Who Says Hollywood Film Can’t Shot on a Phone?
How to be a director? It might not be easy in the past, but today, pick up your phone and shoot now.
It is often believed that if a movie was shot on a phone, rather than a professional camcorder, poor quality and inferior results would be inevitable. But the rising popularity of smartphones, which is as good as - and in many aspects, better than - those of a dedicated video camera, makes people keen enough to record and edit a Hollywood-style short. And filmmakers have already found some success in the field.
“Searching for Sugar Man”, a musical mystery directed by Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul, won the Oscar best documentary feature at the 85th annual Academy Awards on February 24th, 2013. It's worth mentioning that he ran out of money and had to finish filming his movie on his iPhone with the $1 8mm Vintage Camera app. “It was basically the same as the real stuff”, director said.
These include “Olive”, which was shot on a Nokia N8 with a 35mm zoom lens and was the first ever smartphone film to get a cinema release.
And as early as 2011, Park Chan-wook’s “Night Fishing” short, which was shot on an iPhone 4 and won the Golden Bear foe Best Short Film at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival.
However, the mobile movie-making is no longer the studios just in Hollywood. Everyone or mostly everyone has a camera phone in their pocket. The world has come to know and love all sorts of story videos, especially in this age of YouTube shows and viral videos. For example, The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 has could shoot 1080p video at 60fps or 2160p video at 30fps, and soon more phones are likely to have 4K cameras, allowing for higher quality videos across a range of handsets.
There are real advantages to shooting on a phone. For one thing, it’s cheaper than conventional camera equipment, and allows more risks to be taken as there's less money at stake. And because of small size and portability, you can put it and film almost anywhere, which potentially allows you to capture moments that would otherwise be lost because you didn't have your video camera with you.
Of course, there are weaknesses too. A smartphone with a great camera for video but low storage space and power makes the movie-making worthless. So you’ll probably invest in storage card to ensure you have enough memory in your smartphone, and carry an eternal battery that you can plug in on the go, for example, Kinkoo Infinite One, which has the lightest and thinnest appearance in its real 8000mAh class, recharges your iPhone 5 times, and ensure your phone always powered.
Nowadays, technology significantly lowers the users’ threshold and blurs the borders between smartphone and camera. The mobile movie-making is also going back to the basics and makes people remember what’s most important for a film, the story, the actors, the way it looks. So, this type of filmmaking isn’t necessarily a bad thing although smartphone films are still fairly few and haven’t yet hit the mainstream.
It is often believed that if a movie was shot on a phone, rather than a professional camcorder, poor quality and inferior results would be inevitable. But the rising popularity of smartphones, which is as good as - and in many aspects, better than - those of a dedicated video camera, makes people keen enough to record and edit a Hollywood-style short. And filmmakers have already found some success in the field.
“Searching for Sugar Man”, a musical mystery directed by Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul, won the Oscar best documentary feature at the 85th annual Academy Awards on February 24th, 2013. It's worth mentioning that he ran out of money and had to finish filming his movie on his iPhone with the $1 8mm Vintage Camera app. “It was basically the same as the real stuff”, director said.
These include “Olive”, which was shot on a Nokia N8 with a 35mm zoom lens and was the first ever smartphone film to get a cinema release.
And as early as 2011, Park Chan-wook’s “Night Fishing” short, which was shot on an iPhone 4 and won the Golden Bear foe Best Short Film at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival.
However, the mobile movie-making is no longer the studios just in Hollywood. Everyone or mostly everyone has a camera phone in their pocket. The world has come to know and love all sorts of story videos, especially in this age of YouTube shows and viral videos. For example, The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 has could shoot 1080p video at 60fps or 2160p video at 30fps, and soon more phones are likely to have 4K cameras, allowing for higher quality videos across a range of handsets.
There are real advantages to shooting on a phone. For one thing, it’s cheaper than conventional camera equipment, and allows more risks to be taken as there's less money at stake. And because of small size and portability, you can put it and film almost anywhere, which potentially allows you to capture moments that would otherwise be lost because you didn't have your video camera with you.
Of course, there are weaknesses too. A smartphone with a great camera for video but low storage space and power makes the movie-making worthless. So you’ll probably invest in storage card to ensure you have enough memory in your smartphone, and carry an eternal battery that you can plug in on the go, for example, Kinkoo Infinite One, which has the lightest and thinnest appearance in its real 8000mAh class, recharges your iPhone 5 times, and ensure your phone always powered.
Nowadays, technology significantly lowers the users’ threshold and blurs the borders between smartphone and camera. The mobile movie-making is also going back to the basics and makes people remember what’s most important for a film, the story, the actors, the way it looks. So, this type of filmmaking isn’t necessarily a bad thing although smartphone films are still fairly few and haven’t yet hit the mainstream.