Shooting for vertical first

The usual order of operations is to shoot landscape, cut landscape, then hand the finished edit to someone and ask for a vertical version. It is the cheapest possible approach and it produces the worst possible result.

A 16:9 frame composed for a cinema screen puts its subject somewhere in the middle third and uses the outer thirds for context — the landscape, the other actor, the product on the table. Crop to 9:16 and every one of those relationships is destroyed. You keep the subject and lose the reason the shot existed.

Plan both frames on set

The fix is not a clever crop. It is a decision made before the camera rolls: which frame is primary, and what does the other one need in order to work. On a recent travel campaign we shot vertical as the master and derived the landscape crop from it, which is the reverse of standard practice and took some persuading.

If the vertical cut is an afterthought, your audience is an afterthought.

Practically, that means framing with safe areas marked for both ratios, and accepting that some shots only exist in one of them. A tight vertical portrait has no landscape equivalent worth cutting, and that is fine. Shoot the landscape version separately rather than compromising both.

What it costs

Roughly ten to fifteen per cent more shooting time, and a longer shot list. Considerably less than the cost of a campaign that underperforms in the only place most of its audience will ever see it.