By Kavishna Wijesinghe
Technology is evolving at an exponential rate and its benefits affect the field of filmmaking, where things have gone digital for nearly two decades now. Although once costly, film stock can now be shot quite inexpensively on digital cameras and more so on smartphones. The same shot that was taken with an Arriflex 435 can now be shot on an iPhone.
Smartphone technology has evolved to the point where it can shoot 4K, going up to – and sometimes beyond – a framerate of 240fps (frames per second). While pretty much most of the guests on Junkyard Theory have echoed the idea that it is not the camera you shoot with but the content and story, we decided to take a look at how smartphones have been revolutionising the film world.
Democratisation of film tech
With the smartphone industry blowing up in the last decade, it has become an everyday tool which has integrated seamlessly into our lives. Since every smartphone pretty much comes with a camera in it, it allows every user to record and capture video footage. The more recent iPhones and Samsung models are continuously compared and reviewed side by side with industry-standard cinema cameras such as Red and Arri Alexas, and still manage to hold their own.
Combine a tool that gets you good footage with the plethora of apps available online which allow you to stitch and edit shots together, even compose music, and then upload that to a platform such as YouTube. Every smartphone user has the potential to tell stories.
With tools such as this being freely available, filmmaking equipment and film itself has become democratised.
Big-name filmmakers joining the party
Smartphones lend a certain freedom on set. It is perhaps why even bigger-name filmmakers such as Steven Soderbergh (director of Ocean’s 11) have hopped on the mobile filmmaking bandwagon. Cinema cameras are clunky, and setting things up takes more time as opposed to a smartphone which can be pretty versatile, fit into nooks and crannies, and capture scenes at a faster rate than the traditional system.
Soderbergh shot Unsane (2018), a psychological horror film about a woman confined to a mental hospital, entirely on an iPhone 7 Plus and followed it up with High Flying Bird (2018), a sports drama which was shot on the iPhone 8.
Meeting Soderbergh at the Slamdance Film Festival in 2019, Junkyard Theory Host Akash Sunethkumara questioned him whether he intended continuing the mobile filmmaking trend, to which Soderbergh replied that he would and was excited to see where the technology would go. He utilised FiLMIC Pro, an app designed to allow the filmmaker more control over the smartphone’s camera to film both movies.
Support is increasing
With the number of apps customised for mobile platforms increasing, more and more people are adopting the more versatile route of planning, shooting, editing, and marketing via mobile technology. FinalDraft, the popular screenwriting application, has its own mobile app. Production management company StudioBinder also has its mobile-friendly versions that allow anyone to basically organise their project on a smartphone. Adobe has its Premiere Rush application that allows video editing. The substantial increase in processing power within a smartphone is a big pro when it comes to handling post-production in-mobile as well.
Limitations
As amazing as having the equivalent of a pocket studio can be, it’s not without a few drawbacks either. Capturing sound without dedicated equipment can be a bit of a challenge. And since smartphones are not specifically made for filmmaking, there’s bound to be a lot of shakes if you’re going for handheld cinematography. If you require smoother shots, you’ll probably have to invest in a stabiliser such as DJI Osmo Mobile. Also, while camera quality has increased in the past few years, mobile cameras still require good lighting to capture good footage. They do not yet have the capability to shoot in darker environments without resulting in grainy footage.
We are still in the preliminary stages of mobile filmmaking. At the rapid rate tech keeps evolving and with more filmmakers opting to switch to cheaper equipment, there is no doubt we will definitely see more support for mobile filmmaking in the upcoming years.