♪ Original Score
by Lorne Balfe ♪
♪
Damien Chazelle: My name is
Damien Chazelle
and I'm the director
on Vertical Cinema.
Part of the fun
of this was to try to
think purely in terms
of the vertical aspect ratio
and what that does.
♪
I just think back to
when I was a kid,
you know playing with
much less sophisticated
technologies than a phone,
you know the little old
VHS cam-corders
and things like that.
And just trying to do
my version
of Hollywood movies
with what I had.
I use the iPhone
all the time.
So it was sort of
getting to know
in a deeper way
a camera that I thought
I knew so intimately.
♪
We would constantly
sort of realize,
things that it could do
that we didn't know
that it could do
and to think about how 
you can do stuff beyond
just pulling it out
of your pocket and shooting.
♪
Assistant Director: OK go ahead
and open the walls up please.
Open the walls.
We've got pieces marked
for the walls?
Damien:
There is the accessibility
of the phone
that hopefully,
you know,
a little movie like this
throws out a few
ideas out there
that people can
then play with
literally on their own,
or at home.
Or in
their back yards.
The spirit of it, ya know,
of trying to just
throw things at the wall
and see what sticks.
Not just with stories or what
the content on screen is,
but how you
capture it
and what the form is.
April Napier: You're thinking
about how things are moving
in an elongated fashion.
Right you're not thinking
about landscape,
you're not thinking
about panorama.
Kris Peck: Instead of looking
at a holster like this
and trying to paint the frame,
you now have a full frame
of a vertical prop.
Damien: One of the things
that's really fun
about playing
with vertical aspect ratio
is how you can play
with what the eye sees when,
and the way that you can get
an audience
used to looking up and down
rather than left and right
which is what
they're kinda used to.
♪
When we did the body
mount shot with the iPhone
the power of the shot
has to reside not
just in Tom's face
but in the environment
around him
and how it's weirdly
inverted for us
as viewers as he falls.
♪
Cut!
Damien: Take any camera,
you know,
it's full of quirks
and personality
and sort of hidden
little secrets.
♪
There's no reason
that we can't be
a little more free
thinking about it
the same way
painters long ago
decided that you know
well, if I want to paint
an image like this
I'll paint it vertically,
this will be horizontal,
this'll be a box;
this will be on a wall,
this will be on a ceiling,
this I want people
to look up to,
this is what I want people
to look down to.
I was trying to think of
any kind of moving image
as a little more of
a blank page.
That's another thing that
can really differentiate
shooting a movie
with an iPhone vs
shooting around
your house
sort of casually
with your iPhone.
So just try to make
choices that feel
deliberate and that's
almost all you need.
♪
We're going to
do this shot
where our stunt man
jumps off
the top
of the skyscraper.
So we're doing
it in two ways:
just following him
here on this rig
as he jumps down,
then we're going to
do a plate
without the pad
for the camera
going over
this side of the building
where there is no
extra story,
and we'll combine
those two shots.
Lots of kinks
to figure out
but we're getting there.
It's fun.
Assistant Director:
Three! Two! One! Go!
DAMIEN:
When you're shooting,
you know ultra wide
on the iPhone,
that's where you
get the real
feeling of
the parallax changing
It's always a little more
of that kind of a punch
in the gut
sort of feeling.
Jesse La Flair: Most of the time
we're coming from elevation
or going to elevation
So we're jumping
off of something,
flipping down
from something,
twisting down
from something.
So to have
this vertical frame
really gives
the perspective
of what we're doing.
DAMIEN: Ok stand there.
That's your kiss spot.
Damien: I definitely think
this little piece
we're doing
is just a beginning step
in terms of
experimenting.
There's a lot more
that can be done
and it's just a beginning
that maybe shows
some of the options
that can be played with,
and there's many more
that can be added
to the mix later on.
KRIS: Now we're going
to see something genius
from some young
boy or girl
that's going to
inspire us.
Micah Fitzgerald:
Knowing and learning
that you don't actually need
million dollar cameras
to make
something look good.
That actually
it's a matter
of what you bring
to the table.
Tom McComas: We just saw the
shot with the machine gun fire
and the dust hits
and all that
It worked really well
with the vertical format.
Not gonna lie.
[PLANE ENGINE]
Damien: It's easy to forget
sometimes how many colors
there are to play with
in the palette,
it's not
really specifically
just about
the vertical frame
It's just about kinda of
asking the question
what happens if we flip
any sort of aspect
of film making that we take
for granted on its side.
What things stay the same
in that new kind of way
of looking at things
and what things
completely change.
Lean back a hair.
♪
A hair.
Yeah yeah yeah.
That's great.
I think this is less also
about trying to tailor
yourself to one
specific aspect ratio,
I think it's just maybe
trying to encourage people
to think outside
of the box. Period.
Cut!
Assistant Director:
Alright guys that's a wrap.
Thank you very much.
[CHEERS & APPLAUSE]
♪
