There have been a number of high-profile movies technically shot on iPhone, but in most cases they are using the same professional cinematography kit they would use with other cameras, including lenses costing tens of thousands of dollars.
Resident Evil director Zach Cregger uses his own iPhone in a rather different way, taking an approach that could be useful to amateur and professional filmmakers alike …
There’s an ongoing debate about how meaningful it is to claim that a high-profile movie, ad, or keynote video was shot on iPhone. Naysayers argue that the quality is all down to the professional lenses, lighting rigs, and editing employed, while those on the other side of the fence point out that everything was captured by the iPhone sensor.
Cregger mostly sidesteps all of that, describing his own use of an iPhone for shot planning, creating photo boards that accurately represent the image that will be captured by each of the Pro lenses he intends to use.
He does, however, add that an iPhone is all that you need to make a movie, even if his own budgets give him access to rather more expensive kit.
At the other end of the scale, I use my iPhone in a similar way to him when planning my own amateur videos. I take still photos to create a photo board so that I have a visual reference for each of my planned shots. The videos themselves may be shot on my Blackmagic rig, my iPhone, or some mix of the two.
You can watch Cregger talk through his process for Apple TV here.
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