Hey everyone! We've been getting a lot of questions lately about when shooting video for social media, should I be shooting landscape (16:9 aspect ratio) or portrait (9:16 aspect ratio)? Well, that definitely depends on what you're going to be using the video for and what platforms you plan to publish it on.
Shooting a video in landscape - This is typically what you would see in a post on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and even uploads to YouTube. These don't have a certain time length as they can be short for things such as Twitter. But if you do plan on taking longer forms of video, this is the aspect ratio you want to go with.
Shooting a video in portrait - Though this used to be mainly Snapchat, over the past couple of years the aspect ratio of 9:16 has been used with a lot of 24-hour content on several other social media platforms. "Stories" are an example of what is used on Facebook, Instagram and even LinkedIn. Twitter has a similar feature that they released lately, but those are called "Fleets." So, if you are looking to post something quick that only lasts 24 hours and want it to be raw without much editing, this is the format you should use. There are some channels, like TikTok, that use this format and the content doesn't just last 24 hours; it has a longer shelf life. So, if you're using that, again, this is the format for you.
If you're looking to get the most out of the topic, event or whatever you're shooting the video for in the first place, there's nothing wrong with doing both! Simply take your video in landscape, explain through everything thoroughly, then turn your camera and record again. This time, be a little quicker on the points and don't go into each one too in-depth as you don't want a story (or even a TikTok) to be that long.
Those are some quick tips of what you should think about when holding your camera and capturing video that you're going to use for social media. If you have any other tips you'd like to share, let us know in the comments!
Cheers!
-Matt