Vertical Cinema

Most vertical video is shot as though the camera were just turned on its side. It isn't the same craft. Vertical Cinema is the first professional guide to 9:16 filmmaking as its own medium — a frame with a grammar, an architecture, and an economics distinct from horizontal cinema.

Over eighteen chapters and more than thirty diagrams, John K. Corser builds the discipline from first principles: how the upright frame reorganizes a viewer's attention, how shots, performance, and cutting change when the frame stands vertical, how to carry a story across the swipe, and how to design for the way people actually watch on a phone. It runs from the theory of the medium, through the working grammar of shooting and editing, to the scripting, workflow, and production economics of vertical work.

Drawing on three decades in film and television, Corser has written the reference for directors, cinematographers, editors, and creators who take the vertical frame seriously.