The Vertical Venture of Damien Chazelle

By Jana Clark

Academy Award winner Damien Chazelle is known for his cinematic style and techniques on the big screen, but in his newest 9-minute short titled “The Stunt Double,” he took out one key element: widescreen. The La La Land director is famous for thinking outside the box and challenging what the viewer sees. He took a gamble and filmed in 2.55:1 CinemaScope to capture the elaborate musical numbers and large location shoots, including shutting down Interstate 405 in Los Angeles for his 2016 film. For Chazelle, taking risks in the formatting of a movie is admirable. So why not roll the dice on Apple’s promotional ad for iPhone 11? Unlike any other ad Apple has released, the short film is shot vertically for its entire duration on an iPhone 11 Pro. This format is something Damien Chazelle calls Vertical Cinema. 

“So how does Vertical Cinema differ from regular cinema?” you may ask. Before the first widescreen movie in 1953, everything was shot in 4:6 to be correctly formatted for televisions. After that, all widescreen film would have to be recut with “pan and scan” for the home viewers: it was all about changing the aspect ratio of what the viewer saw. When films were cut with “pan and scan,” they lost most of the landscape and, in a sense, the director’s genuine vision for the movie. This leads us to the most crucial question: Why challenge the viewer with a 9:16 ratio when the eye is trained to look side to side–not up and down? Well… we have social trends to thank for that.       

Vertical cinema is not a new format for video. If you own a smartphone, you may already have vertically filmed footage today. Smartphone app users on Facebook, Instagram, and similar apps use this composition to post videos to their stories. However, this aspect ratio has gained widespread recognition and been elevated by TikTok. The app, whose subscribers spend an average of 52 minutes a day on, has pushed vertical composition into the forefront of how an audience views a video.

In a sense, one can say that Chazelle’s featurette, “The Stunt Double,” takes the viewer on a journey through movie history with the same social trends of vertical ratio. Classified as cinema, the film comes with the same expensive sets, actors, grips, gaffers, and of course, Damien Chazelle. The film is told through the eyes of the lead actor portraying a movie’s stunt double. When the parachute doesn’t open for Chazelle’s lead actor, he relives various scenes from his past. Each scene showcases a different genre and is blended with an introduction title. The actor steps in, does the risky action scene, and “cut”.

The movie seems simple enough to film, but how exactly was Chazelle able to fill the frame so the viewer can watch without missing the real estate of a full-frame? The trick was to stop thinking horizontally and allow the full frame of the shoot to be vertical. Using an upright image, the director of photography can highlight pops and elongated scenery at a heightened level. Viewers should also take into account that his flick was filmed with handheld devices in mind. 

“The Stunt Double” was a way for Chazelle to bring back the magic of his first films when he was young. Movies were all about shooting on an old VHS camcorder, finding the best frame, and recreating what he imagined a Hollywood film would look like. While shooting Apple’s promotional ad, he realized that Vertical Cinema gave the eyes something to play with–a fresh take on film ratio.