Vertical video made its debut on the silver screen at the Maryland Film Festival (MdFF) last weekend.
While it isn’t typically associated with cinephile culture, MdFF organizers wanted to tap into the region’s social media talent to demonstrate the diversity of work emerging from the format.
Simone Phillips, who runs the popular food blog Charm City Table, curated the category and saw it as an opportunity to reframe the narrative around content creation.
“We can use AI as a tool where it doesn’t have to rip off artists’ intellectual property.”
Q Ragsdale, Cinetech
“People associate it immediately with greedy influencers, but it doesn’t always have to be that way,” Phillips told Technical.ly. “It can be anything.”
The team opened submissions to the public via a free online form and ultimately presented 20 films under five minutes, ranging from music videos to animations. The category builds on the festival’s robust shorts programming, which gives both established names and burgeoning filmmakers — including students and locals — a shot at a professional showing.
The festival highlighted creatives like Hilary Gonzalez and Nikki Ucheya, who created a visual poem dedicated to Stony Run Park amid nearby construction for the Johns Hopkins University Data Science and Artificial Intelligence Institute. It also showed a video from local film critic James Edwardaro Willey, part of their “350” series that spotlights underappreciated films.
Few major festivals feature a vertical video category, though a handful of fests dedicated to celebrating 9:16 — the format’s aspect ratio — have surfaced in recent years.
Even if it isn’t fully embraced by the mainstream, it’s certainly gaining traction in the film industry. Vertical film production houses are now vying for audience’s attention on social media, alongside traditional independent creators.
Cinetech’s dedication to the digital age
MdFF has long aimed to stay at the forefront of new technology and formats, according to Q Ragsdale, curator of the fest’s Cinetech exhibit, which platforms emerging media technologies.
The exhibit featured the AI-fueled interactive project “The Mirror’s Echo,” which takes a participant’s spoken words and turns them into claymation-style imagery.
Ragsdale also selected an interactive virtual reality film that allowed the player — cast as a space station crew member — to choose their own adventure, with different endings guided by a self-help AI assistant.
“We can use AI as a tool where it doesn’t have to rip off artists’ intellectual property,” Ragsdale said, “and use it with integrity.”
These tech-powered projects, however, face major roadblocks amid a rapidly changing tech landscape
Premiering in 2024, the tech-focused program experienced a setback this year when software developer Niantic sunset its augmented reality platform 8th Wall in February.
Filmmakers were using 8th Wall to overlay digital images onto real-world environments and the tech was previously used at the festival to project artwork onto theater walls.
“We’re taking a little bit of a hit,” Ragsdale, who lost a project after 8th Wall shut down, said, “but I know we’re going to come back because there’s really a lot of great artists creating work in this space.”
