How: iphone is not IMAX Part Three

iphone aesthetic v IMAX aesthetic
#iphonenichtimax

Although an iphone camera gives you great speed there is also a major disadvantage -- lack of lens choice.

No matter what sort of doo-dad you mount, tape, whatever to your cellphone, you will only get what the fixed size lens and sensor chip in combination with Apple software allow you to get.  These are technological issues, but cropping in on a sensor chip and calling it a "zoom" will not get you the same image as using a long focal length lens.

At some point I'm sure you'll be able to "dial in" the lens look you want -- say a long Panavision lens -- and the software will emulate that lens and transform the image much the same way you can plug your $50 Strat knock-off into your phone and dial in a Marshal stack at full volume and sound awesome -- or loud anyway.  But doing that with images is much more complicated and will require a little 3-D info from a second lens -- something some smartphones can already shoot.  All you need is the software . . . but remember playing a digital sampler to give you a Marshal at 11 is not anything like playing a '59 Strat through a Marshal at 11, so don't get too excited.

What I'm saying is, until the tech changes radically, you have an iphone that is optimized for a particular focal length lens, whereas IMAX has interchangable lenses -- and this is important.

You are telling a story in images, that is, transforming the world into an edited 2-D resemblance of reality.  Like in music, where a minor chord makes you feel sad and a major makes you feel happy, different focal lengths make your audience feel different -- and you need this full range -- making a feature with a single focal length is risky.  I tried some in-front-of-lens add-ons and didn't like what I got.  There are only a few shots where I used a telephoto attachment and mostly it because there was little movement:

For techies out there this was shot with the actor sitting in a folding chair just outside his open front door.  The sun is diffused by a high thin layer of clouds and there was a short awning over the door casting a faint shadow.  I had him sit just inside the shadow of the awning.  I draped a black cloth behind him and used the telephoto add-on with the iphone on a tripod.  As I rolled camera I told him to think of different moments in his life like when he lost someone he loved, or some moment when he wanted revenge.  Great face to photograph.

I found the telephoto attachment gave me the compression of space I wanted, but basically cut the scan rate in half.  Since he was to be mostly static in this image, it worked.  This is a different image than if I had "zoomed" in with the camera.  Those zooms are only cropping the scan of the chip.

I needed a real telephoto lens to get certain kinds of shots, especially in low light:

So I brought in a second shooter.  He shot on three afternoons and one evening.  About 100 of the shots in the project were done by him.  He used a Canon 5D.  In a chase movie like this one, the ability to change the audience's psychological distance is one of the most powerful tools you have as as filmmaker.

Most of the project was shot with my iphone 4S at its widest giving me what I used for my "normal" lens.  It is very close to a 35mm on a 35mm film camera.  I shot for many years with a Leica M3 double-stroke using a 35mm Summicron lens and really like that focal length.
It gave me a bit of compression:

but also created visual space like a wide:

But I still needed a wide angle.  I had tight interior spaces on numerous vehicles and locations.  My iphone was too long in focal length to be useful for really tight spaces.

Almost 20% of my budget went to the purchase of a GoPro Hero 3+ and all sorts of mounts.  I used it for car interiors:

And for landscapes:

And since I could do underwater shots, I used a GoPro submerged in water dyed red to create one of Anne's nightmare images:

I also kept using the same focal lengths over and over.  I never zoomed the iphone.  My second camera guy was doing my long shots for me (here's a case where having your out line done will inform you as to when you need to bring in someone or something special).  And the GoPro had three wide angle settings.  So when I got in the editing room, I had shots from five focal lengths.  This makes the shifts from one shot to the next easier on the eye.  I don't care for zoom lenses -- unless the DP is willing to limit themselves to only using four or five specific focal lengths.  Attention to these choices while shooting will make your life in the editing room much easier.