The “Mobile Effect” on Screen Format: the Case of Vertical Videos

The videos made through mobile phones are probably changing the way we think of videos created to tell or show something, both imaginary tales or private movies, or even chronicles of events to spread rapidly through the web. A change has already occurred in the use, as the new digital portable devices allowed to concentrate on a single medium a variety of media with various functions. Therefore, a tool like the telephone has been enhanced with new features typically designed for other media.In this process of appropriation, new mobile devices changed the way these new features are being used, due, of course, to new conditions. Other than multiplying the production of images that one would call "dirty" due to the presence of rough movements, continuous zoom in and zoom out and, of course, broadcast sub-standard video quality, the new tools introduced the practice of vertical shooting, so inducing a habit.In the history of photography, however, the two formats, landscape and portrait, have always lived together. This paper aims to analyze, briefly, a situation in rapid and continuous evolution, also characterized by the presence of new paradigms responding to visual aesthetic rules that are gradually being defined.