Cinematography : Seeking Thoughts on I-Phone Filming by Kate Merywyn Hawkes

iPhones are great for mobile filmmaking. Grab the Filmic Pro app. On Facebook go find Si Harrocks and his group on mobile filmmaking!

Thank you! Hmm couldnt find it

Give this a go - hopefully the link holds, works: https://www.facebook.com/groups/mobilefilmakers

Thank you - worked perfectly.

I use iPhones to get quick shots I might attempt to use. You need a rig for it to work professionally and use it the whole film. Best dp’s are people that use iPhone’s camera constantly

A camera is a tool. It's the person using it. Example, a great screenwriter can use a notebook and pencil, typewriter or Final Draft. It won't matter. One is just a bit easier / more efficient.

All boils down to lighting + composition.

Hi Kate Merywyn Hawkes!

I guess that an iphone even though the images from them are really great lately wouldn't exactly be my first choice for shooting a film you can do it and probably do it really well if you consider a couple of things.

One would be the wide angle lens, although I don't know iphones specifically I think I saw that you can actually use different lenses, but in either case I would use an app to shoot like filmic pro which will give you a lot of control and if you shoot to a good codec you can probably get a really nice and usable image for color grading.

Most important thing will definitely be lighting and getting the right shot, regardless of camera.

Although phones typically capture fairly good audio you have the same problem accurse if you capture sound on camera, the onboard mic is usually too far away from the subject to get good and usable audio and might pickup too much sounding sounds to be useful.

The solution is very simple get another phone and hid it near the subject talking in the scene and use it as sound recorder and then just sync the audio in post, which will give you a lot better control over the audio.

I've shot stuff with phones before in a similar fashion and it's a great way to start but I quickly started using DSLRs and even got fed up with all the compression problems with those before fairly quickly buying an affordable small cinema camera and separate audio recorder which are both fairly affordable these days and get rid of most of the problems associated with DSLRs and phones and what not.

But if you have nothing else phones are the best alternative simply because the're everywhere.

Good luck with your film and have a great time shooting and then editing. :)

Thank you everyone!