PEEP THIS: An iPhone Music Video and The Potential of Cell Phone Cinema

At a recent dinner my good friend, Greg Payton, of C3 Stories showed me his OWLE Bubo iPhone handheld adapter. When I slipped my iPhone into the unit and felt the heft of the rock-solid aluminum molding, it made me rethink the iPhone as a video camera, or more accurately, it made me refeel the iPhone as a video camera.

For the first time my iPhone actually felt like a real camera.  And maybe it was largely psychological,  but getting over that little hurdle of shaky handheld shooting and looking through the additional lens of the OWLE , helped me better see the iPhone’s potential as a bonafide storytelling tool. So just this week, I spent the better part of the weekend researching the some of the new tools of cell phone cinema and assembling the Down and Dirty DV 2012 iPhone Cellphone Cinema Tool Guide.

In researching all the new tools to make video production on an iPhone easier and more professional, it became apparent to me that cellphones – be they iPhones, Nokia’s, Androids or whatever are now actually a bonafide means of capturing and executing a creative vision on video.  There are still some technical and practical hurdles to be sure, but they are significantly smaller than they were just 2 years ago.  And you know that one of my guerrilla mantras is that:

“It ain’t about the toolz…It’s about the skillz.”

Case in point is this music video by artist Lindi Ortega that was shot entirely on an iPhone 4 using the Nexvio 8mm vintage video app.

Our HD cellphones at this point are truly just another camera.  Yes they have less features, but less features also means more simplicity.  And I think in a strange way, when you remove a lot of the tech of video, all that’s left is the core… good storytelling skills and a solid vision.

Stay tuned for more videos as I start to explore the budding world of cell phone cinema and look for a full review of Nexvio’s 8mm iPhone app which I downloaded immediately upon seeing the above.

What are some of your favorite apps to take your cellphone video to the next level?  Let a brotha know and I’ll share it with the rest of the world.