Speaker 1: Stop shooting vertical videos. Instagram Reels, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts are all forcing us to shoot our videos vertically, but there are some really good reasons why you shouldn't. If you've ever posted or shot any content for the internet, you've probably come across having to decide whether to shoot your videos horizontally or rotate your camera to shoot them vertically. Right now, I'm in the middle of shooting a TikTok, and you might notice in the background there, I've got my camera set up horizontally, and that's because I shoot all of my vertical videos in horizontal mode, with a few exceptions, but I'll explain why that is in a minute. Now, before you go off and decide to shoot all of your videos horizontally, there are three things you need to do first. You need a camera that allows you to shoot in full 4K Ultra HD. And you also need storage space to store all those 4K files, because 4K files are a lot larger than 1080p files. You also need a way to edit and reframe those video files. Something like Premiere Pro or DaVinci or Final Cut are gonna be what you wanna use. And there's one other thing, but first, back to that TikTok I was filming. Here's the setup I'm using. You can see my camera is mounted horizontally, and I'm shooting a review of this backpack. So then maybe you're wondering, well, how do you make vertical videos out of a horizontal video? 4K video has enough resolution that you can do a center crop and reframe your 4K footage to work in a vertical format. Vertical video, like on TikTok and Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts, is shot at a resolution of 1080 by 1920. And 4K footage has a vertical resolution of 2160, which means you actually have more resolution than you even need to make that vertical cropped video work. It seems like such a simple solution. Just take all of your 4K video files and crop them in. But there's one more thing you need to understand before you go ahead and do that, and that's framing. Framing is super critical, because if you frame your video too tight, when you go to do that center crop, there's not gonna be enough space around the subject that you were shooting. To fix that, you'll need to frame everything wider. So either step back to get more in your frame and allow more space around your subject, or switch to something like a wide-angle lens. My favorite tip to making sure I'm leaving enough space is to actually use the thirds grid that you can put on your camera screen, or the rule of thirds. And as long as what you're trying to capture you keep in that center thirds, you shouldn't have any problem when you go to reframe it later. There are a lot of practical advantages to shooting everything horizontal. Cameras are designed to be held and operated horizontally, from the button layouts to the way the ergonomics are designed. Also, you don't need any specialized equipment. A lot of people end up using L brackets or camera cages in order to mount their camera vertically. But if you shoot horizontal, then you don't need any of that equipment. And lastly, it just takes out the decision fatigue, of having to decide in the moment, do I need to shoot this horizontally or vertically or both, or do I need to re-shoot things? You just shoot things once and you're done. Now, there is one exception to the rule of shooting everything horizontally, and that's if the framing of the thing that you're shooting is super critical. For example, I shoot all of my talking head segments vertically because I want to make sure that I nail my framing. I want to make sure that I've got my subject centered, that I have enough negative space so it doesn't look like they're being squished, when I do my center crop. But one thing you need to be careful of is that this edge and this edge of your lens have the most optical distortion. They're also more susceptible to both chromatic aberration and vignetting. To show you what I mean, here's an example of me shooting in horizontal. I can move to the top of the frame or to the bottom of the frame, and there's not too much warping. But if all of a sudden I start shooting like this, as I get to the top of the frame, you'll notice that there's a lot of warping. And even the way I point, point down at myself, my legs start to look really long or my forehead starts to look really big. Big forehead, big forehead. But by far the most important thing about shooting everything horizontally is that there's no guarantee that vertical video will last forever. We have these platforms now that are so vertical video centric. And if they ever go away and all you have is vertical video, then it's gonna be a challenge to figure out what to do with that content. At least if you have things horizontally, you can always repurpose it for a portfolio, for YouTube, for a website, and not to mention if you're doing a video project. There's been multiple times where I've shot a project for a vertical format, but because I shoot everything horizontally, I'm able to go back later and make a full edited version that you can post on a website, that you can post on YouTube, or you can put in your portfolio. There's a really nice bridge here. There's no guarantee that vertical video will last forever. So invest in yourself now, invest in horizontal video, because those are the files, those are the projects, those are the video clips that you'll be able to continue using. I found that shooting everything in horizontally, horizontally? In horizontal orientation has freed me up creatively. So I'm focusing less on which way to hold my camera and more on the focal lengths or the settings or the things that I'm actually shooting. It's also made me way more flexible to use my content across multiple platforms and in various different formats. I'm just getting started in my deep dive into short form content creation. So if you're new here and you want to see more videos like this, make sure you hit the subscribe, or you can jump right into this video here, which is my workflow for creating high quality Instagram reels inside of Premiere Pro. And until the next one, peace. Boom. Nailed it.