’s. David Bordwell and Kristin Thompson use similar, but slightly different, categories.145

Out of the eleven films I have studied, nine include human characters and three of these include both human and animal characters (Stork story, Theo, and Turuu). A tenth film (Umwelt) depicts insects climbing on plants, while only one of the films (Addendum) completely lacks any living film characters. This means that I could study scale of shots, using Salt’s categories, in ten of the films – all except Addendum. I have counted the number of shots with different shot scale, and the results can be seen in table 3.3.146

142 Jacques Aumont. The Image (London: British Film Institute, 1997), 205-206. 143 Laya Maheshwari. "Angular Visions: Vertical Cinema at Rotterdam." Filmmaker Magazine (28 January 2014). 144 Salt, Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis, 155-156. 145 Bordwell and Thompson, 190. 146 In about half of the films, a handheld camera has been used. This means that shots are reframed as the

camera moves, creating shots within the shot, as film critic Gérard Legrand has written about (Adrian Martin,

43

The most common scale of shot in my film sample is the long shot, which makes up 23% of the shots with characters in them. If we also include the full shots – as Salt considers the full shot to be a special case of the long shot – the number rises to 35%. The other shot categories are used relatively evenly, each making up between 14% and 7% of the shots; the most uncommon shot is the big close up.

It is interesting to compare the vertical short films with Barry Salt’s online database of 394 horizontal films and TV series, dating from 1912 to 2000.147 The percentage of big close ups in our vertical sample is similar to that of Salt’s cinema database (7% vs. 6%). However, shots at the other end of the scale – the widest shots – are more common in our vertical film sample than in Salt’s database of horizontal films: very long shots make up 9% vs. 4% and long shots (including full shots) make up 35% vs. 23%. If we only compare with the 29 films less than 20 years old in Salt’s database, the difference is even bigger: very long shots make up 9% vs. 1% and long shots (including full shots) make up 35% vs. 12%.

I believe that one explanation for this, is that a vertical framing comes with extra space at the top and bottom of a shot; this can lead photographers to leave more space above and below the film characters, bringing the number of “wide shots” up – even if the vertical shots are not wide in a geometric sense, and little of the surroundings are actually visible in the narrow frame.

Mise en Scène and Film Style: From Classical Hollywood to New Media Art (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), 8-13. I have however chosen only one shot scale for each shot.

147 Barry Salt. "Data tables" (Starwords website, 2018).

Table 3.3: Scale of shot; statistical style analysis

44

3.4 Editing and Effects The speed of editing in the films studied varies greatly; they have an average shot length between four and 22 seconds. This is quite similar to the range and variation found in horizontal feature film, according to the online database of Barry Salt.148 While average shot length looks “normal,” a certain playfulness in the editing can be detected.

One film, Umwelt, is made up entirely of time-lapse shots. Two other films, Tuuru and Addendum, include vertical split screens. In Addendum, these split screens are used for an artistic mirror effect (see fig. 3.3). Tuuru includes a very interesting split screen shot of two dromedaries, where both animals are visible in the frame, because the space between them has been cut away (see fig 3.29). Tuuru also includes no less than 25 horizontal split screens – this means that more than half of the film’s shots are horizontally split.

Another playful element added in the post-production is vertical title graphics; this kind of text graphics can be seen in two films, Impact and Theo (see figs. 3.14 and 3.23).

148 Salt, "Data tables"

Table 3.4: Editing; statistical style analysis

45

4. Conclusions As explained in chapter two, vertical media is far from new; humans have created – and enjoyed – them for thousands of years. An archaeology of vertical media shows that many of the first artworks, paintings, portraits and photographs, as well as many of the first moving images, films, television screens – both imagined and real – and computer as well as game machine displays were vertical. Vertical media have always existed alongside horizontal media, sometimes as an equally appreciated form and sometimes as a format with unique connotations; verticality has often represented a heavenly direction or an ambitious upwardness. Portrait mode has also been preferred for a tight and intimate framing of the human form.

Ancient form, new channels

While the tall aspect ratio is ancient, in the early 2010’s new distribution channels for vertical media were created through digital conversion – and met with consumers ready to make use of them. Human communication was a strong driver, and mobile apps for video communication in portrait mode, such as FaceTime and Snapchat, took off. Users became spect-actors and started producing micro-autobiographies. Today one third of the world’s population has a smartphone – a portable studio for shooting, editing, publishing and consuming video, often in vertical mode. After initial resistance from professional filmmakers, today a broad range of film genres are produced for vertical viewing.

Most vertical video is today produced for viewing on smartphones. Such mobile vertical video combines portrait mode media with mobility, a viewing situation which implies a unique dispositif. Mobile vertical media can be considered nomadic, individual, self-centered, separate from other film and both non-immersive, because of the narrow display, and engaging because of its temporality and liveness.

Vertical frame, vertical style

Just like with the introduction of handheld cameras in the 1940’s, the introduction of vertical smartphones can be expected to come with new creative solutions; a technical and social revolution tends to lead to new modes of expression. My analysis shows that the “tall tales” I have studied, do indeed have more that characterizes them, than just their distinct vertical shape; the vertical frame also influences what filmmakers do inside it. Many of the films thematize verticality both in story and in action, as well as in camera movement. In the vertical short films, we see spaceships launching, people and insects climbing towards the sky, cliff divers diving, and kids falling into cave pits. The action has turned in a different direction, compared to horizontal movies. This in turn influences camera movement; the ratio between vertical and horizontal camera movement is very different from that of horizontal feature film; vertical video stands out with its many tilt shots.

46

Shot composition is also different; filmmakers can no longer rely on the golden ratio or the rule of thirds, the way they are used to. Portrait mode is ideal for framing characters, but how to show the surrounding landscape? My analysis indicates that filmmakers tend to go for wider shots; the vertical short films I have studied employ up to three times as many long shots – proportionally – as horizontal feature films do. This does not mean that the viewer sees more of the surroundings in vertical video – but definitely more of the characters. There is also a certain playfulness in both shot composition and editing in the vertical “early films” I have studied. For example, filmmakers use top shots, 90-degree angle shots, time-lapses, split screens and vertical title graphics.

Our digital hand mirror

With mobile vertical video, the historic metaphor of the film screen as a mirror, discussed by Friedberg and others, becomes more literal than ever; our smartphone screen becomes a mirror used to look at our own lives. We do, however, have to revise what Christian Metz has written about the filmic mirror; he claimed that it can show everything except the spectator’s own body.149 But just look on Instagram; it's full of vertical micro-autobiographies specifically showing the spect-actors’ own bodies. Even the vertical short films I have studied focus on the human characters by leaving out much of the surroundings, like a mirror. I would therefore like to round off this paper by making a new metaphor, using a more specific kind of mirror. As consumers we bring our mobile phone with us; we hold it up to our face and look at ourselves; we pose and produce our self-portrait – and consume it as many times as we wish. We shoot and watch video that is vertical, nomadic, individual and self-centered. Mobile vertical video is, more than other film, about our favorite subject: ourselves. Our mobile video screen has become our personal, digital hand mirror – and it's vertical.

149 Christian Metz. "Identification, Mirror" from "The Imaginary Signifier," in Leo Braudy and Marshall and

Marshall Cohen, ed. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 604.

Fig. 4.1: Amphora from Athens (5th Century BCE).

Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The image has been cropped. Used with permission.

Fig. 4.2: Justin Bieber taking a selfie in Hawaii (2015)

Copyright Splash News. Permission to use has been requested.

47

References

Literature and Magazines Arijon, Daniel. Grammar of the Film Language. Los Angeles: Silman-James Press, 1991. Aumont, Jacques. The Image. London: British Film Institute, 1997. Azéma, March and Florent Rivière. “Animation in Palaeolithic art: a Pre-echo of Cinema.” Antiquity

86, No 332 (June 2012): 316-324. Barger, M. Susan and William B. White. The Daguerreotype: Nineteenth-Century Technology and

Modern Science. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 2000. Basulto, David. Life. Camera. Action.: How to Turn Your Mobile Device into a Filmmaking

Powerhouse. Austin: Lioncrest Publishing, 2016. Black, Lauren and Elizabeth S. Eva. “Pixels at an exhibition: InfoWorld tests 3 portrait monochrome

displays for the Mac II.” “MacIntosh Supplement,” InfoWorld 11, no 42 (16 October 1989): S1-S8. Bordwell, David and Kristin Thompson. Film Art: An Introduction. New York: McGraw-Hill

Education, 2015. Buerger, Janet E. French Daguerrotypes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989. Burns, Russel. John Logie Baird: Television Pioneer. History of Technology Series, no. 28. London:

The Institution of Engineering and Technology, 2000. Carbone, Mauro. “Thematizing the Arche-Screen through its Variations.” In Dominique Chateau and

José Moure, ed. Screens. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016, 62-69. Casetti, Francesco. The Lumière Galaxy. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. Ceram, C.W. Archaeology of the Cinema. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World, 1965. Comm, Joel. Live Video Revolution. New York: Morgan James Publishing, 2017. Edgar, Robert, John Marland and Steven Rawle. The Language of Film, 2nd ed. London: Bloomsbury

Academic, 2015. Edgerton, Gary. The Columbia History of American Television. New York: Columbia University

Press, 2010. Elsaesser, Thomas and Malte Hagener. Film Theory: An Introduction through the Senses. Oxon / New

York: Routledge, 2015. Engberg, Maria and Jay David Bolter. “Mobile Cinematics.” In Pepita Hesselberth and Maria Poulaki,

ed. Compact Cinematics: The Moving Image in the Age of Bit-sized Media. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017, 165-173.

Enticknap, Leo. Moving Image Technology: From Zoetrope to Digital. London: Wallflower Press, 2005.

Farber, Alex. “Sky primes portrait video for Snapchat channel.” Broadcast Magazine, April 7, 2016. Farber, Alex. “Snapchat reveals content plans.” Broadcast Magazine, August 23, 2017. Fickers, Andreas and Annie Van den Oeven. “Experimental Media Archaeology: A Plea for New

Directions.” In Annie Van den Oeven, ed. Techné/Technology: Researching Cinema and Media Technologies, their Development, Use and Impact. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2014: 272.

Foucault, Michel. The Archaeology of Knowledge. New York: Pantheon Books, 1972. Friedberg, Anne. The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft. Cambridge; USA: MIT Press, 2006. Gaudreault, André and Philippe Marion. The End of Cinema? A Medium in Crisis in the Digital Age.

New York: Columbia University Press, 2015.

48

Guido, Laurent. “Between Paradoxical Spectacles and Technical Dispositives.” In François Albera and Maria Tortajada, ed. Cine-Dispositives: Essays in Epistemology Across Media. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015, 249-273

Gunning, Tom. “The Cinema of Attraction: Early Film, Its Spectator and the Avant-Garde,” Wide Angle 8, nos. 3-4 (1986).

Henshilwood, Christopher S, Francesco d’Errico and Ian Watts. “Engraved ochres from the Middle Stone Age levels at Blombos Cave, South Africa,” Journal of Human Evolution 57, no. 1 (July 2009): 27-47.

Houwen, Janna. Film and Video Intermediality: The Question of Medium Specificity in Contemporary Moving Images. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017.

Huhtamo, Erkki. “Elements of Screenology: Toward an Archaeology of the Screen.” ICONICS: International Studies of the Modern Image 7 (2004): 31-82. Tokyo: The Japan Society of Image Arts and Sciences.

Huhtamo, Erkki. “Screenology; or, Media Archaeology of the Screen.” In: Stephen Monteiro, ed. The Screen Media Reader. New York/London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017, 77-123.

Huhtamo, Erkki. “Messages on the Wall: An Archaeology of Public Media Displays.” In: Scott McQuire, Meredith Martin and Sabine Niederer, ed. Urban Screens Reader. Amsterdam: Institute of Network Cultures, 2009, 15-28.

Huhtamo, Erkki and Jussi Parikka, ed. Media Archaeology: Approaches, Applications, and Implications. Berkeley/Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2011.

Huhtamo, Erkki. “The four practices? Challenges for an Archaeology of the Screen.” In Chateau, Dominique and José Moure, ed. Screens. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016, 116-124.

Jacobs, Steven. Framing Pictures: Film and the Visual Arts. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2012.

Keep, Dean. “Artist with a Camera-Phone: A Decade of Mobile Photography.” In Marsha Berry and Max Schleser, ed. Mobile Media Making in an Age of Smartphones. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, 14-24.

Kittler, Friedrich. Grammophon Film Typewriter. Berlin: Brinkmann & Bose, 1986. Lobban, Grant. “Film formats: All shapes and sizes.” Cinema Technology 26, no. 1 (March 2013), 66-

70. Malitsky, Joshua. Post-Revolution Nonfiction Film. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2013. Mannoni, Laurent. Le grand art de la lumière et de l’ombre: archéologie du cinéma. Paris: Nathan,

1995. Martin, Adrian. Mise en Scène and Film Style: From Classical Hollywood to New Media Art. New

York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014. McCarthy, Anna. Ambient Television: Visual Culture and Ambient Space. Durham, USA: Duke

University Press. McLean, Donald F. Restoring Baird’s Image. Stevenage, UK: Institution of Engineering and

Technology, 2000. Metz, Christian. “Identification, Mirror,” from “The Imaginary Signifier.” In Leo Braudy and

Marshall and Marshall Cohen, ed. Film Theory and Criticism: Introductory Readings. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016, 602-609.

Moure, José. “Archaic Paradigms of the Screen and it’s Images.” In Dominique Chateau and José Moure, ed. Screens. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016, 42-61.

Mulvey, Laura. “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema.” Screen 16, No. 3, 1975, 6-18. Musser, Charles. “Early Advertising and Promotional Films, 1893-1900: Edison Montion Pictures as a

Case Study.” In Bo Florin, Nico de Klerk and Patrick Vonderau. Films that Sell. London: BFI Publishing, 2016, 83-90.

Musser, Charles. “The Stereopticon and Cinema.” In François Albera and Maria Tortajada, ed. Cine-Dispositives: Essays in Epistemology Across Media. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015, 129-160.

Napoli, Maria Donata. “The ‘Mobile Effect’ on Screen Format: the Case of Vertical Videos.” CITAR Journal 8, no. 2 (December 2016).

49

Natale, Simone. “Understanding Media Archaeology.” Canadian Journal of Communication 37 (2012): 523-527.

O'Reagan, Gerard. Introduction to the History of Computing: A Computing History Primer. Zug, Switzerland: Springer Nature, 2016.

Papini, Giovanni. “La filosofia del cinematografo,” La Stampa, 18 May 1907, 1-2. Parikka, Jussi. What is Media Archeology? Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2012. Peres, Michael R., ed. The Focal Encyclopedia of Photography. Abingdon, UK: Tyler & Francis,

2013. Perriault, Jacques. Mémoires de l’ombre et du son: une archéologie de l’audio-visuel. Paris:

Flammarion, 1981. Rivetta, Pietro Silvio “Toddi,” “Rectangle-Film [25×19].” In Dominique Chateau and José Moure, ed.

Screens. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016, 25-28. Robida, Albert. Le Vingtième Siècle. Paris: George Decaux, 1883. Robinson, Michael. “The Techniques and Material Aesthetics of the Daguerreotype.” PhD. Diss.,

Photographic Research Centre, De Montfort University, 2017. Rossel, Deac. “Celluloid.” In Richard Abel, ed. Encyclopedia of Early Cinema. Abingdon, UK: Taylor

& Francis, 2005. Salt, Barry. Film Style and Technology: History and Analysis. 3rd Ed. London: Starword, 2009. Salt, Barry. Moving into Pictures: More on Film History, Style, and Analysis. London: Starword,

2006. Schleser, Max. “Connecting through Mobile Autobiographies: Self-Reflexive Mobile Filmmaking,

Self-Representation, and Selfies.” In Marsha Berry and Max Schleser, ed. Mobile Media Making in an Age of Smartphones. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014, 148-158.

Schneck, Marilyn E. and Dagnelie Gislin. “Prostethic Vision Assessment,” in Dagnelie, Gislin (ed.), Visual Prosthetics: Physiology, Bioengineering, Rehabilitation. New York: Springer Science+Business Media LLC, 2011.

Snickars, Pelle and Patrick Vonderau. Moving Data: The iPhone and the Future of Media. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.

Snickars, Pelle. “A Walled Garden Turned Into a Rain Forest.” In Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau. Moving Data: The iPhone and the Future of Media. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012, 155-168.

Spehr, Paul. “Unaltered to date: Developing 35 mm film.” In Fullerton, John and Astrid Söderbergh Widding. Moving Images: From Edison to the Webcam. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000: 3-28.

Spehr, Paul. The Man Who Made Movies: W.K.L. Dickson. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2008.

Stockstad, Marilyn and Michael W. Cothren. Art History. 4th Edition. Upper Saddle River, USA: Prentice Hall / Pearson Education, 2011.

Strauven, Wanda, ed. The Cinema of Attractions Reloaded. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2006.

Thompson, Kristin and David Bordwell. Film History: An Introduction, 3rd Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2010.

Turquety, Benoît. “Forms of Machines, Forms of Movement.” In François Albera and Maria Tortajada, ed. Cine-Dispositives: Essays in Epistemology Across Media. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2015, 275-297.

Utterson, Andrew, ed. Technology and Culture: The Film Reader. Oxon / New York: Routledge, 2005.

Väliaho, Pasi. “Solitary Screens: On the Recurrence and Consumption of Images.” In Pepita Hesselberth and Maria Poulaki, ed. Compact Cinematics: The Moving Image in the Age of Bit-sized Media. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017, 123-129.

50

Walden, Kim Louise. “Archaeology of Mobile Film: Blink, Bluevend, and the Pocket Shorts.” In Pepita Hesselberth and Maria Poulaki, ed. Compact Cinematics: The Moving Image in the Age of Bit-sized Media. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2017, 134-142.

West, Shearer. Portraiture. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. Zielinski, Siegfried. Deep Time of the Media: Toward an Archaeology of Hearing and Seeing by

Technical Means. Cambridge, MA, USA: MIT Press, 2006. Zielinski, Siegfried. Audiovisions: Cinema and Television as Entr’actes in History. Amsterdam:

Amsterdam University Press, 2014.

Online Sources Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. “10 Animated Shorts Advance in 2014 Oscar Race.”

Official Oscars website, 5 November 2014. Available at: http://www.oscars.org/news/10-animated-shorts-advance-2014-oscar-race [12 May 2018].

Adelaide Film Festival. Website. Available at: www.adelaidefilmfestival.org [12 May 2018]. Apple Inc. “Identify your iPhone model.” Website of Apple Inc., 2017. Available at

www.support.apple.com/en-us/HT201296 [12 May 2018]. Barakat, Zana. “Filmmakers, Embrace Vertical!” JSK Stanford YouTube channel, 15 May 2015.

Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=uB7MmIGaNdQ [12 May 2018] Baumgartner, Jeff. “Mobile Video with a Vertical Hold.” Multichannel News 38, no. 10 (April 3,

2017): 18. Available at: www.multichannel.com/mobile-video-vertical-hold/411891 [12 May 2018]. Bell, Carissa. “Facebook’s live videos can now be twice as long.” Mashable, 21 July 2016. Available

at: www.mashable.com/2016/07/20/facebook-live-fullscreen/ [12 May 2018]. Bordwell, David. “Paolo Gioli’s Vertical Cinema.” David Bordwell’s website on cinema, August

2009. Available at www.davidbordwell.net/essays/gioli.php [12 May 2018]. Bourne, Wéland. “Is it time to accept vertical video?” Videomaker Magazine 30, no. 8 (February

2016): 46. Available at www.videomaker.com/article/18225 [12 May 2018]. Brueck, Hilary. "Here's How Snapchat Might Be Beating Facebook", Fortune.com, 29 April 2016.

Available at www.fortune.com/2016/04/29/snapchat-10-billion-video-april/ [12 May 2018]. Colao, J.J. “Snapchat Adds Video, Now Seeing 50 Million Photos A Day.” Forbes, 20 December

2012. Available at www.forbes.com/sites/jjcolao/2012/12/14/snapchat-adds-video-now-seeing-50-million-photos-a-day/ [12 May 2018].

Constine, Josh. “Instagram launches ‘Stories,’ a Snapchatty feature for imperfect sharing.” TechCrunch, 2 August 2016. Available at: www.techcrunch.com/2016/08/02/instagram-stories/ [12 May 2018].

Constine, Josh and Sarah Perez. “WhatsApp launches video calling for everyone.” TechCrunch, 15 November 2016. Available at: www.techcrunch.com/2016/11/14/whatsapp-video-calling/ [12 May 2018].

Dexter, John. “Rise of the Vertical Video.” The Adelaide Review, 3 October 2017. Available at www.adelaidereview.com.au/arts/cinema/youth-on-the-march-vertical-video-adelaide-film-festival/ [12 May 2018].

Die Erste Vertikale. Festival page on Facebook. Available at www.facebook.com/DieErsteVertikale/ [12 May 2018].

Eckhardt-Jacobi, Damien and Vincent Bova. “Vertical Video Syndrome - A PSA.” Glove and Boots YouTube channel, 5 June 2012. Video available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bt9zSfinwFA [12 May 2018].

Festival de Cannes. “Mommy.” Film presentation on the 2014 festival website. Available at www.festival-cannes.com/en/films/mommy [12 May 2018].

Fingas, Jon. “Zuckerberg reportedly asked Instagram to copy Snapchat Stories.” Engadget, 10 April 2018. Available at www.engadget.com/2018/04/10/instagram-added-snapchat-features-at-zuckerberg-request/ [12 May 2018].

51

Garun, Natt. “Facebook Live now lets you add a friend to live stream together.” The Verge, 23 May 2017. Available at www.theverge.com/2017/5/23/15679926/facebook-live-add-a-friend-ios-update [12 May 2018].

Harding, Colin. “Celluloid and photography, part 3: The beginnings of cinema.” Website of the National Science and Media Museum, Bradford, UK, 17 November 2012. Available at: blog.scienceandmediamuseum.org.uk/celluloid-and-photography-part-3-the-beginnings-of-cinema [12 May 2018].

Huhtamo, Erkki. “Up and Down the Shaft of Time.” Speech arranged by Sonic Acts at the 2014 International Film Festival Rotterdam, 23 January 2014. Available at www.vimeo.com/100534645 [12 May 2018].

Instagram Business Team. “Instagram Stories ads—now available for all businesses globally.” Instagram Business Blog, 1 March 2017. Available at business.instagram.com/blog/instagram-stories-available-globally [12 May 2018].

Kastrenakes, Jakob. “YouTube now properly displays vertical videos on iOS.” The Verge, 21 December 2017. Available at www.theverge.com/2017/12/21/16806572/ [12 May 2018].

Kessler, Frank. “Notes on Dispositif.” Article presented at the Utrecht Media Research Seminar in June 2014, updated November 2007. Available at www.hum.uu.nl/medewerkers/f.e.kessler/Dispositif%20Notes11-2007.pdf [12 May 2018].

LaJeunesse, Nicole. “New Views from Mobile Video: Vertical, Spherical, Live.” Videomaker Magazine 31, no. 2 (August 2016): 42-43. Available at www.videomaker.com/article/18766 [12 May 2018].

Liffreing, Ilyse. “The year in Snapchat advertising.” Digiday UK, 27 December 2017. Available at www.digiday.com/marketing/year-snapchat-advertising/ [12 May 2018].

Liszewski, Andrew. “Brilliant, overdue app forces your phone to take horizontal videos.” Gizmodo, 15 January 2014. Available at: www.gizmodo.com/brilliant-overdue-app-forces-your-phone-to-take-horizo-1501848420 [12 May 2018].

Mann, Jonathan. “Turn Your Phone! (Vertical Video PSA).” Jonathan Mann YouTube channel, 9 July 2013. Video available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=NtQWp_31wuI [12 May 2018].

Maheshwari, Laya. “Angular Visions: Vertical Cinema at Rotterdam.” Filmmaker Magazine, 28 January 2014. Also available online at www.filmmakermagazine.com/84090-angular-visions-vertical-cinema-at-rotterdam/ [12 May 2018].

Meyer, Robinson. “It’s No Longer Hip to Be Square – on Instagram, At Least.” The Atlantic, 25 August 2015. Available at: www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/08/its-no-longer-hip-to-be-a-squareon-instagram-at-least/402616/ [12 May 2018].

Neal, David. “Gunfight at the V.V. Corral: the shootout over vertical video.” Online Journalism Blog, 15 June 2016. Available at www.onlinejournalismblog.com/2016/06/15/vertical-video-journalism/ [12 May 2018]

Neal, David. “Vertical Video: A Retrospective. The First 10 Years (2007-2016).” Revised 20th November 2017. Buena Vista, Colorado, USA: Walrus & Carpenter Productions, 2017. Available at http://exit109.com/~dnn/vertical/ [12 May 2018].

Nield, David. “Here’s Why The Displays In New Phones Are So Weird And Wide.” Gizmodo Australia. April 3, 2017. Accessible at www.gizmodo.com.au/2017/04/heres-why-the-displays-in-new-phones-are-so-weird-and-wide/ [12 May 2018].

Perez, Sarah. “YouTube is launching its own take on Stories with a new video format called ‘Reels.’” TechCrunch, 29 November 2017. Available at www.techcrunch.com/2017/11/29/youtube-is-launching-its-own-take-stories-with-a-new-video-format-called-reels/ [12 May 2018].

Plaugic, Lizzie. “Selena Gomez releases new vertical music video you can only watch on Spotify’s mobile app.” The Verge, 18 May 2017. Available at: www.theverge.com/2017/5/18/15658542/ [12 May 2018].

Ramsey, Franchesca, Andrew Huang, Grace Helbig, Hannah Hart and and Nocola Foti. “Turn your phone!” Chescaleigh YouTube channel, 26 June 2013. Video available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYLL7-rUGPY [12 May 2018].

Ross, Miriam and Maddy Glen. “Vertical Cinema: New Digital Possibilities.” Rhizones, No. 26, 2014. Available at www.rhizomes.net/issue26/ross_glen.html [12 May 2018].

52

Ross, Miriam and Maddy Glen. “Vertical Cinema Manifesto.” Miriamruthross YouTube channel, 17 January 2013. Available at www.youtube.com/watch?v=buHSJitp46w [12 May 2018].

Rys, Dan. “Fresh Off a Big Funding Round, Musical.ly Signs Its First Major Label Deal with Warner Music.” Billboard, 29 June 2016. Available at: www.billboard.com/articles/business/7423281/warner-music-group-deal-musical-ly [12 May 2018].

Salt, Barry. “Data tables.” Starwords website. Available at: www.starword.com/Data/Data-Tables/data-tables.html [12 May 2018].

Slim Cinema. Festival website. Available at: www.slimcinema.co [12 May 2018]. Sniadak, Dave. “Keep It Level, The Future of Video Depends on it: Broadcast Standards for the

Aspiring Videographer.” Videomaker Magazine 30, no. 10 (October 2015): 32-36. Available at www.videomaker.com/article/18081 [12 May 2018].

Sniadak, Dave. “Why Traditional Broadcast Video Standards Still Matter Online.” Videomaker Magazine 32, no. 9 (September 2017), 62. Available at www.videomaker.com/article/19128 [12 May 2018].

Statista, Inc. “Number of smartphone users worldwide from 2014 to 2020.” Website of Statista Inc., 2017. Available at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/330695/number-of-smartphone-users-worldwide/ [12 May 2018].

Storaro, Vittorio. “What is Univisium.” Blog post, 4 March 2007. Available at: http://vittoriostoraro-asc.blogspot.se/2007/03/what-is-univisium.html [12 May 2018].

Verti Films. Festival website. Available at: www.vertifilms.com/en/ [12 May 2018]. Vertical Cinema. Website of the art project. Available at: www.verticalcinema.org [12 May 2018]. Vertical Film Festival. Website. Available at: www.verticalfilmfestival.com.au [12 May 2018]. Wallenstein, Andrew. “Snap Judgment.” Variety 331, no. 8 (March 22, 2016): 34-39. Available at:

http://feature.variety.com/snapchat-live-stories/ [12 May 2018]. Wallenstein, Andrew. “Snapchat Shows: Inside the Plan to Reimagine TV for the Mobile Era.”

Variety 336, no. 3 (May 23, 2017): 46-49. Available at: www.variety.com/2017/digital/news/snapchat-shows-inside-the-plan-to-reimagine-tv-for-the-mobile-era-1202440096/ [12 May 2018].

Westaby, Ross. “Westaby Web Moment: Why are we still using vertical video?” FOX 17 WXMI-TV, Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2 October 2015. Also available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5k2DMIMuSo [12 May 2018].

Film and Video 2001: A Space Oddisey (Stanley Kubrick, 1968) Addendum (Ferenc Kiss, 2016) Alia (Matias Martinez, 2016) Alicewinks (David Neal, 2012) Along the lines (Antonella Lauria and Susanna Vicentini, 2016) Anonimatograph (Paolo Gioli, 1972) Basket Case (James Bedford, 2016) Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (Zack Snyder, 2016) The Birth of a Nation (D.W. Griffith, 1915) Cave of Forgotten Dreams (Werner Herzog, 2010). Colterrain (Tina Frank, 2013 De Rénoir à Picasso (Paul Haesaerts, 1950) Dickson Greeting (William K.L. Dickson, 1891)

53

Eiland (Kuesti Fraun, 2016) The Greeting (Bill Viola, 1995) Impact (Jean-Charles Granjon, 2015) Intolerance (D.W. Griffith, 1916) Jack and the beanstalk (George Fleming and Edwin S. Porter, 1902) Lost Postcards (Tamara Scherbak, 2016) The Mermaid (La Sirène, Georges Meliès, 1904) Men boxing (William K.L. Dickson and William Heise, 1891) Mommy (Xavier Dolan, 2014). Monkeyshines (William K.L. Dickson, 1889-1891) The Numberlys (William Joyce and Brandon Oldenburg, 2013) Passages (Mila Turajlic, 2016) Pyramid Flare (Johann Lurf, 2013) Roundhay Garden Scene (Augustin Le Prince, 1888) Rosemary’s Baby (Roman Polanski, 1968) Rubens (Henri Storck and Paul Haesaerts, 1948) The Searchers (John Ford, 1956) Stork Story (Francesco Mattuzzi, 2016) Theo (Cédric Martin, 2016) Thing (Luca De Salvia, 2016) The Thomas Crown Affair (Norman Jewison, 1968) Trafalgar Square scene (Wordsworth Donisthorpe and W.C. Crofts, 1889) Tried (Charles Williams, 2015) Turn your phone! (Franchesca Ramsey, A. Huang, G. Helbig, H. Hart and and N. Foti, 2013) Turn Your Phone! (Vertical Video PSA) (Jonathan Mann, 2013) Turuu (Joerg Locher and Jeremias Heppeler, 2016) Umwelt (Yoshiyuki Katayama, 2015) From Bulb to Flower (Van bol tot bloem, Jan Cornelis Mol, 1931) Vertical Cinema Manifesto (Miriam Ross and Maddy Glen, 2013) Vertical Video Syndrome - A PSA (Damien Eckhardt-Jacobi and Vincent Bova. 2012) Youth on the March (Mike Retter, 2017)

54

Appendix: Source Material Film Facts This appendix is a summary of production information regarding the 12 short films I have studied.150

150 The information is taken from the films’ closing credits and from the Vertical Film Festival website, available

at: www.verticalfilmfestival.com.au [9 November 2017].

Addendum

Director: Ferenc Kiss Prod. Co.: Directing Light Sound Des.: Phonography Cast: - Country: Hungary Year: 2016 Duration: 2′49″ Equipment: Canon/Helios Alia

Director: Matías Martínez Script: Matías Martínez Camera: Matías Martínez Producer: Diego Rivera Makeup: Valentina Muñoz Sound Des.: Matías Martínez Batian León Music Des.: Luis Salazar Cast: Millaray Villanueva Renato D'garcia Country: Chile Year: 2016 Duration: 3′00″ Equipment: Sony FS700

Along the Lines

Directors: Antonella Lauria Susanna Vicentini Sound: Francesco P. Sileno Makeup: Emanuela Serini Cast: Romano Rocchi Country: Italy Year: 2016 Duration: 3′00″ Equipment: Canon EOS 750D Eiland

Director: Kuesti Fraun Script: Andreas Uehlein Kuesti Fraun Camera: Chris Brandl Sound: Chris Brandl Editing: Chris Brandl Prod. Co.: Mobtik Cast: Andreas Uehlein Country: Germany Year: 2016 Duration: 3′00″ Equipment: Samsung Note 3

55

Impact

Director: Jean-Charles Granjon Cast: Lionel Franc Line Prod.: Bluearth Production Post Prod.: La planète rouge Country: France Year: 2015 Duration: 3′00″ Equipment: Phantom Flex Passages

Director: Mira Turajlic Camera: Mira Turajlic Editing: Mira Turajlic Aleksandra Milovanovic Music: Nemanja Mosurovic Sound Des.: Vladimir Maksimovic Prod. Co.: Dribbling Pictures Country: Serbia Year: 2016 Duration: 3′00″ Equipment: iPhone Stork Story

Director: Francesco Mattuzzi Camera: Davide Grimoldi Editor: Alice Bolognani Music: Rafaël Leloup Cast: Eric Procaccianti Country: Italy Year: 2016 Duration: 2′39″ Equipment: Canon EOS 5D Mark II Theo

Director: Cédric Martin Script: Cédric Martin Camera: Mathieu Roger Editing: Mickael Martin Cédric Martin Music: Tristan Salvati Sound Des.: Fabien Goury Cast: Marie Bokillon Louis Quinn Country: France Year: 2016 Duration: 2′59″ Equipment: Sony FS7

Tried

Director: Charles Williams Producer: Charles Williams Ex. Prod.: Thomas Dawe Jackie Gatt Script: Abdul Hammoud Camera: Aaron Farrugia Editor: Charles Williams Sound Des.: Craig Conway Cast: Abdul Hammoud Prod. Co.: Simpatico Films Country: Australia Year: 2015 Duration: 2′37″ Equipment: Nexus 5, Arri Alexa Turuu

Directors: Joerg Locher Jeremias Heppeler Cast: Turuu and his family Country: Germany Year: 2016 Duration: 3′00″ Equipment: Panasonic FZ1000 Umwelt

Director: Yoshiyuki Katayama Music: Kevin Macleod Cast: - Country: Japan Year: 2015 Duration: 1′43″ Equipment: Canon EOS 7D

56

Stockholm University

Department of Media Studies

SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden

Phone +46 8 16 20 00

www.ims.su.se