Last week was a mess with my laptop crashing. With it I also lost all my data and hence couldn’t make a post here. I did get all the data restored. Thankfully I had it all backed up to the cloud.

Plug: I use Backblaze. If you too wish to have all your data backed up for $60/year (yes, that’s unlimited data as long as it’s in one system), use this referral link so that we both can get one additional month. Thanks! https://secure.backblaze.com/r/02st59

Few days back I received the following question in mail from Chittaranjan Paramguru. I felt it would be something you, fellow mobile filmmaking aspirants, too might be looking for. Hence sharing it here.

Question:

“I would like to make one content Hindi Cinema in iPhone i would like to know what is it’s filmlook in theatre screen. secondly iPhone lenses like moment,moondog, ulanzi, beastgrip which is better. thirdly dof adapter with Cinema full frame lenses, one kannada Cinema dinga made in dof adapter attached Cinema lenses had released in January 2020 . sujust me what will be better.am one director and screen writer.”
The following was my reply.

Dear Chittaranjan,

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Film Look

We were not able to screen our film in a theatre and hence cannot give an accurate comment. We did watch it on the largest screen we could get and it looked perfectly fine.

There have been other films shot on earlier versions of the iPhone that were screened in theatres and people did not even realise it was shot on a phone. So I believe it will look like any other film (depending on the cinematography and storytelling of course).

I’m not sure if you saw our film. You can watch it for free on YouTube at munnariv.com/watch. Please watch so that you can decide for yourself if the iPhone aesthetics look film-like to you or not.

Gear

We used the Moondog Labs anamorphic lens. For details on all the gear we used, please check this article https://iashik.com/mobile-filmmaking-gear-for-a-feature-film/.

We have not used other lenses or DOF adapters. Hence unable to suggest.

Though one suggestion I would make is that if you are looking for shallow depth of field with DOF adapters, it is better to shoot on an SLR itself. It might be easier and cheaper.

Everything We Learned

I have tried to write down everything we learned while making a film on a mobile phone on my website, iashik.com. I suggest you go through them. There is a lot you can learn from our mistakes.

The article 7 Steps to Make Your First Feature Film will be a good starting point.

If you have queries that have not been answered on the website, please feel free to let me know. I will answer them in the following weeks.

Wishing you the best.

Hope these help clear your doubts on the topic as well. If you have any questions please feel free to send them to me (you’ll have to signup for my newsletter).

Cheers!

Hey Aspiring Filmmaker,

I debuted my film career making a feature film for ₹5 lakhs ($7,000) on an iPhone. I’d like to help you do the same. So I wrote everything I learned into a book. It is now available on Amazon, called The Indian Indie Film (or Make Your Film for rest of the world). Enjoy!