What orientation to shoot a video?

Before shooting a video it’s important to decide what orientation to shoot the video in, horizontally or vertically.
Here are the 2 main options:
- If you are going to shoot a video strictly and only for vertical posts (Images above 3 & 4), then you should shoot the video vertically.
- Other wise you should shoot the video horizontally. That way it can be used in many more ways, including on a Website, Youtube and all other social media platforms with all types of post sizes as shown above.

However, if you are shooting a video horizontally for maximum options, some considerations have to be taken if the video will be used for any of the vertical types of posts (Images above 3 & 4).
In such case the video has to be shot wider than normal (with extra space all around the frame) to allow extra space above and below for the vertical posts.
OR
Simply use spacing, text and graphics in the editing stage to minimise cropping and still fill the space above and below the video frame.

For Example:

In the example images above and below, the video was shot “normally”, horizontally, with no extra space around the frame.
If it needed to be posted on Instagram in all 4 main formats then there are 2 options…

Option A:
As shown in the images above, the different size frames get filled-in with the video image.
Pro: No extra editing needed and it looks good.
Con: The video gets cropped on the the left and right so you might loose important details. Unless it was shot wider as explained above. However shooting wider to suit all formats takes more time and effort to shoot and edit.

Option B:
As shown in the images below, the full video screen can be seen, no cropping done.
The extra space above and below get filled with text and graphics to make it look good.
Pro: The full video screen can be seen, no cropping done. No need to shoot wider as explained above.
Con: Extra editing needed to ad the text and graphics.

Note: When producing a video to suit all formats, extra work is needed, but considering shooting costs more per hour than editing, the more cost effective option is to shoot “normal” horizontally and make the extra work be done in the editing stage.