Tools of the Trade

It used to be that making a major motion picture was something that you could only do with the full support of a major Hollywood studio. Even independent movies were huge undertakings requiring massive budgets (in the millions of dollars) for the rental of expensive film cameras, lighting rigs, cranes and dollies. Even with the introduction of digital video cinematography, spending $100,000 on a RED or Arri camera was the cost of doing business.

Fortunately for many of us, low-budget filmmaker Robert Rodriguez started a trend towards ultra-low-budget filmmaking which lowered the barrier to entry for talented, but undiscovered, filmmakers.

Just last year Rodriguez offered $7,000 grants to five amateur filmmakers to shoot a feature film in two weeks. The film shoots became segments for Rodriguez’s show Rebel Without a Crew, based on his book by the same name, for the upstart streaming media service Go90.

But that was just the start. According to the CultofMac website, Hollywood feature film director  Steven Soderbergh recently shot a feature film with the iPhone X and is talking about doing it again. This was not just a stunt, according to Soderbergh.

“I think this is the future…anybody going to see this movie who has no idea of the backstory to the production will have no idea this was shot on the phone. That’s not part of the conceit.”

Not convinced? Check out this video.

The fact that many of us have, in our pockets, access to this kind of technology should be a wake-up call to anyone who has big dreams and a small wallet. Now get out there and shoot something!

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