Vertical Cinema

We decided that our film needed to be shot vertical rather than horizontal, as the space needed to shoot our films meant that when the actress was standing part of her body would be cut off. An idea we had was to add graphics onto the side of the piece, or maybe even a kaleidoscope effect.

(an example done by James as he experimented with ways to create the horizontal film, before we had the idea of Vertical Cinema)

I partly feel that this will look like an after thought and could look like a rushed job added to our piece and that it is unnecessary. I have done some research into Vertical cinema and feel that perhaps this will work to our advantage.

A special effect expert called Tim Webber who has worked on films such as Children of Men, Gravity, and Where the Wild Things Are, was asked his artistic opinion on the effects vertical cinema has and he was quoted saying

The artistic and aesthetic differences are really where vertical cinema is interesting. Landscape filmmaking automatically lends itself to having more people in the frame at once. How people interact, and the relationships they have with one another, are a key narrative point to the majority of films we see today. With a portrait frame, however, it’s much more suited to having one person dominate the screen. As a result, the type of film we’d see with this technique would be different to the norm.

Considering we have only on actor on set at the entire time, and the focus of out film is on their life and their experience it makes sense to keep the film vertical to include this effect. Similar to my previous post about the fish eye lens camera adding the intensity, as that was not a possibility to do any more I feel as though this would be a good alternative.

In the article he was further quoted saying

'...in vertical cinema the environment tends to have a far greater effect on the character. So, if the sky plays a big role in your film thematically or through the narrative, a vertical frame would be the perfect fit.

Another thing that is massively importing in our film, is the environment as it  expresses her mood, and is also a metaphor for her mental age. Something very important to us is that the environment to be bold and noticeable, and I feel this will be done better by the use and experimentation of vertical cinema.

Here is the rest of the article I have researched my information from
http://cinefex.com/blog/vertical-cinema/