First cellphone feature film

February 25, 2006 10:59 PM

The World’s First Cell Phone Feature Film. Sony Ericsson sponsored the film by providing W900i cell phones. The cheap medium allowed for a very loose shooting style, with multiple cameras constantly rolling, freeing the actors to experiment and improvise.. the footage looked "fabulous" when blown up to 35mm.
posted by stbalbach (12 comments total)

Waiting for Ebert
posted by longsleeves at 11:48 PM on February 25, 2006

Unless these are cell phones very different from any I've ever touched, it's definitely not going to look "fabulous" when blown up to 35mm. There are ways to blow up digital video for printing to film that makes it look much better than you ever expected (Algolith's filter suite springs to mind), but the video you get from cell phones is of so much lower quality, I don't think this will look like anything but, well, crap.
posted by Joakim Ziegler at 1:52 AM on February 26, 2006

Maybe they mean "fabulous" as in "lacking factual basis or historical validity; i.e. 'mythical centaurs;' 'the fabulous unicorn;' or 'great looking 35mm film shot on a cell phone camera.'
posted by moonbiter at 2:22 AM on February 26, 2006

Can we all agree that the women pictured are hot?

At least that's something...
posted by thanotopsis at 5:33 AM on February 26, 2006

I can vouch for the image quality of the camera when we're dealing with stills, but the video's 320x240. I have a hard time watching my videos from my w800i on my 12" laptop, let alone a cinema.

Still, cool idea.
posted by sixacross at 7:13 AM on February 26, 2006

they used 12 sony ericsson K750i's for "The First Music Video Filmed Entirely Using Cellphones."

But the new technology created a lot of problems, he said. The resolution on cellphones is equivalent to 1/3000 of the quality of normal video, Marshall said. "They're basically toys. Imagine recording your album on an answering machine or doing album art on an Etch A Sketch. The mobile phones were so temperamental that they'd just turn off at any point without warning." And although the manufacturer promised that they'd record 15 frames per second, they only did 10. To overcome this limitation, the band performed at half time. Editors later sped the footage back up...

Employing lots of cameras was one of the many tricks the crew used to make the end product look good, he said. "We overlaid the phone footage so we had phones shooting the same angles." The images were Bluetoothed to an iMac. Then three people worked for two weeks on post-production, Marshall said, adding that most video projects rely on one editor for two to three days. During post-production, the team tinkered some more. "We defocused parts to give it that soft look, and we ran noise reduction over the clip."

siemens also sponsored a micromovie award :D

cheers!
posted by kliuless at 8:49 AM on February 26, 2006

I don't get it, why didn't they just use cheap cameras? Why the extra cell phone function?
posted by Packy_1962 at 9:06 AM on February 26, 2006

I'd imagine they mean it looks fabulous insofar as the low quality at which it was recorded makes for a somehow more evocative image (though evocative of what, I dunno, gotta wait and see the film). Kind of like avant-garde filmmakers using these for kicks.
posted by jrb223 at 9:55 AM on February 26, 2006

I thought the first movie shot with cell phone cameras was the upcoming Miami Vice adaptation, at least judging from the poor image quality seen in the trailer.
posted by Potsy at 3:00 PM on February 26, 2006

1. Buy cell phones and laptops...
2. ???
3. Profit!!!
posted by muppetboy at 5:35 PM on February 26, 2006

Fredo Viola made a cell-phone video a long time ago.
posted by unixrat at 8:43 PM on February 26, 2006

You know what else should be shot using cell phones?

Nothing.
posted by Astro Zombie at 9:09 PM on February 26, 2006