The Letterboxed Generation

[Martin McCaffery]

Headline from the Washington (DC) City Paper" Shortcomings Is an Amusing Anti-Rom-Com for the Letterboxd Generation

Frighteningly accurate new generational description, or too cute by half?

[Steve Guttag]

Could be worse...the "vertical" generation.

[Frank Angel]

What can you call a generation that aspire to grow up to be nothing but social media "influencers?"

[Jon Dent]

My generation got categorized as "slackers". Let another one share in the joy of generalizations.

[Tony Bandiera Jr]

Could be worse...the "vertical" generation.

I have named vertical phone videos "VaginaVision" (TM)

[Gordon McLeod]

I have named vertical phone videos "VaginaVision" (TM)

hmm i like that

[Bobby Henderson]

I simply cannot stand vertical videos. They just suck. A few times over the past few years friends have occasionally asked me to "fix" their shitty vertical clips because I have a bunch of graphics software. There's no fixing the crap, other than the various methods we see on TV broadcasts (all of which look awful). Or we could just rotate the whole video 90 degrees that way the whole thing can be sideways. Usually I just tell them to hold their phone horizontally the next time they want to shoot some video. They rarely ever follow the advice.

[Frank Angel]

You would think that these supposedly savvy selfie-ites who are so concerned about how they look on devices, would understand that the simple act of turning their camera-phone "side-ways" gets them a FULL screen on almost ANY display, where as holding it as as they do when it's a "phone," gets them a MUCH small piece of the screen geography. How is it that they can't comprehend this, especially considering how much time they spend nothing but taking pictures of themselves? Even those who fancy themselves as amateur reporters who want to get their videos of odd events the record, to get picked up and played on TV -- even THEY can't do a simple movement of the wrist that would get them a substantially larger geographical image on their big screen TV. There's a simple answer; dumb-asses.

[Martin McCaffery]

Gotta remember, it is all disposable, so the aesthetics are insignificant,

[Bobby Henderson]

It's damned near a cultural stereotype, kind of like "white people can't dance." Yeah, too many Americans don't know how to math.

Forgive me for using "math" as a verb in that phrase, but it's done for effect. I deal with this shit all the time in my work via customers wanting to do illogical things with sign designs. So many people don't understand simple concepts of geometry such as aspect ratio. It's no wonder the United States has to import so many foreign-born workers to take jobs in engineering, computer science, software development and health care.

Yesterday my Dad posted a video made by someone else on Facebook. The video was a montage of how 1980's high school students dressed back then. I responded the people in the video were very 80's looking, but the video was very "today" for its horrible quality. The damned thing was severely window-boxed. Someone put 4:3 ratio VHS tape footage into a vertical video phone "container," putting thick letter-box bars on the top and bottom. Then that vertical video image was pillar-boxed inside a larger horizontal container. It's like those Russian Matryoshka nesting dolls: a video inside of a video inside of another video. Geez.

I think some of the shitty window-boxed commercials I occasionally see on TV are made that way on purpose; the ads are targeting older people. I guess they figure old people are still rocking the 4:3 CRT TV sets and want to be sure their shitty video will play correctly on that vintage gear. Never mind what a set top box might do to alter the image, such as stick it into another layer of letter-boxing or pillar-boxing!

[Randy Stankey]

Whenever I see a picture or video in Vagina Vision® I think of it as "The Mark of the Stupid."

If a person doesn't know enough or care enough to do things well then it can also be assumed that they don't know enough or care enough about what they are recording for other people to care about, either. They are essentially saying, "Look at me! I have a CAMERA PHONE and I know how to post videos on YouTube!" They haven't got much else to say except to showcase their own, personal, sense of narcissism.

Sure! I post cat videos and things on YT out of my own, personal, sense of narcissism, too. At least, I care enough to turn the camera phone the right way 'round. Who really wants to look at my cats except for people who know me? Even then, most people usually only look out of a sense of courtesy. However, I can return the courtesy by making my stupid cat videos in a watchable format.

If you don't offer that modicum of basic courtesy to your potential audience, why should they do anything more than give a quick glance before they "swipe left?"

Funny story:

When my girlfriend first moved to Pennsylvania from California, she wanted to show her mom and dad where she lived so I made some videos to post on YT so that they could see. In those videos was a fair number of my "stupid cat videos." My GF's father wanted to see her new cat so I made some videos and posted them so he could see. They aren't anything special. Knowing who her father was, I did take some extra care in making them but, still they're just stupid cat videos.

Shortly before my GF's father passed away, he made a special point to call me up and tell me that he liked my cat videos!

Take this with the tongue-in-cheek humor intended... A well known, movie producer called me up and told me that he liked my movies!

Point of the story:

If I had made those stupid cat videos in Vagina Vision® would her father have taken the time to call me up?

He probably would have swiped left like everybody else.

[Mike Blakesley]

As bad as vertical videos are, what I hate worse is how every TV channel insists on putting a larger, but mega-blurry version of the same video behind the image "to fill in the space" that would otherwise be blank. JUST LEAVE IT BLANK. Don't they realize how awful it looks to have that moving fuzzy shit behind the thing you're trying to watch?

Background graphics have gotten out of hand on news channels. They simply can't stand to have a static background, it's gotta have some geometric patterns or lines or shifting colors or something moving behind the talking heads.

It all falls into the category of "just because you can do something, doesn't always mean it's a good idea to do it."

[Bobby Henderson]

I hate how all news shows look anymore due to all the on-screen Chryon spam. Pretty much all of them have their stock prices style "ticker" at the bottom, showing over-simplified and emotionally-amplified headlines. Then there is a larger text bar above that showing some headline related to what the news anchor is talking about. Usually that headline is set in a typeface that is artificially squeezed to fit the space. It looks like unprofessional shit. Apparently none of these fucking TV networks and local TV stations have ever heard of OpenType Variable fonts. Of course they gotta display their ever-present network logo (usually in the lower left corner). Finally there is usually some other graphical jazz-hands shit to go with all the graphics eating the bottom 25% of the TV screen.

I blame 9-11 for how modern TV "news" programming looks now. When the World Trade Center, Pentagon and Flight 93 were attacked the networks started running those tickers just like a financial news channel to provide moment by moment updates. Then they never stopped using the tickers. They stayed put in the 20+ years since. But now the on-screen graphics are used to patronize and emotionally manipulate viewers. It's all part of delivering anger pornography to the general public.

I think young people would be a bit shocked to see footage of news broadcasts from the 1990's and earlier. Back then it was possible to have a clean one-shot of the news anchor with no other graphics on screen. In Walter Cronkite's day he could be delivering the news with him being the only thing on the monitor. At most, there would be a graphic over his shoulder or off to the side.

Sports programming is almost as bad as the "news" stuff with all the graphics they put on the bottom of the screen. Too many cable networks are willing to let on-screen spam invade the TV series shows.

[Martin McCaffery]

Don't they realize how awful it looks to have that moving fuzzy shit behind the thing you're trying to watch?

I'm willing to bet they do that because if they just left it blank they would get calls from people complaining their widescreens are not being filled.

[Harold Hallikainen]

In those videos was a fair number of my "stupid cat videos." My GF's father wanted to see her new cat so I made some videos and posted them so he could see. They aren't anything special. Knowing who her father was, I did take some extra care in making them but, still they're just stupid cat videos.

Shortly before my GF's father passed away, he made a special point to call me up and tell me that he liked my cat videos!

Take this with the tongue-in-cheek humor intended... A well known, movie producer called me up and told me that he liked my movies!

Point of the story:

If I had made those stupid cat videos in Vagina Vision® would her father have taken the time to call me up?

He probably would have swiped left like everybody else.

Did your cat videos make it to the cinema? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aLgB-jyZEKo