The horizontal screen is not an “eight-week”, and the vertical screen is not a panacea.
Editor’s note: This article is from WeChat public account “Love Fan” (ID: Ifanr), the author is cold thinking.
On August 10, 2016, Taobao was on the second floor. This content section, which needs to be pulled down outside the main scene, is different from the normal product display. It displays a video with a complete storyline, and a product recommendation with a higher relevance to the content is attached to the end of the video. It seems that the process is getting longer and selling is more efficient.
Under the influence of the video of “One Thousand and One Nights” on the second floor of Taobao, how many people opened Taobao in the middle of the night, how many people were subjected to late night “crit” and then “anger” and placed orders, hot Teng Teng’s squid dumplings, thin ham with oily light, and a variety of seasonings made of salt and pepper shrimp…
Behind the crazy goods, it is neglected, and the short dramas on the second floor of Taobao are vertical. Perhaps in order to match the use of Taobao itself, perhaps in order to allow users to have a smoother viewing experience, the short play of less than five minutes on the second floor of Taobao may be the first vertical screen we have seen.
Before the portrait screen, the landscape is defined like this
Do not traverse, let the screen put video on the vertical, this is the trend in recent years. The vertical version of the video is better for the user to switch, with a smooth experience with one hand.
But more than a hundred years ago, in the era when color images did not appear, horizontal screens have become one of the rules established by the image creation community.
From now on, horizontal video is the best way to visualize. Our eyes are horizontal and long, and we pay more attention to the environment at the left and right ends than the upper and lower ends. In this case, the horizontal screen can better show the relationship between people and the environment. In the “Death Poetry Society”, the middle school students jumped onto the desk. In the “Big Bang”, everyone sat on the sofa. In the “007” movie, Eva Green sank into the sea.
The vertical screen of these scenes can also be displayed, but the effect is never as good as the horizontal screen, and the original charm may be lost.
▲ Image from: “Death Poetry Society”
After selecting a form that is more in line with the viewer’s visual effects, the video has rules set by those who take the lead.
The earliest known short film “Lande Sea Garden Scene” in the world, although only 2.11 seconds, is the earliest film included in Guinness. This “movie” that can be brushed more than twenty times in a minute presents the basic horizontal image.
▲ This movie can be swiped almost 30 times a minute. After you read this sentence, you have seen it three times.
And the first “movie” we learned in the history book is “The Factory Gate”, which was seven years behind the “Lande Garden Scene”, just because public screening has a higher visibility.
This 46-second documentary is also the basic horizontal screen.
▲ More than 20 times longer than the “Lande Garden Scene” – “Factory Gate”
The older brothers are very “horizontal”, and the younger brothers behind are naturally “crossing”.
In 1932, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences set 1.37:1 as the college standard, and since then a variety of films have a standard aspect ratio. At this stage, the true proportion of the image content is actually 4:3 (also called 1.33:1), but it needs to leave enough vocal information on both sides, so the standard of 1.33:1 is 1.37:1.
▲ 1.37:1 Proportional movie “Gone with the Wind”
1.37:1 Once, it was also the broadcast ratio of all cinemas. In order to make the movie play on the TV, the National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) also adopted this standard. Until 1953, the Academy’s Academic Flat 1.85:1 was born and became the new broadcast standard.
Today, the 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen and the 1.85:1 college widescreen have become the most common screen ratios in cinemas.
Therefore, in order to make some special filming films successfully on the big screen, the film side will also make some cuts.
When the Avengers 4 was released, in order to attract fans to choose their own theater, the IMAX theater, which can fully play movies, sloganed the slogan “26% more attention.”
▲ The movie screens seen on the IMAX screen are also different
There are also directors who choose to mix the two proportions of the lens directly for creation. Nolan likes to mix different formats to show different effects. The lens shot with the film IMAX camera shows the grand scene, and some detailed scenes returning to the room return to the 1.85:1 frame ratio.
There are both grand scenes and cost savings. The switching of the lens language also has a charm.
And on TV, everything is different. The aspect ratio of 4:3 and 16:9 also requires a compromise. Adding black borders to the top and bottom of the movie, cutting out the original content to fit the TV size is a common method.
When the screen of the mobile phone becomes the most important screen, different video websites and studios also use this method to process the image.
In this case, the vertical screen drama is a test of the short video platform by the long video platform. The competing products of the vertical screen are not dramas, but short videos of vertical forms. Everyone is at the same starting line, and the competition is for the attention of the vertical video users.
For vertical screen dramas, brainwashing dances can be there, funny paragraphs can be there, and story stories can be there. The vertical screen can attract the user’s attention can only be passed, can be the same as the short video station, but can attract users to see, only to really achieve the purpose of retaining users.
Video vertical playback is a trend, but users are not too lazy to even reverse the screen with full screen. If it is only the cut of the original lens, the vertical screen is not new to the user. The way of expression is the means, and the presentation of content is the core.
In the mobile phone, the vertical screen drama is very easy to “stand up”, but if you want to “stand up” in the content, it is not so easy to use the long content of the vertical screen to be competitive.
In the vertical screen, the creators play tricks like this
In China, the first to try is an e-commerce platform that looks like the video doesn’t seem to matter. In a world where everything can be sold, Taobao is very hard, and it has been a precedent.
Taobao is the same as Ali’s Youku, they launched a series of vertical screen information programs in 2017, want to better present the sense of the news, so that users can better “brush” the news. However, this spicy newspaper soon became “cool”. The Spicy newspaper column itself is still there, but it is difficult to see the original vertical video at the end of the year, which is convenient for users to operate with one hand, quickly switch content, and watch more immersive… These ideas can be said to basically fail.
▲ The effect of the vertical screen of Youku Spicy Newspaper on the computer side
Tencent also has a special vertical screen variety “Speak with strangers”, which is a talk show produced by famous TV host Chen Xiaonan after bidding farewell to Phoenix TV to join Tencent. This variety has a score of 9.2, but we also found that it has changed from the vertical display in the first season to the traditional horizontal video.
For this type of conversational variety, the vertical screen itself is a more conversational form of communication, “and strangersIn the first season of the talk, it did indeed slide up and down to switch the video. This form of switching allows the user to see the next interview conversation video as quickly as possible. And when it is shared by the characters, it shows a full-screen portrait, unlike the vertical video, there is still a lot of space. This form is like a face-to-face conversation. When the interviewee explains his story, its subtitles will still be on the top, which is different from the traditional presentation.
But from the second quarter return to the traditional horizontal screen video presentation, Tencent video may feel that this vertical screen form is still not ideal, the effect is not up to expectations.
▲ Left for the first season of “Speaking with Strangers”, vertical screen; right for “Speaking with strangers” Season 2, horizontal screen.
Iqiyi, one of the “Yi Ai Teng”, certainly does not look at “Friends” and has always been ahead. Iqiyi’s “Life has started with me” may be the most splendid one in the existing vertical screen. When it first appeared on the watercress, it scored 8.2 points. As more and more people watched it, the score slipped and stabilized to 7 points.
3-5 minutes of episodes, paragraphs of life scenes, there is a little smile in a short time to retain users. The audience’s comments on the drama also focused on the special vertical screen, the film and television of the paragraph, the qualified instant noodles, and the new form of uneven quality.
The development of the iQiyi vertical screen drama was not as smooth as expected. Last year they estimated that they would launch nearly 20 high-quality vertical screen works within one year. To this end, they also tried to give a more attractive pay-as-you-go model for vertical short videos, and wanted to attract video producers through the platform. Their attempts on vertical screen content also include obvious one-on-one interviews, live broadcasts, and more.
But at the moment, except for “Life is for me,” it is difficult to see the vertical screen with splashes and iQiyi.
▲ The poster can also see the vertical elements of the show.
Domestic