Although the vertical format is widespread in still images such as photography and painting, it is unusual for cinema and film outside experimental explorations. For decades, the rectangle dominated the appearance of cinematography and other moving images and was conventionalized as their natural form. In recent years, however, the vertical format of moving images became very popular. Initially associated with smartphone videos, vertical videos and films have increasingly attracted attention on online platforms, inspiring projects such as Vertical Film Festival (VFF), giving the ambitious project Vertical Cinema a specific cultural context and stimulating a (self-)historization of vertical framing and screening. In digital moving image culture, the vertical format becomes successively normalized while, remaining connected to the traditional cinematographic rectangle in several conflicting ways. Drawing on Francesco Casetti and format theory, the paper suggests to discuss vertical formats as an aesthetics of relocation which involves cross-media adaptions, reciprocal transformations and plasticity of cinematic formats. With it, it shifts the focus from experience to formats as a key for the understanding the cinematic and filmic relocation and the (dis-) continuities between analogue and digital moving images. In order to examine its relationship to vertical formats, the paper explores relocation as both the formatting of image circulation and the circulation of image formats.
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Cinéma & Cie. Film and Media Studies Journal
Vertical Screening: Aesthetics and Formatting of Relocation
Text.Serial.Journal
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie
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Beyond Cinema
2020-10-01
2021-10-05
2020-10-01
2024-03-10
Cinéma & Cie
Olga Moskatova
2020/10/01
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen- Nürnberg
2036-461X
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Vertical Screening: Aesthetics and Formatting of Relocation
https://riviste.unimi.it/index.php/cinemaetcie/article/download/16544/20225
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Vertical Screening: Aesthetics and Formatting of Relocation
Olga Moskatova, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-
Nürnberg




Abstract

    Although the vertical format is widespread in still images such as photography and
    painting, it is unusual for cinema and film outside experimental explorations. For
    decades, the rectangle dominated the appearance of cinematography and other
    moving images and was conventionalized as their natural form. In recent years,
    however, the vertical format of moving images became very popular. Initially
    associated with smartphone videos, vertical videos and films have increasingly
    attracted attention on online platforms, inspiring projects such as Vertical Film
    Festival (VFF), giving the ambitious project Vertical Cinema a specific cultural
    context and stimulating a (self-)historization of vertical framing and screening.
    In digital moving image culture, the vertical format becomes successively
    normalized while, remaining connected to the traditional cinematographic
    rectangle in several conflicting ways. Drawing on Francesco Casetti and format
    theory, the paper suggests to discuss vertical formats as an aesthetics of relocation
    which involves cross-media adaptions, reciprocal transformations and plasticity
    of cinematic formats. With it, it shifts the focus from experience to formats as
    a key for the understanding the cinematic and filmic relocation and the (dis-)
    continuities between analogue and digital moving images. In order to examine
    its relationship to vertical formats, the paper explores relocation as both the
    formatting of image circulation and the circulation of image formats.


   In 2011, Tate Modern presented Tacita Dean’s monumental cinematographic
installation Film, which was shaped as a 13-meter-high perforated filmstrip. At
the time when film scholars and filmmakers alike were controversially discussing
the technological transition from analogue to digital, Tacita Dean’s work became
an emblematic statement in the discourse of ‘the end of film’. While the industry
successively abandoned analogue technology, many experimental filmmakers
and artists embraced the materiality of film — often in order to counteract the
industrially planned obsolescence.1 For Francesco Casetti, this exhibition of the

1
 Vicky Smith, ‘The Full Body Film’, Sequence, 3 (2012), 42–47; Kim Knowles, ‘Blood, Sweat, and
Tears: Bodily Inscriptions in Contemporary Experimental Film’, NECSUS, 2.2 (Autumn 2013),
447–63.

                                                       Cinéma & Cie, vol. XX, no. 35, Fall 2020
                                        Olga Moskatova


analogue materiality in a gallery or museum constitutes a relocation of cinema.
Principal elements of cinematographic setting such as a dark room, a projector
and a screen are reinstalled in an art space.2 The relocation goes along with
transformations imbuing cinema with expectations usually linked to art.3 Yet,
the shifts do not result from the changed institutional framing alone. One of the
most striking features of Film is its vertical format: the vertical CinemaScope. It
was produced by turning a 35 mm anamorphic lens ninety degrees. This verticality
connects the analogue film technology with the site-specific traits of the Turbine
Hall: The format refers to the vertical image transport that prevails in almost all
analogue film apparatuses.4 In addition, the work was commissioned by Tate
Modern to depict the Turbine Hall and to be exhibited in its eastern part.5
The format adopts the proportions of the hall and embodies the architectural
oblongness. Thus, the verticality negotiates between the analogue materiality
and the new location of cinema, anticipating an upright and mobile spectator in
the museal dispositive.
   When Tacita Dean’s gigantic Film was shown, Apple’s iPhone had already
been on the market for four years. Launched in 2007, iPhone enlarged the screen
surface by relinquishing a hard keyboard and implementing a touchscreen.
From the start, it was advertised as a new screening device for watching films,
constituting another end of possible relocations, namely onto a small and
intimate screen.6 Functioning also as a recording device, iPhone furthermore
contributed to the spread of the moving images in vertical format and, with it,
to the transformation of the cinematic formats in the digital realm, showing how
sites of relocation may actively shape the images they have to accommodate.
   In Casetti’s concept of relocation, formats, however, do not play a major
role. Rather, experience is a key factor in exploring the continuities and
discontinuities between analogue and digital cinema as well as between theatrical
and nontheatrical viewing sites. Basing the notion of media on experience,
Casetti aims to avoid reducing (post-)cinema to questions of media materiality.
He thinks of medium not primarily as a device or a material support, but as
a cultural, site-specific form of experience.7 The relocation follows two paths:
the relocation of films, as a question of content delivery, and the relocation of
cinema, as a question of viewing settings.8 Nevertheless, formats seem to vitally

2
  Francesco Casetti, The Lumière Galaxy: Seven Key Words for the Cinema to Come (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2015), pp. 17–18.
3
  Ivi, p. 18.
4
  David Bordwell, ‘Paoli Gioli’s Vertical Cinema’, in: David Bordwell’s Website on Cinema, August
2009, <http://www.davidbordwell.net/essays/gioli.php> [accessed 29 November 2020].
5
  Nicholas Cullinan, ‘Tacita Dean, Film, 2011: Summary’, <https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artworks/
dean-film-t14273> [accessed 29 November 2020].
6
  Martine Beugnet, ‘Miniature Pleasures: On Watching Films on an iPhone’, in Cinematicity in
Media History, ed. by Jeffrey Geiger and Karin Littau (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press,
2013), pp. 196–210 (197).
7
  Casetti, pp. 19–20.
8
  Ivi, pp. 47–53.

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                Vertical Screening: Aesthetics and Formatting of Relocation


affect both forms of relocation: initially indicating the shape and size of an
image, formats impact the way images are exhibited and experienced. They
help us to grasp the environmental dimension which relocation emphasizes.9
As Tacita Dean’s installation illustrates, an image format is operative in two
ways. Externally, it regulates the fitting in, the embeddedness into an existing
environment; internally, it regulates the compositional, aesthetic and motivic
affordances.10 Moreover, formats not only influence how relocating images are
presented at their destinations, how they fit into the new spaces, formats also
address the process of media migration and, thus, the distances images have to
cover in order to reach a new destination: While relocation raises the question
‘Where is Cinema (Today)?’,11 formats offer a productive category for reflecting
the actual transitions between different locations or screen technologies. In the
process of relocation, images have to face different technological workings,
varying aspect ratios and screen sizes. Large cinema images have to be adapted
to small screens and to their aspect ratios, or vice versa. For this purpose,
formats have to be standardized, protocols for reformatting, rescaling and
compatibility such as letterbox, pillar-box, pan and scan or blow up have to
be established. Thus, formats concern and interrelate the destinations and the
routes of relocating images.
   Therefore, I suggest shifting the focus from experience to formats in order to
reflect on the relocation and the digitalization of the cinematic. Vertical formats
of large and small screens are of particular interest. Although the vertical format
is widespread in still images and is considered portrait format in photography and
painting, it is unusual for cinema and film outside experimental explorations. For
decades, the rectangle dominated the appearance of cinematography and other
moving images and was conventionalized as their natural form.12 The history
of the standardization of the cinematic rectangle is well documented and did
not develop in a linear fashion. It can be briefly summarized by three caesuras:
introduction and implementation of 35 mm and 4:3 aspect ratio by Thomas
Edison and his chief engineer William K. L. Dickson c. 1900; specification of the
Academy standard and readjustment of the aspect ratio (1:1.37) after introduction
of film sound in the 1920s; finally, the institutionalization of widescreen cinema,
resulting from the success of Cinerama and CinemaScope in the 1950s.13 In
recent years, however, the vertical format of moving images became very popular.
Initially associated with smartphone videos, vertical videos and films have
increasingly attracted attention on platforms such as YouTube, Vimeo, and later


9
  Ivi, p. 29.
10
   On these two aspects of image formats see Michael Niehaus, Was ist ein Format? (Hannover:
Wehrhahn, 2018), pp. 25–31.
11
   Malte Hagener, ‘Where Is Cinema (Today)? The Cinema in the Age of Media Immanence’,
Cinéma & Cie. International Film and Media Studies Journal, 11.2 (Fall 2008), 15–22.
12
   Ted Hovet, ‘The Persistence of the Rectangle’, Film History, 29.3 (Fall 2017), 136–68.
13
   For a full historical account see John Belton, Widescreen Cinema (Cambridge, MA and London:
Harvard University Press, 1992).

                                                                                          127
                                          Olga Moskatova


IGTV and TikTok, inspiring projects such as Vertical Film Festival (VFF), giving
the ambitious project Vertical Cinema a specific cultural context and stimulating
a (self-)historization of vertical framing and screening.14 In digital moving image
culture, the vertical format becomes successively normalized while, at least for
the time being, remaining connected to the traditional cinematographic rectangle
in several conflicting ways and also indicating the changes images undergo in the
process of migration. In the following, I will discuss the vertical form of moving
images as an aesthetics and formatting of relocation, arguing that relocation
implies both the formatting of image circulation and the circulation of image
formats. The latter involves cross-media adaptations, reciprocal transformations
and the plasticity of formats.


Formatting of Relocation

   In his study on mp3, sound studies researcher Jonathan Sterne made a case
for integrating format theory into media theory. Formats specify ‘a set of rules
according to which a technology can operate’15 and have a ‘contractual and
conventional nature’.16 They are standardized measurements which impact the
appearance, aesthetics and inner workings of a given medium. Following Sterne,
Haidee Wasson called for the formatting of film studies, arguing that formats
are more precise categories for examining digital culture than the ahistorical,
unchanging and expansive concept of a medium.17
   However, it is not very productive to play off formats and media against each
other, and there is also a risk involved. Terminologically, formats contain the
notion of form and shaping (in-forming). Historically, image formats often denote
the size, proportions and, thus, the outward shape of a picture.18 Thereby, formats
risk introducing the form/matter distinction which has a long philosophical
pedigree. Especially with regard to the digital and its discourses of immateriality,
formats can reinforce the (still deployed) opposition between the analogue
material medium and digital immaterial information. In the Aristotelian-Platonic
tradition, it is precisely the concept of form that is ahistorical and is intended
to secure the essence of an entity. In media theory, too, the concept is often
dematerialized, such as in Luhmann’s medium/form distinction and in other


14
   The Australian Vertical Film Festival and the Austrian Vertical Cinema project both provide
brief histories of vertical format in moving images functioning, at least partially, as a way of self-
legitimation. See the webpage of the festival <https://www.adamsebire.info/vertical-film-festival/
about> [accessed 29 November 2020] and the special issue of Kontraste Cahier, 3 (2013), dedicated
to the Vertical Cinema project.
15
   Jonathan Sterne, Mp3: The Meaning of a Format (Durham and London: Duke University Press,
2012), p. 7.
16
   Ivi, p. 8.
17
   Haidee Wasson, ‘Formatting the Film Studies’, Film Studies, 12.1 (Spring 2015), 57–61 (p. 58).
18
   Niehaus, p. 9, pp. 9, 26–37.

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                  Vertical Screening: Aesthetics and Formatting of Relocation


Aristotelian-inspired concepts of mediality.19 Instead of being an alternative to
medium, formats have to be addressed as part of material media arrangements.
They are productive analytical tools because they can reorganize established
media-theoretical framework and raise different questions about media. For
Sterne, for example, formats function both at a smaller and larger scale than media.
They highlight ‘smaller registers like software, operating standards, and codes, as
well as larger registers like infrastructures, international corporate consortia, and
whole technical systems.’20 In any case, formats have to materialize in order to
be operative. Formats can be distinctive because an individual medium employs
many different formats. Specific formats can coalesce with specific cultural
practices, such as mp3 or GIFs facilitating a culture of sharing and spreading
of content. Some formats such as 16mm or Super8 are closely linked to amateur
or avant-garde practices, while others such as CinemaScope prevail in the film
industry. The affordances of formats equally affect the production, circulation
and exhibition of media content. Instead of hierarchizing media and formats,
Sterne invites us ‘to ask after the changing formations of media, the contexts of
their reception, the conjunctures that shaped their sensual characteristics, and
the institutional politics in which they were enmeshed.’21
   Recent research on formats, which is conducted against the background of
digital technologies, often emphasizes their role for distribution, circulation and
spreadability of media content.22 This close relationship between formats and
circulation makes them suitable for the analysis of relocation. Whereas the focus
on ‘the flows and mobilities of contemporary visual culture can also obscure new
formations of material and contextual specificity’, formats can help to illuminate
how ‘moving images also touch down at identifiable moments’, ‘in particular
places’ and at ‘differentiated and material social sites of cultural engagement’23.
Formats and relocation are intertwined in several ways, which I suggest to
differentiate into the formatting, preformatting and reformatting of circulation on
the one hand and the circulation of formats on the other.
   First of all, we can briefly introduce three different kinds of analogue and digital
formatting that may be involved in the exhibition, circulation and relocation of
moving images. In the digital realm, (audio-)visual container formats such as
GIF, Matroska (MKV), mp4 or mov and corresponding compression codecs,
being standardized algorithmic actors which encode and decode data, are


19
   On hylomorphism and media theory see Olga Moskatova, Male am Zelluloid: Zum relationalen
Materialismus im kameralosen Film (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2019), pp. 57–79.
20
   Sterne, Mp3, p. 11.
21
   Ibidem.
22
   Ivi, p. 1; Lucas Hilderbrand, Inherent Vice: Bootleg Histories of Videotape and Copyright (Durham
and London: Duke University Press, 2009); Erika Balsom, After Uniqueness. A History of Film and
Video Art in Circulation (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017).
23
    Haidee Wasson, ‘The Networked Screen: Moving Images, Materiality, and the Aesthetic of
Size’, in Fluid Screen, Expanded Cinema, ed. by Jeanine Marchessault and Susan Lord (Toronto:
University of Toronto Press, 2007), pp. 74–95 (p. 76).

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                                      Olga Moskatova


usually measured in file size and resolution. Analogue film formats are defined
by different measurements, which do not automatically coincide. Formats such
as 35mm, 16mm or Super8 specify the width of the filmstrip, while they are
furthermore differentiated according to the aspect ratio of the projected image as
standard or widescreen. For example, a 35mm film may equally feature an aspect
ratio of 4:3, being a standard gauge, or 1:2.35, being an anamorphic wide gauge.
   As Tacita Dean’s installation exemplifies, the relocating images have to fit
into new environments which are already preformatted somewhat.24 This way,
compatibility between formats — for example, between cinematic image formats
and televisual or digital screens formats — becomes an issue, which impacts
not only the circulation but also the exhibition and production of relocating
images. In particular, the art history and image theory by Jacob Burckhardt,25
David Summers,26 and Wolfram Pichler and Ralph Ubl27 underline the close
relationship between formats and space. Without initially being concerned with
the circulation of images, they can nevertheless productively complement the
media theorical perspective because traveling images have to finally reach a
definite location that confronts the images with its own site-specific conditions.
Drawing on their different accounts of the relationships between formats,
image and space, Michael Niehaus develops the idea of a preformatted space.28
Format is a particular feature of a pictorial object that occupies space and, thus,
raises questions of embeddedness and separation from the surroundings.29 By
giving images their material shape, formats perform the task of situating them
within a spatial context and regulate whether an image can be placed in given
surroundings or not.30 Invoking the typical function of the image frame, Niehaus
further entrusts the formats with the task of differentiation between interior and
exterior, a virtual space of representation and a concrete space of presentation
— a focus which can be also found in Summers’ as well as Pichler’s and Ubl’s
writings.31 Simultaneously, the space of presentation establishes a preformatted
space.32 Drawing on art historical considerations of Jacob Burckhardt, Niehaus
argues that architecture and architectural elements such as wall surfaces, domes
or alcoves functioned as historically specific preformatted spaces for images and
sculptures.33 The art historical epochs differ in how rigorously the architectural
preformatting is imposed upon the images or harmonized with the depicted. To a

24
   On preformatted environments see Niehaus, p. 12, 30.
25
   Jacob Burckhardt, ‘Format und Bild’ (1886). In Jacob Burckhardt: Vorträge 1844–1887, ed. by
Emil Dürr (Basel: Benno Schwabe, 1918), pp. 312–23.
26
   David Summers, Real Spaces: World Art History and the Rise of Western Modernism (London:
Phaidon Press, 2003).
27
   Wolfram Pichler and Ralph Ubl, Bildtheorie zur Einführung (Hamburg: Junius, 2014).
28
   Niehaus, p. 28.
29
   Ivi, pp. 26–27.
30
   Pichler and Ubl, p. 145.
31
   Niehaus, pp. 26–28; Summers, p. 43; Pichler and Ubl, pp. 143–44.
32
   Niehaus, p. 28.
33
   Ivi, pp. 29–30.

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                  Vertical Screening: Aesthetics and Formatting of Relocation


certain extent, formats themselves therefore result from the ‘previous structuring
of space’34 and, subsequently, begin to act not only as a material boundary, but
also as a preformation that affects image genres, composition and depiction.35
   Furthermore, relocation also implies reformatting, i.e. changes of formats.
Films can relocate as VHS into the domestic sphere and establish cinephile
practices of collecting and watching.36 On today’s small screens, formats such
as mp4, AVI or GIF turn films into clips and image quality into accessibility.37
Changes of formats can imply diminishment or enlargement of images and
screens and, thus, also pose a problem of fitting in. Furthermore, formats can
not only facilitate, but also impede relocation. For example, digital cinema
package is a theatrical container format that territorializes films by preventing
their uncontrolled exhibition, distribution, and relocation.
   Reformatting of relocation also gives relevance to nontheatrical screen
formats, since moving images formatted in VHS, DVD, GIF, mp4, mov, etc.
are dependent on televisual or computerized screens for display. Screen formats
are measured in aspect ratios, which affect their outward form and at the same
time constitute a preformatted site for the relocating images. They particularly
concern the main issue of this paper, namely vertical screen formats, which — as
I will show in the next sections — also illustrate mutual exchanges between big
and small screens in the course of relocation: It is the shape of the screens that
especially indicates that relocation not only involves the formatting of circulation,
but also the circulation of formats.
   Being standardized, formats guarantee not only operativity within one medium
and its infrastructure, but also cross-media interoperability, which necessitates
the dissemination of formats.38 Historically, the relocation of cinematic content
onto different screens and displays is accompanied by the adaptation of
cinematographic Academy and widescreen formats by television and later by
computers and smartphones. Early television screens and computer screens
were round, sometimes even vertical, for technical reasons; they had, first and
foremost, to implement the early cinematographic 4:3 aspect ratio in the postwar,
and later, in the 1990s and 2000s, the widescreen as standard, as a result of media
rivalry and content migration.39 The 16:9 aspect ratio, which is typical for HD


34
   Ivi, p. 30 (my translation).
35
   Ivi, pp. 30–33.
36
   Hilderbrand, pp. 34–49, pp. 175–90.
37
   Hito Steyerl, ‘In Defence of the Poor Image’, E-Flux Journal, 10 (2009), 1–9 (p. 1), <https://
www.e-flux.com/journal/10/61362/in-defense-of-the-poor-image/> [accessed 29 November
2020].
38
   Jonathan Sterne, ‘The mp3 as Cultural Artifact’, New Media & Society 8.5 (2006), 825–42 (p. 829).
39
   Michael Z. Newman and Elana Levine, Legitimating Television: Media Convergence and Cultural
Status (New York and London: Routledge, 2012), pp. 100–128. On round and vertical television
screens see Erkki Huhtamo, ‘Elements of Screenology: Toward an Archaeology of the Screen’,
Navigationen – Zeitschrift für Medien – und Kulturwissenschaften, 6.2 (2006), 31–64 (pp. 60–63).
On early round computer screens see Jacob Gaboury, ‘The Random-Access Image: Memory and
the History of the Computer Screen’, Grey Room, 70 (Winter 2018), 24–53.

                                                                                               131
                                        Olga Moskatova


television and many computer and laptop screens, is developed in such a way as
to mathematically contain all common cinematographic widescreen aspect ratios
such as European 1:1.66, the American 1:1.85 and the anamorphic 1:2.35 as well
as the standard aspect ratio 4:3.40 Thus, digital screens, on which images circulate
as digitally born JPEGs, GIFs, mp4s, etc., materialize historical analogue film
formats, i.e. the aspect ratios and their shape.
   The proliferation of cinematic aspect ratios and of the cinematic rectangle
bear witness to the expectations of what kind of content is likely to circulate
and relocate on the screens. Whereas Casetti and Sampietro emphasize the
repetition of cinematic experience as a precondition of relocation,41 it seems that
the repeated circulation of cinematic formats also contributes to a successful
relocation of cinema and films alike. Also, the screen shape indicates which
formats are believed to be cinematic at a given time and epitomizes a hierarchy of
media positioning cinema as a desirable standard. As research on series, quality
television, computer games and online advertising has shown, widescreen formats,
i.e. horizontal rectangles, and letterbox were coded as especially cinematographic
in the 1990s and 2000s and were adopted by other visual media on their way into
the digital future.42 Digital media created a cinematic impression by means of
remediation or materialization of the widescreen rectangle in order to legitimate
themselves and strengthen their cultural value: ‘In the era of convergence, the
cinematic shape of the picture is ultimately as significant to many viewers as the
qualities of its content.’43 Before digital screens ‘cinematized’ as flat 16:9-screens,
remediation of letterbox format was a common strategy. By deploying a letterbox
view on 4:3 screens, computer games signalled a shift out of play to the spectatorial,
cinematic mode.44 In the late 1990s and early 2000s, series such as The X-Files
(Fox, 1993–2002), The Sopranos (HBO, 1999–2007) and The West Wing (NBC,
1999–2006) began to letterbox the images on 4:3 television screens, drawing a
distinction between regular and cinematized content while accepting the overall
shrinkage of the image.45 Letterbox format results from the relocation of films
and was originally implemented in order to adjust the cinematic widescreen to
4:3 television without cropping the image. It signifies both the incompatibility
of image formats in transition and the necessity to fit into a preformatted space.



40
   This mathematical compromise goes back to Kerns H. Powers. On 16:9 see Neman and Levine,
pp. 119–21.
41
   Francesco Casetti and Sara Sampietro, ‘With Eyes, With Hands: The Relocation of Cinema Into
the iPhone’, in Moving Data: The iPhone and the Future of Media, ed. by Pelle Snickars and Patrick
Vonderau (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), pp. 19–32 (p. 20).
42
   Newman and Levine, pp. 100–28; Harper Cossar, ‘The Shape of New Media. Screen Space,
Aspect Ratios, and Digitextuality’, Journal of Film and Video, 61.4 (Winter 2009), 3–16; Glen
Creeber, Small Screen Aesthetics: From TV to the Internet (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013),
pp. 84–104.
43
   Newman and Levine, p. 123.
44
   Cossar, pp. 9–10.
45
   Newman and Levine, pp. 115–23; Creeber, pp. 101–04.

132
                 Vertical Screening: Aesthetics and Formatting of Relocation


Turned into an aesthetic choice and conscious strategy, the letterbox began to
denote the relocation of the cinematic experience.


Vertical Video Syndrome, or the Persistence of Cinematic Rectangle

   Smartphones, and the vertical format they enable, take part in this history
of circulating cinematographic formats, which testify to the relocation
and cinematization of noncinematic screens. In 2007, Apple launched its
touchscreen-based mobile phone. The design and advertisement of the
screen anticipated the relocation of filmic content onto the new small screen:
replacing the keys with touchscreen enlarged the screen area, which was the
size of stamps on other mobile phones at that time, and also allowed it to be
held lengthwise.46 This way, iPhone’s aspect ratio came closer to the widescreen
format, prefiguring the viewing and streaming of filmic images or cinematized
series on platforms such as Netflix. Furthermore, the phone was promoted as
a mobile viewing device, intended for moving images. Regardless of the small
screen, iPhone was explicitly presented as a medium of relocation: Steve Jobs
illustrated its distinctive qualities as a viewing device by showing sequences
from Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest (Gore Verbinski, 2006) — a
spectacular costume drama cast with international stars and boasting special
effects.47 The next generations of iPhone added further features such as video
recording and a CinemaScope application for film viewing, flagging the device
both as a camera and a portable cinema.48
   Whereas the particularities of watching films on smartphones were often
discussed, especially the aspects of miniaturization and tactility,49 I am primarily
interested in the format. It is as a cinematized screen of filmic relocation — by
means of circulating a cinematographic wide format, which then leads to its
cinematographic preformatting — that smartphone, like no other, has contributed
to the popularization of the vertical format. As a medium of relocation, iPhone
materializes the cinematographically coded widescreen. Surprisingly, the
CinemaScope application introduced the format that was historically intended
to differentiate small screens from big screens in the first place, namely televisual
from cinematic.50 The easy rotatability of the phone and its recording function
made it possible to transform — to reformat — the cinematographic format into


46
   Beugnet, p. 197.
47
   Ibidem.
48
   Alexandra Schneider, ‘The iPhone as an Object of Knowledge’, in Moving Data: The iPhone and
the Future of Media, ed. by Pelle Snickars and Patrick Vonderau (New York: Columbia University
Press, 2012), pp. 49–60 (pp. 53, 55).
49
   Beugnet, pp. 196–210; Casetti and Sampietro, pp. 19–32; Wanda Strauven, ‘The Archaeology of
the Touch Screen’, Maske und Kothurn, 58.4 (2012), 69­–79.
50
   André Bazin, ‘Will CinemaScope Save the Film Industry?’ (1953), Film-Philosophy, 6.2. (January
2002), <https://www.film-philosophy.com/vol6-2002/n2bazin> [accessed 8 March 2020].

                                                                                             133
                                        Olga Moskatova


a vertical one in a twinkling of an eye. In this way, mobile phones facilitated the
spread of vertical images, which originated in amateur videos circulated via social
media and messaging services such as WhatsApp. Accordingly, the vertical mode
was initially perceived as an amateur rather than professional format.51 While
the discourses of mobile phone aesthetics often focus on low-res, intimacy, and
mobility of recording, the vertical format often goes unmentioned.52 However, it
is precisely the vertical form that emphasizes the mobility and physical presence
of a human observer behind the camera and deictically marks him, endowing
the image with codes of subjective witnessing and authenticity.53 Because
smartphones, like early film apparatuses, combine the functions of production
and display of images,54 they are the primary sites for viewing vertical videos.
On computer screens or on smartphones and tablets with diverging aspect
ratios, vertical videos are framed by pillar-box. Originally introduced to show
older 4:3 filmic or televisual images on a widescreen without distortion, the
pillar-box is a sign of the processes of relocation. Like letterbox, it is trade-off
that communicates the historical asynchronicity between image formats and
the intricate relationship between image formats and screen formats as a key
question of circulating images.
   One year after Tacita Dean’s installation, videos in 9:16 or even vertical
CinemaScope were widespread to such an extent that they started to provoke
negative reactions. Especially, the ironic video Vertical Video Syndrome — A
PSA55 (Glove and Boots, 2012) has shaped the ongoing depreciative discourse.
In this video, the protagonists of the puppet show Glove and Boots value the
vertical orientation as bad taste and technical error: ‘Vertical video happen when
you hold your camera the wrong way. Your video will end up looking like crap.’
In doing so, the vertical format is not only pathologized as a ‘syndrome’, but also
naturalized with recourse to screen technology and physiology: ‘Vertical Video
Syndrome is dangerous. Motion pictures have always been horizontal. Televisions
are horizontal. Computer screens are horizontal. People’s eyes are horizontal.
We aren’t built to watch vertical videos.’ The video also visually reaffirms the
primacy of the rectangle and the necessity to rotate the phone by using horizontal
framing, including the pillar-box. This normative line of argumentation has
often been picked up in written commentaries or further videos on the net. It
fails to recognize that the horizontal rectangle and its prescriptive force are not
natural or physiological, but date back, first and foremost, to the modelling of


51
   Miriam Ross, ‘Vertical Framing. Authenticity and New Aesthetic Practice in Online Videos’,
Refractory. A Journal of Entertainment Media, 24 (2014), <http://refractory.unimelb.edu.
au/2014/08/06/ross/> [accessed 29 November 2020].
52
   Caridad Botella, ‘The Mobile Aesthetics of Cell Phone Made Films: From the Pixel to the Every
Day’, Revista KEPES, 9.8 (2012), 73–87.
53
   Ross.
54
   Ibidem.
55
   The original video is no longer accessible. For shorter version Vertical Video Syndrome (Clean
Version) see: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f2picMQC-9E> [accessed November 2020].

134
                  Vertical Screening: Aesthetics and Formatting of Relocation


noncinematic screens on cinematographic (widescreen) formats and to the (pre)
formatting of historical and anticipated relocation.
   Considering the historical plurality of image formats and also the technically
motivated round shapes that many screen media have had at the beginning, it
is only in view of the naturalized persistence of the cinematic rectangle and its
adaption by other media that the vertical format can appear as deviation, lack
of techno-aesthetic expertise, or experimental innovation in production and
display of moving images.56 Formats prove to be more than technical problems;
they also embody aesthetic values. The implicit aesthetic norms and discursive
strategies, such as pathologizing or perfection, become especially visible in times
when new formats are introduced. In his historical analysis, Ted Hovet has
shown that the cinematic rectangle became prevalent not only for technical or
economic reasons; rather, the processes of standardization were always imbued
with aesthetic preferences, judgments of taste and opinions on what moving
images ought to look like.57 Accordingly, he remarks:

       […] the display of an image is also rhetorical: it asserts an argument about the
     proper and correct way to frame the image and in its most extreme form admits of
     no alternative. Reducing the discussion to issues of technical properties (or economic
     expediency) disguises its function to control, contain, and, of course, shape the
     content of the image in a particular way.58

   The aesthetic control asserts a conservative impulse and correlates projection
and production according to the rectangular format. The latter is materialized
in a series of further rectangles: in screens, projectors, cameras, masks, and on
filmstrips.59 Due to the circulation of cinematographic formats, the control also
extends to analogue and digital screen media, which have assimilated and, thus,
simultaneously reaffirmed the cinematic shape. Vertical Video Syndrome — A
PSA testifies to the persistence of the rectangle and its role in the history of the
relocation of films onto small screens. As if echoing Manovich’s statement that
new media are mathematical in logic and cinematic in appearance,60 the video
also implicitly embraces a historically specific format of cinema as model for
digital media.
   Historically, the delegitimating of non-horizontal rectangular formats needs
explanation. Luke McKernan recalled the history of round image formats
in painting, early photography, optical toys and projecting technologies,
starting from the contemporary film experiment Lucifer (Gust van den
Berghe, 2014), which shows images recorded in a round shape with the aid



56
   On persistence of cinematic rectangle see Hovet, pp. 136–68.
57
   Ivi, pp. 140, 156, 165.
58
   Ivi, p. 140.
59
   Ivi, p. 162.
60
   Lev Manovich, The Language of New Media (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2001), p. 180.

                                                                                       135
                                        Olga Moskatova


of a Tondoscope.61 In the nineteenth century, magic lantern projections were
often round due to the shape of the lens and the light beam.62 William K. L.
Dickson, too, experimented with round formats in addition to square and
rectangular ones,63 as evidenced by his recordings [Newark athlete No, 1]
(1891). In early film, these conventions survived in terms of circular masking,
which may be partially applied, such in the film Santa Claus (G. A. Smith,
1898), or completely dominate a moving image, such as in London’s Trafalgar
Square (Wordsworth Donisthorpe, 1890).64 In 1918, the Italian journalist and
illustrator Emmanuele Toddi still bothered to question the omnipresence of
the cinematic rectangle in favour of round picture formats, by referring to the
physiology of the human eye.65
   In order to become the dominant cinematic shape, the rectangle first had to
displace the circle, which was widespread in magic lanterns in the nineteenth
century.66 The manuals of the time seem to presuppose the circle rather than
the rectangle as the default mode for the magic-lantern projection. Also,
it was common to vary the formats and outlines of the projected image by
means of different masks. The masks could not only be of round, square, oval
or oblong shape, but also vary in horizontal or vertical orientation.67 The pre-
cinematic practices of projection in the nineteenth century enact the famous
‘dynamic square’ which, for Eisenstein, could incorporate the plurality of
formats, including the vertical ones.68 The aesthetic considerations dominated.
The image shape and orientation were expected to be appropriate to the
object. For example, vertical rectangular or oval forms were recommended
for portraits as well as tall objects and buildings, while rounded squares were
considered suitable for landscapes.69 Thus, formats have been associated
with specific genres, entrusting them with the task of internal compositional,
aesthetic and figurative regulation.


The Dynamic Square of Digital Moving Images

  Eisenstein advocated a comparable plurality of formats in his lecture
“The Dynamic Square” given at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and

61
    Luke McKernan, ‘The Round Window’, in Luke McKernan, 18 October 2015, <https://
lukemckernan.com/2015/10/18/the-round-window/> [accessed 29 November 2020].
62
   Hovet, pp. 146–50.
63
   Belton, pp. 19–22.
64
   The short films can be seen at Luke McKernan, ‘The Round Window’.
65
   Emmanuele Toddi, ‘Rectangle-Film [25x19]’ (1918), in Screens, ed. by Dominique Chateau and
José Moure (Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press, 2016), pp. 25–28.
66
   Hovet, p. 146.
67
   Ivi, p. 151.
68
   Sergej M. Eisenstein, ‘The Dynamic Square’, in Film Essays and A Lecture by Sergej Eisenstein,
ed. by Jay Leyda (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1968), 48–66 (p. 52).
69
   Hovet, p. 151.

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                 Vertical Screening: Aesthetics and Formatting of Relocation


Sciences in 1930. The Academy held a meeting aiming to discuss widescreen
alternatives to the existing film format, which had become almost square with
the introduction of sound. Three horizontal rectangles with an aspect ratio of
3:4, 3:5 and 3:6 were under consideration.70 Eisenstein immediately defeated
the standardization, declaring the horizontal formats ‘the terrible enslavement
of mind by traditionalization and tradition’, which ‘represent the limits within
which revolves the creative imagination of the screen reformers and the authors
of the coming era of a new frame shape’.71 Above all, he opposed the exclusion
of the vertical and its compositional potential. Instead of reinforcing widescreen
‘horizontalism’, Eisenstein proposed embracing the vertical composition. After
presenting several anthropological, art historical, psychological and motivic
arguments in support of the vertical, he finally pleaded for a reconciliation of
both the horizontal and the vertical in a dynamic square, which could contain
many projection formats and variable shapes.72
   As is well known, his vision didn’t take hold in the film industry. However,
there is a history of diverse experimentation with vertical and dynamic framing
paving the way to their today’s popularity in digital culture. Eisenstein’s lecture
came at the end of a decade that has seen many experiments with multi-
shaped masking, including vertical ones, such in Ernst Lubitsch’s Sumurun
(1920) or Fritz Lang’s Der müde Tod (1929), multiple-screen dispositifs
such as Abel Gance’s Napoléon (1927), or multiple projection in dynamic
formats on concave screens such in László Moholy-Nagy’s idea of Polykino
or ‘simultaneous cinema’ (1927).73 In 1928, the vanguard architect Frederick
Kiesler even designed a dynamic cinema architecture in Mondrian-like style
encompassing a ‘screen-o-scop’-a device changing the screen size and shape
with respect to projected images.74 Later, films such as The Door in the Wall
(1956) by Glenn H. Alvey Jr., which declare itself being dedicated to “dynamic
frame” in the opening credits, came very close to Eisenstein’s conception in
using changing shapes for dramatic needs. For David Bordwell, Paoli Gioli’s
films such as Commutazioni con mutazione (Paolo Gioli, 1969) and L’operatore
perforato (Paolo Gioli, 1979) form a ‘vertical cinema’.75 By manipulating the
images on the optical printer and making filmstrips, perforation holes and
film frames visible, the films ostentatiously emphasize the vertical orientation
and transport of moving images which is technically implemented in almost


70
   Eisenstein, p. 49.
71
   Ibidem.
72
   Ivi, p. 52.
73
   For a more detailed discussion see Antonio Somaini, ‘The Screen as “Battleground”: Eisenstein’s
“Dynamic Square” and the Plasticity of the Projection Format’, in Format Matters: Standards,
Practices, and Politics in Media Cultures, ed. by Marek Jancovic, Axel Volmar, and Alexandra
Schneider (Luneburg: Meson Press, 2020), 219–36 (pp. 226–31).
74
   Giuliana Bruno, Atlas of Emotion: Journeys in Art, Architecture, and Film (New York: Verso,
2018), pp. 46–47.
75
   Bordwell, n.p.

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                                        Olga Moskatova


all analogue projectors, printers and cameras.76 This vertical aesthetic, which
seemingly draws attention to the mismatch between the verticality embodied
in apparatuses and the horizontality of projected and framed images, can be
also found in materialist and structural films such as Slides (Annabel Nicolson,
1971) or Little Dog for Roger (Malcolm LeGrice, 1968) and in many found
footage filmy by Cécile Fontaine such as Golf-Entretien (1984) or Japon Series
(1991). Besides rich history of alternative and multiple projection techniques
in expanded cinema, two famous World Expo projects are also worth
mentioning, which specifically experiment with large scale vertical screening
and, forming a monumental ‘sensory architecture’, express the historical desire
to ‘expand the cinematic experience and challenge the frame of projection’77:
Designed by Colin Low and Roman Koitor, and produced by the National
Film Board of Canada for the Expo 67, the multiscreen project Labyrinth
consisted, among others, of a 12-meter long vertical screen extending over
several stories and a complementary vertical screen on the floor. Both were
surrounded by elliptically shaped balconies. The closely aligned architecture
and the screened material were designed to interpret the theme of Expo ‘The
Man and His World’ by drawing on Theseus myth, turning the Labyrinth into
an immersive, quasi-religious ‘viewing machine’ and a ‘total experience’.78
Three years later, at Expo 70, the British Columbia pavilion housed the
ambitious project Vertical CinemaScope, developed by Jaroslav Frič, the head
of the group SCARS (Science Art Sense).79 Consisting of two screens, one high
placed in the rear and one of regular dimension in the front, the project was
architecturally composed in order to create a dynamic aesthetic of size and
to enable dramatically contrasting monumentality of the screen with small
projected objects.80
   Although this brief, by no means exhaustive history bears witness to vertical
framing and screening predating smartphone aesthetics, it is only in today’s
digital image culture that the format becomes prevalent on an everyday basis,
embedding its aesthetics of plasticity, size and spatialization into a new cultural
context. Remarkably, the contemporary advancement of vertical moving images
was driven neither by artists nor by prestigious undertaking, but instead owes
its existence to user-generated content. Although vertical format is still met
with refusal, it is increasingly gaining currency online, eased, among others, by
trendy application such as IGTV or TikTok. David Neal has compiled an online


76
   Ivi.
77
   Mirna Belina, ‘Mount Vertical’, Kontraste Cahier, 3 (special issue: Vertical Cinema ed. by Mirma
Belina and Sonic Acts, 2013) 4–8 (p. 5).
78
   Seth Feldman, ‘Minotaur in a Box: The Labyrinth Pavillion at Expo 67’, in Reimagining Cinema:
Film at Expo 67, ed. by Monika Kin Gagnon and Janine Marchessault (London: McGill, 2014),
pp. 27–45 (pp. 35–42).
79
   Timothy Druckrey, ‘Sensory Architecture and the Cinematic Imaginary’, Kontraste Cahier, 3,
2013, 9–32, (pp.22–29).
80
   Ivi, p. 27–29.

138
                 Vertical Screening: Aesthetics and Formatting of Relocation


retrospective of the most successful vertical videos, which shows that the initially
amateur format is now being taken up in the professional fields of music videos,
journalism, online and offline advertising, and also narrative film.81 Meanwhile,
the list also includes series and previews of moving images on smartphone apps.
The vertical format is beginning to circulate and to be repeated itself. Although
its exceptionality remains to refer back to cinema, it is starting to break away
from and to rework the cinematographic norm of the rectangle.
   David Neal’s ambitious project Alicewinks (2012) is one of the first vertical
moving images with the length of a feature film that explores the narrative potential
of the format. At the same time, the work unfolds an astonishing aesthetic of
relocation and of the dynamic square. The animated film is 164 minutes long
and draws on different children’s book illustrations of Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland (1865), which mainly appeared in vertical book
formats. Therefore, there is no consistent aesthetics or representation of the
main characters. Instead, the respective book illustrations undergo different
manipulations in order to capture their peculiarities. Moreover, the shrinkage
and enlargement of Alice begins to comment on the everyday scalability of the
images circulating on digital screens – both in terms of the differences in screen
sizes and the scaling effects on particular screens, namely computer desktops
and pinchable touchscreens. On the one hand, the relocation of moving images
is characterized by the co-existence of very large screens (such as media façades,
cinema or IMAX) and very small ones (such as tablet, laptop and smartphone),
so that the scaling, malleability and adaptability of images to different screen
sizes becomes a genuine problem of formatting.82 ‘We become witness to the
abstractions attendant upon that meeting between screens of an unchanging
size and the fluid images which grow or shrink to fill them. In other words,
the pictures that travel among these screens participate … in a drama of
distortion and size.’83 In the digital realm, Alice’s aesthetics of scale become an
aesthetic of relocation, indicating issues of both delivery and of fitting into an
environment. On the other hand, Alice’s ‘drama of distortion’ and scale also
refers to the plasticity of image sizes and ratios, which is distinctive of display
on small digital screens. On computers, laptops, tablets or smartphones, images
appear in multiple windows, which Friedberg has framed as ‘multiples’,84 and
have to permanently adjust to the shape and the size of the screen. On tablets
and smartphones, this adaptability is closely connected to the rotation from the
vertical to the horizontal mode, and vice versa. On touchscreens, the images also
change their size and scale through pinching gestures. This necessity of the image


81
   David Neal, Vertical Video: A Retrospective. The First Ten Years (2007–2016), <http://www.
exit109.com/~dnn/vertical/>, [accessed 29 november 2020]. On offline advertising see also Ross.
82
   Casetti, p. 135–36; Wasson, ‘The Networked Screen’, pp. 74–95.
83
   Wasson, ‘The Networked Screen’, p. 86.
84
   Anne Friedberg, The Virtual Window: From Alberti to Microsoft (Cambridge, MA: The MIT
Press, 2009), pp. 217–39.

                                                                                           139
                                     Olga Moskatova


to fit the screen frame, to stretch and to be malleable, highlights that the sizes,
aspect ratios and edges of today’s screens have become the dominant properties
of visual experience.85 While Eisenstein positions the dynamic square against
standardization, the plasticity that Alice perfectly personifies in the vertical
moving image Alicewinks, becomes a question of the insertion and adaptivity of
images and their formats on preformatted digital screens.
   The circulation of vertical format is also documented by Vimeo channel
Tallscreen, which is dedicated to artistic exploration of the format. Among
others, the channel presents works which were originally released on Vertical
Film Festival, taking place in Australia since 2014. While Tallscreen recommends
using HDSLR cameras to avoid undesired mobile aesthetics and, thus, dissociates
itself from smartphone as a means of moving image production,86 the festival
also renounces smartphones as a means of image display. This detachment
also represents an autonomization of the vertical format, which, with the aid
of artistic involvement, becomes suitable for cinematographic projects and the
big screen. In this respect, Vertical Cinema proves to be an especially significant
phenomenon. The project invited internationally renowned filmmakers and
media artists to produce short site-specific films for the vertical projection. Ten
films premiered at the Kontraste Dark as Light Festival in 2013, followed by
several further festival screenings up until now. Commissioned to be shown
in narrow, tall spaces, especially churches, the films establish a highly visible
relationship with the architecture. The verticality of the screens takes up the
verticality of the church windows. In this way, it not only reflects on the traditional
metaphor of images and screens, but also becomes a means of insertion into the
new environment, a means of compatibility with the surrounding. As in Tacita
Dean’s Film, the verticalization of a big screen goes along with the relocation
of the cinematographic dispositive into the church, even including collective
reception and sitting, immobilized spectators. Although the films were produced
by mixing different analogue and digital techniques, they were printed on 35mm
and vertically projected with a custom-built projector in 1:2.35 aspect ratio and,
thus, in vertical CinemaScope.87 It is no coincidence that Billy Roisz and Dieter
Kovačič dedicate their film Bring Me the Head of Henri Chrétien! (2013) to the
squeezing and unsqueezing of the images. The anamorphic technology of the
CinemaScope, which relied on the lenses and widescreen experiments of the
Frenchman Henri Chrétien dating back to 1920s, compresses the image by a
ratio of approximately 2:1 during recording onto 35mm and dilates it again in
projection.88 Roisz and Kovačič elevate this compressions and decompressions
to an aesthetic principle by verticalizing and combining them with the glitch


85
   Stephen Monteiro, ‘Fit to Frame: Image and Edge in Contemporary Interfaces’, Screen, 55.3
(Autumn 2014), 360–78 (pp. 360–61).
86
   Tallscreen, <https://vimeo.com/groups/tallscreen> [accessed 29 November 2020].
87
   Belina, p. 6.
88
   Belton, pp. 40–43, pp. 138–57.

140
                    Vertical Screening: Aesthetics and Formatting of Relocation


art process datamoshing in order to emphasize the vertical shape of the new
screen. Basing the work on a genre historically associated with CinemaScope, the
film recycles visual and acoustic fragments from Western movies such as Once
Upon A Time in the West (C’era una volta il West, Sergio Leone, 1968), while
the Western Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia (Sam Peckinpah, 1974) also
appears in the title.
   Although the initiators of Vertical Cinema contextualize their project within
the tradition of expanded cinema and name Jaroslav Frič’ Vertical CinemaScope
as a source of their inspiration,89 it is impossible to think of it undependably
from mobile phones and vertical videos. After all, smartphones have propagated
not only the 9:16 format, but also 9:21 and, thus, have implemented a vertical
CinemaScope to go. A simple rotation allows the user to switch between the
persistent cinematic rectangle and its vertical suspension. Vertical Cinema tells of
both the history of expanded screens and the everyday rotation of smartphones.
With it, the circulation of vertical formats results in the reformatting of the
cinematic. The cinematic widescreen, which was adapted by numerous electronic
and digital small screens as sites of relocation, returns transformed. In current
digital culture, the verticalization of a cinematic screen does not merely mean
experimenting with the plasticity of image formats anymore, it also means
approximating the verticality of intimate small screens and monumentalizing it,
and thus negotiating the relationship to technologies that are in the process of
changing the long-standing paradigms of visual entertainment.




89
     Belina, pp. 4–8.

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