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What the author of this piece neglected to explore in this dissertation which, in the end, seems to endorse the concept of the vertical video is that the reason why performance (stage) plays always have been and continue to be performed on a horizontally laid out venue is the same reason why movie theater screens, television sets, and all professional media is formatted horizontally. And that is because the human eye and the sense of sight is oriented for eyes that are side by side (not one on top of the other). Bottom line... we see and perceive images horizontally.

The whole idea of vertical videos came about because when cellphone manufacturers developed the ability to enhance the photographic capabilities of their devices with the ability to shoot moving pictures via digital video, they should have limited that function to a horizontal format. But they failed to recognize this and, like the still camera function which did allow for both landscape and portrait photography, they didn't consider that people who were used to using the telephone between their ears and mouth, where now using those devices both ways.
The problem of course, is and was that by shooting/capturing a video vertically, the only place you could replay that and properly fill the screen was also vertically and only on a similar device. This results in an image that only fills 1/3 of the human peripheral or side vision.

So, when someone wants to show their home movies, they are missing most of the action.

Let's remember that had they restricted the shooting of video to horizontal mode, the user viewing the video always and still has the option of rotating the device if its a cellphone or tablet, but not if its a TV or large screen without a cropped image!
And in the end, along comes Instagram and TicTok who force their users to use these formats. What happens then is the clever ones steal professional movies and television content that was properly shot HORIZONTALLY, and they crop it which discards two thirds of the professional filmmaker's vision and cheats the viewer out of potentially vital visual information.
Is this too late to rectify? Perhaps, but I'd sure like to see them make an attempt at it!
~ From a professional filmmaker.

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