Soderbergh's thriller "Unsane" shot on iPhone premieres in Berlin

Really interesting. The video has that smartphone look to it, but done with cinematic style. There were a few long lens shots there, but most of them looked pretty much shot through the regular lens. From the look of the trailer, the look is used for emotional and dramatic effect and isn't gimmicky at all. I'm impressed.

dan c

 

Technically you can shoot 4K with the newer iPhones, but I wonder if he just went 1080i. I mean, you're dealing with a microscopic sensor and $.30 lens...seriously what's the point.

As for storage, there are plenty of easy aftermarket options for external iPhone storage.

dan c

 

Strip a 128mb iPhone of everything, have multiple units mounted on the same rig - yes, you can. But it's hard to see why one would want to, other than the sheer Dogme '95 cussedness of doing it.

 

It's called a laptop with a $149.99 Western Digital external HDD.

 

I was thinking things like these that would give the filmmaker more storage and ability for longer takes without having to download and delete so much...
Boost your iPhone's storage capacity with these handy accessories

Also appears he did shoot in 4K, which eats up space with ridiculous speed.
Director Steven Soderbergh's shot-on-iPhone 'Unsane' feature premieres at Berlin film festival

I looked everywhere for a photo of the complete rig working on set but can't seem to find anything.

dan c

 

Saw the movie this weekend.

A pretty good suspense/thriller movie.

You can definitely tell it was not shot on standard professional equipment, but the story and acting are most at play here, and the fact it was shot on an iPhone doesn't distract. (One exception being a scene where the protagonist is undergoing a drug induced psychosis...and the film has to do make do with so-so effects).

 

It could be to inspire others who have no other option(s) to make a movie but have talent and a good idea. I can see some kids saying well if he can do it, then so can anyone.

 

No sure why 4k footage out of an iPhone would limit the visual effects end of things. Maybe they stuck with basic iMovie, and nothing more.

 

Why?

 

Wasn't really much of an "effects" shot - just two overlapping images.

Saw it last night. Enjoyed it quite a bit. Obviously, visually, nothing to write home about. But a night, tight little psychological thriller.

 

A number of reasons:

In the hands of anyone other than a brilliant cinematographer like Steven Soderbergh it will look like ass.

Apple doesn't need any help encouraging this whole idea that a phone is the perfect solution for everything. They're good for snapshots but they have small terrible lenses.

 

Since this one seems to be successful I think you're going to have to live with more of them coming. You are aware just because it's in the theatres you don't need to go see it..

 

The problem is that I see a lot of films in the theater, and I don't particularly want to see the quality of the visual presentation of the films I have to choose from made worse. Several years back, before the Red camera, there was a spate of independent films shot with cheaper cameras. Some of them look great but most of them look terrible, one memorably awful-looking one was called Tadpole. If a film supposedly can be shot on iPhone, that means the budgets for films are going to get worse, with producers saying things like "why do you need that expensive camera. Soderberg shot on an iPhone!"

 

But sure some of those people wtach The Walking Dead and don't find it funny.

 

Different strokes. Some people care more about the quality of the script than the quality of the camera lens or the size of the budget.

 

It's not an either-or. I care about the script and the acting and the sound and the look.

 

I'm gonna get this on DVD when it comes out. Soderbergh's only let me down once before (The Informant).

That said, yeah... I'm sure there will be more iPhone films. Know what though? I'll take that over comic book franchises and remakes. At least something new and original might come out of this, even if it is a little grainy.

 

Except the comment of yours I was replying to wasn’t discussing the actual “look” of anything. It was complaining about projects that haven’t even been made yet with no idea what they could possibly look like.

 

I had to go back and re-read the thread, and I'm still not completely clear on what you're replying to. My point is that there are more and more options to shoot films of high quality, cheaply. But an iPhone is not a good option. They can fake a lot of elements of better cameras with computational photography techniques - like using facial recognition to find the person in the scene and to separate them from the background and darken and blur it out. But that's done with a still. For films, the iPhone has a tiny little lens, and a tiny little imager and there is nothing that will replace good glass and decent sized pixels.

 

Steven Soderbergh’s Unsane makes a poor showing for the iPhone 7

 

Understandable, as it was almost ten posts back.

A good story doesn’t necessarily need “good glass” (and I’m not sure the iPhone’s pixels are a problem). I just don’t understand why more people telling their stories with iPhones is such a problem for you.

 

From the review Pinknic posted:

Her ward is a grimy, under-lit space, and the iPhone’s 4K video camera doesn’t handle low-light conditions particularly well. Faces disappear into fuzzy blurs, the colors trend toward a muddy yellowish-brown, and light sources burn out into blazes of distracting white. The Caucasian characters look blotchy and ill, and the black characters look like shadows. It’s easy to see how shooting on a phone was liberating in technical terms, especially for a filmmaker who is perpetually working on DIY models that will let him escape the Hollywood finance and marketing industry. But it’s hard to believe this was the best aesthetic choice for the film, especially for a small-scale human story where all the action comes from the characters’ encounters, and their facial expressions are so important to the action.
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If that's the best that a brilliant cinematographer like Steve Soderberg can achieve, I'm worried that the next generation of films is going to make me think I have cataracts.

 

What makes you so sure you don’t already?

 

Hah. But I do work as a videographer, shooting dozens of concerts every year, as well as the editor. Basically, I care about image quality.

 

Does that mean he used an iphone internal mike for the sound? Tut tut.