Here is a scene that happens all the time.
The 16:9 hero film looks great. Everyone's happy. Then someone takes it, crops the middle out to 9:16 for Reels, and suddenly the joke doesn't work. The person reacting is out of frame. The product is cut in half. The captions sit right on top of the one thing you need to see.
The crop is technically fine. The film is broken.
Different screen, different film
People watch vertical video differently. Phone in one hand, thumb ready to scroll, often on mute. You have about a second and a half to give them a reason to stay.
So a vertical version isn't a smaller version of the hero film. It's its own thing. Sometimes it needs a different opening. Sometimes the payoff has to come earlier. Sometimes it should be a completely different cut built from the same footage.
Protect what makes the scene work
Every scene has a relationship that makes it work. A person and a product. An action and a reaction. A problem and the solution.
In landscape those can sit at opposite ends of the frame. In vertical, they can't. So we either shoot it tighter, stack the elements vertically, or split it into two shots.
That's why we decide on the vertical framing at storyboard stage. On set we shoot extra coverage for 9:16 - closer angles, a second camera position, a cleaner background. It adds very little time to the shoot and saves the vertical cuts later.
Leave room for the interface
On Reels, TikTok and Shorts, the app covers parts of your video. The caption at the bottom, the buttons on the right, the profile name. If your product or your key text is sitting there, nobody will see it.
We design text and product placement around those safe zones. Boring, but it's the difference between a vertical ad and a vertical ad that works.
A short version needs a whole idea
The worst short cut is the first 15 seconds of the long film. It ends exactly when it starts getting good.
A good 15-second cut has a beginning, a turn and an end. One idea, told completely. On most of our product launches we deliver one hero film and three short social cuts, and each short has its own job: the hook, the use case, the feature.
Plan it before production
If you know your film will run on YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram and in-store screens, tell us before we write the script. Every format has rules. It costs nothing to plan for them early and a lot to fix them in the edit.
Where will your next film run? Tell us, and we'll build it for those screens from day one.
