The next Steven Spielberg Uses a Smartphone
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” The next Hollywood blockbuster may not be made using a smartphone, but that day is soon coming. “
READWITE.COM ” This year’s Academy Award winner for Best Documentary Feature, Searching for Sugarman, was shot mostly on traditional, costly 8mm film. The director shot some final scenes, however, with his iPhone and the $2 app 8mm Vintage Camera. Increasingly, high-quality films – shorts, especially – are being made entirely with nothing more than a smartphone.
Today’s high-end smartphones pack a virtual film studio in your pocket. The Nokia Lumia 920, for example, includes a 1080p full-HD video camera, zoom light, image stabilization and multiple white balance modes to help ensure that perfect shot.
Specs aren’t enough to convince you?
Blackberry has teamed up with famed Sin City director, Robert Rodriguez, to create a short film using the new Blackberry Z10. Former Cannes film festival winner, Park Chan-wook, used a smartphone to film Paranmanjan – it won the Golden Bear for Best Short Film at the 2011 Berlin Film Festival. Not only are smarpthone-shot films making it into film festivals, smartphone-only film festivals are cropping up around the world, such as the Mobil Film Festival in San Diego, the Pocket Film Festival in Paris and the Olleh International Smartphone Film Festival in Korea. Each of these festivals showcase the device’s potential for creating stirring films while enabling those with the talent, no matter where they may be located, to unleash their creative potential.
Personal Filmmaking on a Global Scale
Despite their limitations, smartphones do offer some unique advantages over traditional filmmaking. Smartphone films can be made on a very low budget – which likely encourages risk-taking that traditional filmmaking shuns. Smartphones can film almost anywhere – and they are with us nearly everywhere. The portable nature of the device allows for more intimate moments and increases opportunities for filmmaking with a more personal viewpoint. Smartphones allow those who traditionally are rarely portrayed in films, such as those in impoverished areas around the world, to now be seen. With a smartphone and YouTube, immediate global distribution is possible. “
Read more from Brian Hall in his article ‘The next Steven Speilberg uses an iPhone‘ here and see some great examples of great film-making with mobile devices.
Check out our other post on iPhones in film-making, as well as some excellent examples of diverse techniques in our post ‘Vertical Video‘.
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2 Comments
How do you go with quality when you are teaching media/visual literacy etc in classrooms with filmmaking and the iPad? I find the size of files and portability a real issue. The camera on the iPad is just not good enough to make real movies for my students in high stakes assessment. Any advice?
It’s interesting… I actually get asked this all the time but I have no issues in the classroom at all with quality. It’s a mind set. Do you really need high quality? Is it a help or a hinderance to the learning? If you start with the learning in a task, you may find that the iPad camera, even though it is not ‘cinema quality’ is fine. I think we’ve got to separate tasks that do and don’t require high resolution etc, because if we don’t we might miss out on some great teachable moments and tasks. For instance, in a 1:1 classroom, i love the fact that every student can grab their ‘camera’ in a second. This accessibility – instant on, instant recording, instant sharing, instant manipulation – comes with some limitations of course, but all those instant features I just mentioned means that I am able to use the iPad in the classroom in a way that other types of photography could not be used. Often high quality for production is often just not required from the camera to show an understanding of building emotion, wide shots, etc. When it is, then maybe switching devices is the go, not just for the filming, but also for post-production. The iPad is a tool in the classroom, just like any other, so use it when it is an advantage (and it is a significant one for visual literacy, etc) and switch when it is not. Having said that, have you seen the Pulitzer Prize winning Damon Winter and his iPhone images, or the incredible iPhone films some of our posts? Mobile device photography and film might take a bit of a mind shift, but it is exciting stuff. Hope that helps?