Vertical Adaptation of Film You Already Paid For

A 16:9 master cropped to 9:16 loses about 44 percent of the frame, and what it loses is almost always where the product, the logo or the actor's eyeline was sitting. Adaptation is a re-edit, not a resize. We rebuild the opening beat, reframe shot by shot with keyframed moves where the plate allows one, and deliver a matrix of files each platform can ingest without re-encoding on the way in. The two failures we are usually called in to fix: The first is auto-reframe run in batch. Subject tracking locks onto whoever is speaking, the pack shot drifts out of frame in the final second, and nobody screens the export before it goes live. The second is quieter and costs more. UK masters arrive at 25fps, mixed to EBU R128 at minus 23 LUFS integrated for broadcast. Social platforms normalise around minus 14. Ship the broadcast mix unchanged and your ad plays audibly softer than every organic post around it, which reads as low production value before a word registers. What we do to the film: Conform the frame rate, re-timing rather than dropping frames where a 25 to 30 conversion would judder on a pan. Re-mix to platform loudness with the dialogue bus rebalanced, not simply gain-staged. Reframe in Premiere or Resolve against the graded master, never against a delivery H.264 somebody emailed. Rebuild titles and supers natively at the target ratio in After Effects instead of scaling artwork that was designed for a landscape lower third. Burn captions in for feed placements and supply an SRT alongside for the platforms that render their own. And check safe zones on the current app build rather than against a template from two years ago, because the caption and CTA furniture moves and it eats roughly the bottom third plus the right-hand rail. Decided before we start, not after: Ratios and durations. Usually 9:16, 4:5, 1:1 and a 16:9 trim, cut to the lengths the media plan actually bought rather than to a standard set. Delivery as ProRes 422 HQ masters plus platform-spec H.264, named to whatever convention your ad ops team already uses so nobody renames 40 files by hand. Where Meta placement asset customisation is in play we build the variants it expects rather than letting the platform choose a crop for you. What we will not take on: We do not shoot. If your master has no usable coverage for a vertical reframe, and a locked-off two-hander with both faces at the edge of frame is the common case, we say so after the first pass on the rushes and before we invoice for the rest of the work. We do not clear music, talent or usage rights; that sits with your counsel and we ask for the paperwork before delivery, not after. And we do not sell variant counts. Forty versions with no hypothesis is not a test, it is a way of spending a production budget. We would rather cut six that answer a question you can state out loud. How it runs: One kickoff on the assets rather than the brief. We need project files, the graded master and the audio stems, and establishing what genuinely still exists is usually the longest part of that call. First cut of the lead asset inside five working days, your notes consolidated in one pass, then the rest of the matrix built to the approved treatment. Not for you if: You want a per-asset unit price to compare against an offshore edit house. That comparison is fair and they will win it. This is for brands running national money behind a film that cost considerably more than the adaptation ever will.