A creative investigation into film frames, screen shapes and aspect ratios
In the digital era, videos can be created in any shape, from 1x1 pixels upwards. Such artistic freedoms were already imagined by Sergei Eisenstein back in 1930: the Russian film director advocated projection onto a square screen that could be masked dynamically, to different shapes for each scene, by curtains. Even earlier in moving image history, some of the first motion pictures were vertical; while the camera obscura has always produced circular images via its raw optical properties.
Unlike painters with their canvases though, very few video artists have tapped digital video’s potential for different frame shapes. Only since the mid 2010s did vertical video’s proliferation (primarily in a 9:16 aspect ratio) expand thinking around screen geometries in popular culture. (To encourage filmmaker experimentation with its potential I co-founded the First Vertical Film Festival with my sister in 2014.)
In 2018-19 I was shipped around the world by Facebook to talk to their Creative Shop employees about the long history of vertical image-making in numerous cultures, an offshoot of my PhD research. Aware that I was talking to the very people who were engineering the future of digital moving image formats I always directed my lectures to thoughts about the future for moving image makers, and a plea for us to be granted the same aspect-ratio-agnosticism as other visual artists.
Where is the circular cinema; where are the berry-shaped films; or the jellyfish-shaped videos?
Marooned in Norway for almost two years by Australia’s draconian Covid-19 border closures I’ve been making many little side projects for the communities who’ve sheltered me. The first three months — stuck in a North Sea lighthouse — precipitated my foray into circular video. Nowadays, before filming, I always consider what shape best suits the subject.
Below you’ll find a few of my experiments. Not all succeed; none are particularly profound. They’re just little experiments in breaking free from unquestioned norms; thinking outside of the square (rectangle) that we’ve become so accustomed to…
If you have made (or seen) films in non-standard aspect ratios, please let me know in the comments, below.
I’m always keen to know of more such experiments!