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Music Video “Play” Shot with iPhone 3GS

When the new iPhone debuted with a video camera, it wasn’t long before adventurous filmmakers used it. Kenny Mosher is one of those. He just shot a music video–Play–with the iPhone 3GS and posted it on Vimeo and YouTube (see below for the video). “This is not my first filmmaking

Kenny Mosher

effort,” says Mosher. “I have been shooting videos since high school, where I made some poor quality kung fu films. They were pretty bad, but this is where I learned a lot. In college I started doing more commercial work. Presently, my company Showdown Productions, LLC creates video for several different industries: commercial, marketing, promotional, fund-raising, band promos, weddings, educational. We use high-end HD video equipment and complete custom projects that sometimes include motion design.”

Why shoot with the iPhone? “The video came up when my friend Ben Rivet called me about an idea he had,” says Mosher. “Ben wanted to do a music video for his group BJSR with the new iPhone. At first I was hesitant, but then I was excited about having my company produce something as creative and new as this idea. The point of the project was to get publicity for BJSR and Showdown Productions, LLC. Ben quickly wrote the song and we went to the studio to record it. Ben and I have worked on music before for videos that I have produced.”

“We wanted to see how professional something could look by shooting with an iPhone,” he continues. “I immediately knew we would have to create a rig that could be mounted to my pro equipment: Tripod, Glidecam, Shoulder Mount. Going into it, we knew that the video resolution and quality weren’t going to be amazing so stabilization [of the iPhone] was the key.” One benefit to using the iPhone, he says, was the “super small video sizes.” “At the end of the day of shooting, we only had 1.7 GBs of footage!”

A few companies have come out with gear to use with the iPhone, including Zacuto’s stabilization rig. Mosher, however, decided to build his own. “We made an indie-rig that could be used to mount the iPhone to my HD Glidecam 2000, Manfrotto tripod and shoulder mount,” he says. “The rig was made from the following: a cheap mp3 car mount, L-bracket, full electric outlet cover (no pre drilled holes). We gorilla-glued the L bracket to the mp3 mount, then gorilla-glued that to the outlet cover. Then we drilled a 1/4-inch hole through the outlet cover. This is where you push you tripod plate through and used a wing nut to fasten it.”

Click here to watch the “making-of” video for behind-the-scenes of Play.

Was lighting an issue? “Since the camera uses auto-exposure, you have to have consistent lighting, but to be honest I didn’t pay much attention to it since we were going with a raw feel,” says Mosher, who says that “pretty much everything with the iPhone camera was automatic.” “I just didn’t use the shots that were too blown out, but I used 3-way Color Corrector to fix the minimal color issues. One thing that was really annoying was the AWB (automatic white balance). This caused various issues that I had to fix with 3-Way Color Corrector in FCP. Sometimes in the shots in the woods, the AWB would shift in the middle of the shot. We had to roll with the punches and move on. Camera movement was smooth because of the stabilization equipment previously mentioned.”

Mosher periodically dumped the videos off onto a Macbook. “This was really easy to do using iPhoto,” he says. “From there I took that footage and transfered it to my Mac Pro at home.”

He edited Play using Final Cut Studio 2, and finished in Quicktime conversion H.264.  So far distribution has been through Vimeo and YouTube.  Mosher is looking for mobile distribution, “probably in the near future.”

What did he learn from the experience and will he shoot again with the iPhone? “I had a blast doing this this project,” says Mosher. “Pre-production is key, as usual. The iPhone battery drains fast, so you must be prepared to recharge it constantly. I don’t plan on doing more with the iPhone, but God only knows what jobs might come in for the company.”

Bonus info: Watch ifixit.com take apart the new iPhone 3GS–and show you how to do it.

Tags: Final Cut Pro, iPhone 3GS, iPhone music video, iPhone video camera, mobile content, mobile production, Showdown Productions, Zacuto iPhone rig

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 9th, 2009 at 3:00 pm and is filed under Content, Devices, Home Feature.