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Welcome to the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, episode number four zero one. In Hollywood. Breakfast means maybe we'll do business, Lunch means yes, and dinner means we're in bed.
Richard Rolla broadcasting from a dark, windowless room in Hollywood when we really should be working on that next draft. It's the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast, showing you the craft and business of screenwriting while teaching you how to make your screenplay bulletproof.
And here's your host, Alex Ferrari. Welcome, Welcome to another episode of the Bulletproof Screenwriting Podcast. I am your humble host, Alex Ferrari. Now, today's show is sponsored by Bulletproof script Coverage. Now. Unlike other script coverage services, Bulletproof Script Coverage actually focuses on the kind of project you are in the goals of the project you are, so we actually break it down by three categories micro budget, indie film, market and
studio film. There's no reason to get coverage from a reader that you used to reading temp pole movies when your movie is gonna be done for one hundred thousand dollars, and we wanted to focus on that. At Bulletproof Script Coverage, our readers have worked with Marvel Studios, CIA, WME, NBC, HBO, Disney, Scott Free, Warner Brothers, The Blacklist, and many many more. So if you need your screenplay or TV script covered by professional readers, head on over to covermiscreenplay dot com.
Now I have filmmakers that come up to me all the time and say, Alex, I can't afford a camera. I can't I can't shoot what I want to shoot because you know, these cameras are so expensive, and you know I can't afford an Alexa, I need a Red or I can't even afford a black Magic. It just doesn't I can't do it. And every time I always look at them, I said, you have the power to make your own film, probably in your pocket with your smartphone.
You know, so many of us out there have either an iPhone or a Samsung or an Android or something that is more than capable of shooting an amazing film.
And now Sean Baker with Tangerine really broke the mold on what can be done with the iPhone, and he was shooting with an iPhone I think five s back in the day, and nowadays with like the new iPhones and even like the Fillway phone I have, the Sixcess is more than capable of shooting an amazing short or even an amazing feature, depending on what kind of story you're trying to tell. If you guys have not seen Tangerine Sean Baker's Tangerine, please search it out for it.
I'll put a link to it in the description, as well as our interview about how he did it in the show notes. But today's guest is kind of a revolutionary filmmaker man. His name is Jason van Jendrin, and Jason is an iPhone filmmaking fanatic. He actually threw away and gave away or sold all of his big high end gear, and he is a strictly an iPhone filmmaker. All his productions, all of his videos, he shoots strictly on iPhones and has built an insane business around it.
And I'm not just talking about he's doing his own little private shorts. He does, you know, client based work shooting iPhones, and people always freak out about like why you just showing up with an iPhone. I'm like, just trust us, we know what we're doing. He actually teaches all around Australia, in the US, in Europe about filmmaking with iPhones. And I wanted to have him on the show because I wanted to prove again to you guys
that you don't need all this big, heavy equipment. You don't need a Red, you don't need an Alexa, you don't even need a big black magic camera. You just need what's in your pocket. If you could afford the bigger cameras, great, but you don't need it, just so you know you can tell compelling stories without it. And his first short film he shot on iPhone has been played in hundreds of film festivals around the world and is one tens of thousands of dollars in film festival
prizes and stuff. So he really is an inspiration to filmmakers around the world, and I so wanted to I really searched them out and I wanted him on the show. And I'm so blessed and humbled that he's on the show and he's going to be dropping. I'm talking about some serious knowledge bombs on how you make films with an iPhone. We talk about the gear of what you do to put around the iPhone to make it work even more like a cinematic tool, what apps he uses
to shoot, twenty four p and all that good stuff. Audio, everything. We go into it deep and he has a great course on iPhone filmmaking that will hopefully be coming to IFHTV very very soon. I am working on it, guys, but it is a great course as well. He's taught, He's had ted talks about filmmaking with iPhones and other
things in the business. He's just an inspiration in general. Now, if you guys want to see this video live and actually watch this interview, which was a great one, it's available on the Indie Film Hustle video podcast on IFHTV. Just go to Indie Film Hustle dot tv the chech it out and I'll put a link to that in the show notes as well. Without any further ado, please enjoy my conversation with Jason van gendron I'd like to
welcome to the show Jason van gendron Man. Thank you so much for being on the show.
Brother Alex. It's amazing to finally meet you rather than just listening to you through the podcast. Channels finally get to see you and hear your voice one on one. It's fantastic nights.
It's awesome man, and you are and we are having this. This is like an international call. So you are in Australia. What time is it over there right now?
I know, Well it's almost coming up to half past ten in the morning for me here. Oh nice sunny morning.
So you are in the future, so you can tell me what happens.
I can tell you everything that happens. We're at least a good half day ahead of.
You, exactly.
Well, thank you for the only time Australia is considered to be ahead of anywhere in the world.
So fair enough, fair enough, So thank you again for jumping on man. And you know, the reason I wanted to put you on is because you have a very unique set of skills that we have not had a guest on the show before, which is iPhone filmmaking or pocket filmmaking as you put it. So we're going to get deep into that. But first, how did you get into this crazy business we like to call the film industry.
Well, my checked background really start in the world of advertising. So I was working as an art director in the advertising industry for about thirteen years and got really really tired of just making thirty second and forty five second stories for yeah, and just thought there must be another life beyond that. So basically I set up my own little business, a production business called Treehouse seventeen years ago, and from there we've gradually we started pretty much as
an advertising branding agency. We started working more in television and video and online, and now it's one hundred percent
of our business. We do a lot of branded content, so we do a lot of commercial content, We do a lot of social content for a lot of brands around the world, and in the spare time, I still make my own films and make a lot of training resources and have really as you said before, I've not that I've fallen in love with making things on smartphones, but smartphones really found me as a way of making content, and I was so surprised by what they could create
as a tool that I started digging deeper and was just so pleasantly surprised by how deep we could take the technology and the level of what we could actually create with this new miniaturization of our cameras.
It is, I mean, it is like the latest stuff. I mean, they're they're really powerful cameras. I mean, they have some insane capabilities that literally around. It's sitting around in your pocket. But a lot of people just don't know what to do with it because you are not trained anywhere how to shoot with an iPhone's not in a film school, it's not generally in the mainstream. Everyone looks down upon it because oh, it's just an iPhone. But Sean Baker kind of taught us a little bit
about that with his amazing film Tangerine. By the way, what did you think of Tangerine when you saw it?
Incredible? I watched it in flight somewhere on the way to another festival, and yeah, I thought it was I mean, he shot it on iPhone five.
I think it was five s if I'm not missing, it was either four us. I think I might have even been fours, but it might have been five. Yeah, because I own a six. I own a six ass I haven't jumped yet, so I think it was one or two back it was a while ago.
Yeah, I think again it was a trial blazing project and it was very brave, very adventurous, and again, with every great story, you're watching a film that sure you know it's been shot on a smartphone. Maybe that's how you come across Tangerina initially to watch it, but I think you know, a few minutes in you were totally swept into that story. And that's the great charm of any film, regardless of what we make it on, is
all about creating that incredible story. And I think that's the voice we need to rise to the top through this. It's not so much about what camera we're filming on. It's about enabling ourselves to tell better stories in more ways.
No without question. And I mean when I had Sean on the show to talk about that a while ago, and he actually told me, he's like, we played in Sundance and nobody knew that we shot it on iPhone. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show. Like after the first screening, at the very end, it set shot on an iPhone, and everybody just mind blew up.
It was like it's saying And I think that that was an absolute stroke of brilliance on Sean's behalf, because a lot of people would have had the temptation of actually saying right up front, oh, yeah, but yeah, it's incredible the fact that he did that, Like I said, it's extremely brave, but you know, very credible film. It's deserved all the success it's it's enjoyed, and yeah, I
think wonderful. A great example of exactly what we're talking about today, which is the fact that you know, people anywhere with a fantastic idea can actually realize their story in some capacity if they just rethink the tools that they have accessible to them now already, and certainly our smartphones are a fantastic way of upskilling our filmic ability.
Yeah, with our questions. So so from what I read about you, there was this like famous moment where you literally threw away your high end video camera or film camera. It was a video camera, I guess, and just said, screw it, I'm going iPhone all the way. What was that moment and what caused you to go down that road?
You're going down the rabbit hole, now, Alexia, this is a crazy story. So this takes us all the way back to two thousand and eight.
What that was like? That was like, Yeah, this years decades, millions.
Ten years ago, ten years ago. It's just crazy. And I think that we you know this is I think two years in on having cameras on smartphones right commercially so, so iPhone had only just released the year before. I'm not even sure if the two thousand and eight version
of the iPhone could record video. But the camera that I had back then was a Nokia and ninety five, a little sliding smartphone, and I remember carrying this thing around, looking at it and wondering whether one day we'd actually end up telling stories on our smartphones, we could use them as actual camera tools. So I pretty much just walked around and with a couple of friends of mine, Shane Emmett and John Roy, who's this fantastic musical composer,
I just we started talking. One day, I said, I'd love to make a film on a smartphone and see if we could actually ever get that into a film festival. And of course, sitting here in Australia, our aim was to try and get into an international film festival. So we had this concept of you know those magnetic poetry kits. Yeah, yeah, you can make it oh about something. Someone had something to it as they walked past the fridge. It's it's
a cool little idea. So we thought, what if we could do that with a smartphone film, What if we could actually walk around the city. And so we walked around Sydney with this little Nokia and we just filmed words on science. So we were I guess, harvesting words from shopfronts and vans parked on the side of the street, from the sidewalk, from anywhere we could see signage and words. We'd start filming individual words. We had no concept of a script, storyboard, we had no budget, and we're working
with a smartphone. That was it. Back in two thousand and eight. We ended up collecting twelve hundred words. I remember bluetoothing them one at a time from the phone to my mac.
Yeah, there was no way to look it up. There was no way to look it up back then.
That's right, no way, absolutely no way. But still, you know, we were blitzed by that science, like, wow, we can actually wirelessly transmit this thing from a phone to a dice.
It's fairly it's fairly insane. That technology is fairly it is.
So we ended up with twelve hundred words and we decided to try and make a film out of that, and of course there was the complete one oh one way of do not try and make a short film this way. We had no concept of really what we were making film about. We had, like I said before,
no script, no storyboard. So we we were we realized as we were capturing these words on street signs that we were very affected by homeless communities in the city and the fact that you know, you can walk down the street and you can walk past ten twenty homeless people a day and never looked them in the eye. They kind of become part of the furniture and the city,
the landscape. Yeah, And so we decided we would try and make a project that I guess a story that spoke to that and questioned whether you know, there was another way we could connect with one another on that level. And so we wanted to make a film about homeless societies in cities and urban environs. And Shane and I we sat there looking at this list of twelve hundred words for three nights in a row and trying to find something, something to stitch together into a narrative, and
nothing really happened. It was just like it was like going to the dentist three times in a row. It was honestly, we were sitting there, just nothing was coming to us. And then I remember one night we contacted John Roy, this composer friend of ours, and we said, look, we've got this idea of a film. We want to cut these things together, these words, We've got some shots of these incredible homeless people we've met along the way.
We wanted to make a story about homeless societies in an urban environment and our sense of disconnect with that. We wanted like a piano score, but it has to be like plinky blank, so we can cut the words on certain notes. And I'm totally from a non musical background, so when I say plinky plank, that's pretty advanced to technical musical speak.
From same here.
But I know what I like, right, So I sent him. I sent him a page with twelve images on it from the chute, and he went away and composed this incredible three and a half minute piece which he almost threw away, and he fold me the next day said look, I've got one little piece of music, but I want to just fine tune it now. I said, no, no, no, John, send it through and he did, and Shane and I listened to it and just knew instantly it was the right piece of music for this film. You can hear
the breath in the piano strings. It was incredible. And the film we made was called Mankind Is No Island. We ended up being inspired by the music. The words started leaping off the page once we heard the music. We started finding all of those connections. We put this together. We entered it into a film festival in New York called Troupfest New York and troup Fest at that stage was Australia's biggest short film festival. It attracted an annual
live audience of between eighteen one hundred thousand people. I'm sure how much eighty to one hundred thousand for a short film festival. For a short film festival, This is right on a Sunday evening, on a Sunday summer's evening in Sydney.
Is there nothing else to do in Sydney during that? Like, I don't know. That's mind blowing. Even Sundance doesn't get like that. Making Even Sundance doesn't even get that many people.
That's crazy. It is like a rock concert for short filmmakers. So they had a version in New York and we decided to enter it into that. And that's where the whole story for us started. We end up getting selected flew across for the festival, we played the film, we won one people's choice as well, we got Best Film, and it just started this whole conversation rolling in a
much bigger space. And we did lots of media interviews and lots of talks at other film festivals and universities and film colleges, and yeah, it just started this love of actually not being confined so much by the limitations in the gear we didn't have to tell stories, and actually looking at what we did have available to us and how we could appropriate it and appropriate the concepts that we're working on to be told with simpler tools, simpler camera tools.
And that film cost you fifty seven dollars if I read.
Correctly, fifty seven Australian dollars.
Wow, so it's not even American dollars. So wow, that's not even Americans.
So it would have been forty forty two or three American dollars to make.
And then how much we end up how muching, how much prize.
Money today so it's still actually going in festivals around the world. There's ten years on, it's still during the rounds and it managed to win over thirty three thousand dollars in prize money.
That's insane. Oh my god, Like that is that is the hustle. That is the indie film hustle. Without question. Look, I thought I was rough because my first short film, I had it running in festivals probably like four or five years, and you're still going ten years in.
That's in sen years. It's not competing anymore, but it's still it's beating invitations all the time to screen, and it's it's amazing. I just love those little projects you work on, those little experimental projects that end up surprising you as the creator as well as well as the audience. And I think, you know, it's it's for us. It's the gift that keeps on giving. It's the film story that just keeps on traveling around the world finding you audiences.
And I watch it every now and then. It still teaches me a little bit about what I'm doing. It's still it still has little little gems to give.
You know. It's funny. I was because a lot of the people I worked, a lot of my collaborators worked on with that short film. They kept every time they would see that short film my film film come back up. They're like, isn't that horse dead? Like, didn't you kill that? Like that? You've you've ridden that horse as long as you can on anything since I'm like, I'm like, no, I just I just you know, inject them with some adrenaline, picked the horse back up and just keep riding them
until it keeps going. So hey, if it keeps going, why not, right, I mean, if people still want to see it, it's all good. And then what was your did you distribute that film? Did you actually put it somewhere to be watched or sold or is it strictly just off.
Offline literally just just offline on festivals? It's it's it is online at the moment on the trop fest YouTube channel, so it's had a life there. It's had over a million views on there. Yeah, it's it's it's crazy. I mean, short film in Australia is a really strong, healthy medium for creatives coming out of colleges and film schools. It's something we really actively embrace.
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And I feel really fortunate that, you know, even in a little old Australia, we can actually say we've got a film festival that draws a live audience of eighty to one hundred thousand years. Just insane. And when filmmakers come from overseas, they've never experienced anything like that. They walk into this field and they see this sea of people and they think they're at some crazy concert. It's just an incredible experience.
I mean, you're almost inspiring me to make a short film. I mean, I seriously, I got to send something over there because I just want to experience that. That sounds amazing for a filmmaker. Look, look, there's very few venues, very few things out there. Can you know Sundance Toronto. They don't bring in one hundred thousand eyeballs, you know, that's insane. That's like YouTube numbers, like you get one hundred thousand.
Of us that's it. Yeah, So if any filmmakers want to make a trip to Australia, try and try and make it around February when trop Fest screens in Australian come and experience into the festival, because as a filmmaker, it's just this energy of even just being in the audience, even if you don't have a film in the festival. Just being in that crowd and seeing eighty to one hundred thousand people react and respond at once that's to something they've seen in the screen is just mind blowing.
It gives me chills for speaking about Yeah, because.
It's nothing that no normal filmmakers don't get that, Like, you know, even the biggest blockbusters from Hollywood doesn't get that all in one. But you don't get an eighty to one hundred thousand people watching Avengers like it doesn't happen. So it's that must be amazing. So let me ask you a few tips for making your iPhone more cinematic, because that is a because if you I mean, iPhones is like any other tool, you could use it portally, you can use it really well.
Yeah. Yeah, So there's probably a couple of key things. One would be you need to obviously understand the strength and the limitations of your iPhone as a camera tool. It's got a tiny lens, it's got a tiny imaging chip. Obviously, the latest versions of the iPhone have stepped it up in quality again and they've got incredible you know, dynamic
range now. So the things that I would say from the get go, you really need to focus on in accessorizing your phone with to make it a real cinematic capture tool would be First of all, there's an app called filmic Pro, which is the same app that Sean Baker filmed on as well film Tangerine onto. It gives you a complete manual control of all the camera inputs on your iPhone. So if you can imagine the kind of controls you have on a DSLR camera, you can
have those on your iPhone with filmic Pro. So it's in vable. It's the number one selling manual camera app around the world, I believe, and it allows you to then work with a whole host of other accessories which you can obviously then put onto your phone to expand what it can see optically what it can hear. So yeah, filmic Pro, that'll be the first thing I'll tell people to do. Rush out, find that apput it on your phone and play with it.
And it's pretty good.
It's incredible, like mucho probably yeah, probably, I think it's around twenty something here in Australia, but yeah, it's look for Isn't it funny these days with apps we talk about, you know, paying anything for an app and whenever I go to a film college and I say, oh, you need to buy this app, and it's twenty dollars and they go like, why, that's crazy. I'm never paying twenty dollars for an app. But you know, you're expanding the
functionality of your device so much. Everybody wants everything for free, it's insane.
Tell me about it, brother, I know, yeah, I completely understand what you're.
Saying, totally fatally. So filmy Pro is the bedrock. That's that's the thing I would start with. And of course it's available in an Android version as well, so if you're not on iPhone, if you got something else you can, you can run filmic Pro. It's amazing. The other thing that that is a real game changer with iphon we call it iphonography, is trademark is the ability to add
accessory lenses. Now, so a lot of people away they've heard of lens clips like olo clip or moment lenses and things like that, which have their own sort of
fastening system onto your phone. B script make an incredible cage system for your iPhone or for any smartphone, and have a device called a dof too, which is a depth of field converter and Essentially, it's a barrel which attaches to their b script camera cage which you put your phone in, and it allows you to then accessorize your iPhone with any number of different DSLR lenses or CINY lenses.
Is it worth it because that's a lot of glass going through like a lot of glass, So is it going to degrade the image a bunch or is it worth it?
It's definitely worth it if you want to work with nashallow depth of field. It's really, at the moment the only real way we can do it until computational imaging sort of steps it up another couple of notches and we can get the effect of what we see in portrait still mode now on our phones. But you know, when we can get that in video mode, then that
kind of is another conversation again. But in the meantime, if you do love that beautiful cinematic look of layering the focus in your vision, you need something like a depth of field converter to actually attach accessory lenses to your smartphone and look at this great It does cut back the light input a little bit because essentially what you're telling the lens to do is to focus on
another focusing screen inside the depth of field converter. And that sounds all very technical, but in the end of the day, it allows your iPhone to be able to see through any lens pretty much you can put in front of it. And we've seen things captured. We've certainly captured things ourselves here commercially through lenses that people never ever guess have been attached to a phone. They just they wouldn't think it's been filmed on a smartphone.
I mean, I think you and I are similar vintages as far as our age is concerned. So you might remember this camera. Do you remember the DVX one hundred day Panasonic? Yes, wonderful, wonderful, wasn't that with the most beautiful camera ever. It was the first twenty four ft the first twenty four p camera, and it had a stock lens on it was alike. It was a beautiful
lock lens, but then you couldn't get that depth. So you had the thirty five millimeter adapter and then you could put on those things, but then you would automatically lose like a stop or two, so you had to like pump, so similar in that way, and I think it.
Had like a glass didn't have like a glass the mirror.
Yeah, this something I did a movie once that because I shot my film on the DVX and I had the adapt I had a screwing adapter, not the thirty five, but a screwing to get the white hand, just to get the Sorry everybody, we're geeking out old school now, ye, But but I had a film that came in. It was a million dollar feature film that they shot on
the DVX. I don't know why, but they did. This is back years years ago, and they never attached the adopter properly, and in the top corner you would see the mirror like the little little circle like flickering the whole movie, all the footage. I'm like it was the first time DP. But that's a whole other story for a whole other movie podcast. But that was that was the technology we were dealing with. But the reason I brought that up is because it did drop a lot
of a drop stop. So I'm assuming that this is similar. That you've got to pump.
More light in more light and that's that is an absolutely given with with all smilephones and any small lens camera, we need to you know, smaller sensors need more light, so we need to work with more light when we're shooting. Although you know, having said that, the new ten S, you know the dynamic range and that is incredible. We took that out for a camera test a couple of weeks ago to film festival here in Australia, just comparing the ten to the ten S in nighttime tests and
the amount of extra latitude and exposure was insane. It's it's like thirty to more light coming in in low light situations. Now are you which is incredible?
Are you finding more filmmakers using this as a serious like a serious package, because I don't see I mean other than Sean Baker, and there's a handful of other you know, outliers and yourself obviously, but are there have you seen have you run across other filmmakers who are doing serious work with iPhones?
We have. We've actually started to see the explosion of smartphone film festivals really started taking on. Yeah yeah, yeah. So earlier this year I was at one in San Diego run by Susan Bateello amazing smartphone film fest went to one in Zurich, the Memo Film Festival here in Australia with SF three Smartphone Flick fest. Now these these are getting big support. It played at the Opera House in Sydney. I mean, that's how much tension these festivals
are getting. People are rocking up at the Opera House, the Laymark Building here in Australia to watch films all creating a smartphone and people are really starting to push the boundaries. It's not just people picking these up and a weekend hack, someone just having a go at the first time at storytelling. We're seeing real capable storytellers picking up their smartphones and really experiment ending with the media and pushing the envelope as to what it can do
as a camera tool. And of course these days too, we can we can accessorize with any microphone we can. We can put wireless microphones on our smartphones and capture dialogue from a distance without being connected with leads. We can do all that sort of thing.
Yeah, I was going to actually ask you how do you record professional sound, because a lot of people will just pick up and go action and we're like, no, that's not going to work real.
Well, well, we we work with all the full range of pro microphones we've used in any other other kind of production we can still work with with our smartphones as well, or you're obviously still have the choice of recording your audio separately and syncing it in post. We generally do both. We record into the camera as well as have back up audio too. We can never enough backups of audio.
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So yeah, you know, accessory microphones are definitely out there. For literally, for less than one hundred dollars, you can buy a really incredible quality microphone to improve the quality of the sounding a smartphone three hundred percent, and it's a no brain. And we see people actually starting to accessorize with a couple of hundred dollars worth of equipment, and they see the leap in quality that they're achieving, they just get the bargain and they want to get
more and more and more. And the amount of times I've been on red carpets at film festivals and I pull out in a little smartphone rig and I'm just doing some little voxpops with someone or someone I've met that I want to ask a question to, and I get one or two questions out and then instantly it's finished. All the producers and directors just start coming over. They're taking photos of the phone rig They want to know what it is, how do you shoot with it? Where
do I get it? Like? It still seems to be such a new conversation. But the more that people are seeing it, the more they're getting exposed to it, the more they're understanding that there's a place in their production kit for a smartphone, a broadcast smartphone kit.
Now, let me ask you, because there is a stigma around shooting with an iPhone. I mean, Sean Baker definitely broke that down a bunch, but everybody, I mean, I've talked to people, professionals, you know, snoody let's call them snoody la guys who's like, that's not a real cinema phone. I mean, that's this or that. And you know what, you can't compete an iPhone's not gonna compete with Alexa. It's just not going to period, It's never going to.
But it will put the power of it of being able to tell a story in the hands of someone who can't maybe afford or get access to an Alexa. Now, how do you because I know a lot of people listening right now. Their egos are are full right now, people listening, I promise you, I promise you, someone out there is going this is ridiculous. I would never I'm a serious exactly like, I'm a serious cinematic cinephile. I'm a filmmaker. I don't I don't shoot with an iPhone.
That's what's in my can I talk on that text on that. But what do you say to people like that? Because I mean, I'm always about like, whatever is the best tool for you know, I shot my last film on a pocket camera, So it's just like, what's the proper tool. It's not perfect for everything. If you're going to shoot a half million dollar movie, iPhone may not be the right tool for it. But if you're doing shorts, are you doing a smaller micro budget feature and you
could get a lot of bang for your buck. So what do you say to people like that who have that? And I'm sure you've run into them.
I'm positively all the time, all the time, and they're my favorite people to convert when I go to a festival and the I mean, some of my peers I work with in the industry here, I'm still saying I've got rocks in my head, but when I show them what's possible with the equipment, they quickly change their mind. And I think, as you said, there is a definite stigma associated with not having a large camera in your hands when you're going to film a serious project. But
we can turn that stigma around too. I think that stigma is something that's been a bit of a stain on the industry as a whole for a long time. A lot of people feel that they there hasn't been room for them, there hasn't been an inclusion there because they don't have access to that red epic or they don't have the means of able to them to tool up with what's considered to be a proper cinematic camera or a broadcast camera, and they've not gone into storytelling or
filmmaking because of that. And I think that's a great shame, because I've met some incredible riders. I've met some incredible producers and want to be cinematographers that have incredible ideas that just have put them on ice for three, four or five years, and they may never make them because they just don't think those things are available to them.
So The great joy here is actually saying we can turn that stigma around, actually say that stigma is probably one of the strengths of smartphone cinematography, and that you can actually be a story teller anywhere, anytime with that thing that's in your pocket, and no one's going to question you. You can be a one person production team.
You can be operating very frugally. You could be in the middle of Times Square filming this incredible shot, but nobody knows whether you're filming it just for a social feed or whether you're actually making something it's going to screen at Sundance. You're never going to get a tap on the shoulder by the security guards or the local administration asking you for your film permits. You're never going
You see what I'm saying. You can really fly under the radar with a small camera like a smartphone, and even when it's accessorized with some lenses and audio. We've never ever been kicked out of an area, We've never been stopped from filming, We've never been considered a serious crew.
And that's part of what I love. We can actually travel around, we can get these incredible stories, we can capture this incredible footage and we're never hindered in our way, and it's such an enabler for us in capturing story. I love it. For me, that's what I love doing.
I'm a documentary filmmaker. So for me being able to run around like a ninja and capture and create story and not be burdened by the process or the people around me or the environment that I'm filming in is a wonderful joy and it's something that's been allowed me to actually make stories I couldn't make any other way.
Yeah, exactly. I think it was a lot like the when the DSLRs first came out, people were making, you know, like Michael Polish's film for Lovers Only or things like that, where they literally went to Paris and shot everywhere in restaurants, every because it was it was a people thought they were taking pictures. The technology was so new, and now similar things with the iPhones, like, no one, they're not professionals obviously there. They don't know what they're doing, obviously,
so let's not bother them. You know. I even ran across that with the pocket you know, like with my pocket camera. People were like, what are you doing? I'm oh, I'm shooting them a feature like what like it's it's mind bloying, but you could sneak in with those kind of cameras. And the iPhone is the ultimate of that because everybody knows that camera. I mean, you know that device, so you never you'll never get caught with it.
And do you feel like it's happened all through the chain? Sorry, I was just I said, it's happened all through the chain of evolution in camera craft. If we look back to you know, the very begin with film cameras, actual film cameras. When the digital video camera revolution came along, the film industry, the film camera industry, all as traditional cinematographers did not rate the digital camera setups. They never thought they were going to have a long lasting place
in the industry. And of course history tells us otherwise. When you know, the first DSLR came out, I think in two thousand and seven or eight, actually film video.
Yeah, I remember the five D came out.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, when that first one came out with the record capacity for video, the digital video camera market said, that's not a proper camera, that's not how we going to record video. Of course, you know, everybody denied that that was actually going to make any kind of inroads in our industry. And now we're sitting at that other chapter. We've got the further miniaturization of
our craft. We've got smartphones, we've got action cameras, adventure cameras, we've got all sorts, we've got wearable cameras coming next. You know, we've got so many things that are new to the industry. And of course everyone shooting on a DSLR or a digital video camera or anything else is going No, that's definitely not a serious camera. History will
prove that different. And again it's not about saying, you know, smartphone cameras are going to overtake the industry and you know every other kind of camera is going to discribe.
Of course, that's not going to happen now. But what we do need to be aware of is the fact that, you know, for some of those productions, there's some elements of your production, maybe a smartphone camera is actually going to be able to capture that scene or tell that story better than something else you're already have in your kid.
Yeah, and with our question, no, no, absolutely, with our question, and you could sneak into places with that small camera and get shots. I do actually know of a few filmmaking dps who are on network shows who will we'll do a little and they'll intercut and if it's a quick little action thing or something like that, you know, it works, It really works.
Away. A couple of weeks ago, Alex I actually was a guest at one of our major television networks here in Australia. There was two hundred and forty of their executives gathered around in one of their big studios. They have one of these get togethers every three months and they have guest speakers from all sides of the film and television industry coming and address them once every quarter. I came in to talk to them about what smartphones are going to do, what space is there for smartphones
in the broadcast television world. And I would have thought that would have been a really hostile audience going in and speaking to all those executives and EP network producers and series producers, and they loved it. They were totally on board. They loved opening their minds to what they
could do. And of course, you know we'd be having dops working on TV series coming up to us afterwards saying, you know, we've been filming with the same cameras for twenty years and we're not allowed to upgrade our cameras because of budget, but we could afford two or three of these kits to accessorize what we're doing in our action. And so they're seeing the opportunity for it, and there's
definitely space for it in the industry. And when people start seeing some you know, in the coming years, you will see some more feature films. We'll see definitely see a lot more documentaries coming out that have been created on smartphones, and I think that'll help really change, be a catalyst of change for that conversation. And you know, you can buy a one hundred and twenty dollars anamorphic lens to put on the front of your phone and
capture a beautiful animalphic picture. Right with anamorphic lensmears the whole thing. You know, it's and it fits in your pocket. It's it is insane, it's crazy.
I mean, do you feel like it's I mean, the iPhone revolution or the smartphone revolution is kind of similar to what happened with the DSLRs. Like people were like only like the first early adopters would go in and start playing and toying and making little films with it and all that kind of stuff. We'll be right back after a word from our sponsor, and now back to the show. And now I feel that that's what's happening with iPhone technology and with with smartphone.
Technology completely completely. In fact, we've you know, so we run a production agency here in Australia and we earlier this year became the first production house in Australia to actually downscale our tools, so we now actually shoot all of our television commercials and all of our brand content for big brands exclusively on iPhones. We do it all on iPhones with accessory lenses, accessory microphones. Everything we produce out of our production agency is all sourced on a phone.
Now, how how is it when you show up to set and you're bust open the iPhone like fantastic?
I love it.
No, no, but like other people, like other people like what are the what does the other people say? I have to believe that, Like you show up and there's a crew and they're like, no, seriously, what are we shooting on?
Yeah, instead of twenty people, there's five people. And then all of a sudden, it's like, yeah, but you guys aren't seriously, you're just doing the social stuff right, No, we're actually doing the broadcast stuff today. And look, it's amazing because it opens so many conversations. When we're filming talent, they love it because it's a completely different way of working and they find they're more in the moment rather than the process of the filmmaking process, so that it's
a bit of liberator for talent as well. And definitely, you know, when we're doing documentary interviews, there's nothing like putting an unassuming camera set up in front of the documentary subject and getting them to open up. We have been able to get so many more incredibly deep conversations going through using smartphones as camera capture tools as opposed to traditional camera setups for people that aren't used to
being in front of the camera. It is an incredible enabler and absolutely, without a doubt, we've made stories that wouldn't have ever made it to air if it wasn't for the iPhone as ature capture tool.
Now, and you said you touched on something, I would love to kind of dig deep, a little deeper into I mean, obviously in the documentary world, You're right because if you know, obviously documentaries you want people to open up. And when they see this alexa a red rig which tend to be huge. Sometimes it could be over into especially intimidating for people who are not versed in our world. But when you you know, you're like, okay, we're just gonna shoot this on, just open up, it's fine.
Yeah.
Yeah, that I have to believe is a lot better on a documentary standpoint. But also just as actors, you know, there's a freedom and a speed that you can move with these rigs. You know, even with my experience with shooting with the small camera, I was able to move so quickly and the actors were just like on, like, there's no going back to the trailer for an hour while we reset. Now we're going and there's an energy to it. So what would I'd love to talk to you about that?
Yeah, totally. We find exactly the same. It's you know, it's so much faster to do. Scene transitions to lighting, setups are simpler. Everything is a lot more simpler, and so we find we have more ability to block through a scene, we have more ability to work through the dialogue the transactions. We see a lot more scope, a lot more experimentation with what we're capturing as opposed to being extremely didactic about what we're wanting to shoot. And
we call it lean forward filmmaking. We think it's really this sense of stepping on set and we actually have the camera in hand, ready to go, and we let the camera almost show and guide for us what could be a good flow for the camera movement, what could be good coverage in the scene. It's quite different to actually sitting there and first of all overly pre producing how we're going to actually capture that scene, how we're going to lends it, how we're going to light it,
how all that sort of thing. We find there's just this there's almost like an organic nature to the production, which is really nice, and particularly I think for people that are not really versed with working with larger crews, that are relatively new to working with other people. I think anything you can do to help keep your crew small, to keep your equipment tight over to be able to keep you more flexibility in your shoot day, and then you call sheet I think all that stuff's all a positive.
So it's a great way to actually really give yourself, many more options and what you probably would do with it with a traditional camera setup.
And at the end of the day, and I think this is I think we could both agree on this. It doesn't really matter what the hell you shoot on is what's the story, and that's what people get. So and so, I mean, I did full podcast about stop obsessing about gear. No one gives a rap, like they really don't. Only guys like you and me will go so what you shoot on? Like really, but like people watching a film on Netflix doesn't care if they shot on Alexa, on Red, on Black Magic, on an iPhone.
It doesn't matter. But people, I think, and you might, you know, you might. I'd love to hear what you think about it. But I think a lot of times filmmakers use that as an excuse not to actually be filmmakers because they're high behind it.
I totally agree, And I think you and I have both gone to the exact same networking opportunities at festivals where you step into a room of fellow creatives filmmakers, you meet one another and it's nobody talks about the project they're working on. They say, I've just been shooting something on X y Z you know, they're straight away, they're end of the gear. That's straight away. It's all
about the box. And I'm sure if you go to, you know, a great restaurant and go and have a chat to some chefs, they're not talking about what brand knife they've been chopping vegetables and fish with that night. They're talking about something totally different. You know, when we think about, you know, incredible performers on stage, the first thing they don't credit their success with is the brand of the microphone that they're singing into or the PA system.
You know. But somehow in the filmmaking industry, we're still very caught up in the fact that it's all about boxes and lenses.
It's it's the marketing. Beyond that, it's the marketing of the companies. Though the companies want you to continue to buy new lenses, buy new cameras, buying new everything. So it's again, you hear it from the beginning of your career, so you get caught up in it. I've kind of let go of that now, I'm like, what's the right tool for the job?
Yeah, yeah, totally. And it's become almost like a skin. I feel, It's like something you said before, like we wrap it over ourselves like a mask, and that's we're talking about the equipment of the gear seems to be an easier thing to do than actually opening up about what we're trying to say with what we're capturing. And I think as soon as we can start changing those conversations, it's actually alex the same reason why I never go
in and introduce myself as a filmmaker anymore. As of earlier this year, I now call myself a film breaker because I feel the way I make films is at odds with what the industry perception of normal is, and so I think I tend to break a lot of rules when I make my films rather than making them. So when I say I'm a filmmaker and I step in that same environment, what's the first question you think someone asks you when you say you're a filmmaker? What's the next thing that comes out of them.
Out, Oh, what are you shooting on?
Well? What films have you made that I know?
Well, there's that chance, Yeah it's not a lot.
Yeah, there's probably not a lot that I've made that that most people would have seen.
So, yeah, you're right.
Let myself as a film breaker that introduces a conversation rather than stopping it with, you know, a period in the conversation. It's just it's a way of enabling people to understand that there's more than one way to make a film come alive.
I always tell people that, you know, if you give a canvas and paint and brush to Basquiacht Warhol and pollen, you're gonna get paint on a canvas. But how you get it is up to them, and it really doesn't matter the style that you make it. Like I know, I've worked with filmmakers who and I've also talked to filmmakers who are completely improv films like I've done. My last two films were fairly you know, structures, outlines and film and you know, and and and that's the first
time I ever did that. Before that, it was more structured and storyboards and pre viz and all that kind of stuff. But there's millions of different ways to tell the story. But at the end of the day, and I think this is where filmmakers get so just miss the mark. It is about what story you're trying to tell? How are you trying to impact the world in one way? Shape or form, whatever your what's your what's your take on it? What is your perspective?
Exactly? What's your voice? What's a lot of people get lost in that. Yeah, they forget that. Really, the perfecting their craft is not about learning how to use more boxes. It's really about learning how to really define their voice and their style as a storyteller and embracing that and feeling comfortable in their skin, actually owning their style of production and what they bring to the films that they want to release the market. Actually, and I think that's
that's actually a really good point. People really need to focus more on their voice and what they want to say, is opposed to experimenting with fourteen different up the camera setups before they feel they've made a serious film.
Well, I think the other thing is that, like, well that movie was shot, you know, this Oscar winning movie was shot on Alexa. So if I shoot a movie with Alexa, then my chances are so much better to get an Oscar. Like that's isn't that the mentality? Like seriously, oh, I have to get a red because that's what like The Avengers were shot on. So I want a two hundred million dollar budgets I guess I have to sit in the red it's it's it's nutty. It really is nutty. I hope we've.
Changed if we only felt comfortable stepping out on the road and driving a car, if we could have a three hundred thousand dollars vehicle. I mean, we can still drive in a two thousand dollar bomb. But you know, it's we're still get It still gets us to a to B hopefully, but it's fine to aspire towards those those other lofty cameras and setups.
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But the main thing is, I think what people who think about it is, if I'm a great story teller, if I've got an idea for telling a story, what can a resource around me that will help enable me to tell that story right, rather than give myself more excuses and delays and procrastinating about actually starting making that film.
Absolutely, and I hope today's conversation Jason has has woken a few people up, has inspired a few people to pick up the thing in their pocket and go tell the story. Experiment learn. I mean, there is no film development, There is no huge amounts of media that you have to buy and trans I mean, it's if you want to tell a story, there is no excuse, and that's what I and that's what I hope this conversation, this interview has helped a few people today, So thank you
for dropping the knowledge bombs. I'm going to ask a few questions that I ask all of my guests. What advice would you give a filmmaker wanting to break into the business today, I.
Would say, you are your project's best advocate, So never ever give up on it. If you give up on your project, if you waiver, if you lose the love, nobody else is going to have the love for your project like you do. So you need to be the absolute champion for your project and never ever lose sight
of that. I think I see a lot of people with an idea that as soon as they start shopping it around or they start asking for opinions, they feel that it's probably less a lesser thing than what they started out with, and they park it off to the side, and then they lose the love for it. I think, Yeah, you need to be your project's best advocate, So never stop selling the concept of what you want to make if you believe in it with all your heart, if you feel it's a thing you really want to make,
it's your sole responsibility with the champion for it. You need to pull everybody else on board, and you need to fly the flag all the time.
And I think you have to be free of the good opinion about others in many ways.
Absolutely. In fact, you know, seeking the advice and opinions of people around you that aren't your friends and family is probably the other thing I would say is making sure you get some good independent reviews of your work. And it'll hurt the first time someone comes back to you and tears it to shreds. It's a horrible experience. But if you sit in it for two or three days and look at your work again with that in
your mind, hopefully you can learn from the process. And certainly that's probably how I've grown as a filmmaker a storyteller, is by exposing my work to people that I really respect, that don't have a personal association with me, that feel honest enough to actually really be honest about a project when I show that to them, and to take on board, to listen to their conversation with fresh ears and eyes.
After a few days, when the pain is settled and you can look at your work and actually learn from it and grow as a storyteller. Is really important.
Absolutely. Now, can you tell me the book that had the biggest impact on your life or career.
The book that the biggest impact in my life for Korea. I'm going to probably be a little controversial here and say it's going to be a book with no words, OK, And I'm going to give you a book called The Arrival by Sean Tan. And I don't know if you've heard of that. He's a graphic novelist based in the Western side of Australia. He won an Academy Award for an animation called The Lost Thing I Believe a few
years ago. And he Yeah, this graphical novel called The Arrival is an incredible story about what it likes, what it's like to feel to walk in the shoes of being an immigrant in a new country. But it's completely told through incredible illustrations, no words needed. It invents its own language through the book when you read it. So, yeah, The Arrival by Sean Tan. Definitely check that out. It's incredible, It's like a storyboard, incredible storyboard awesome.
Now, what lesson took you the longest to learn, whether the film industry or in life.
The lesson that took me the longest to learn would have to be to never stop making. Whether you feel you're a success or a failure, whether you feel you're inspired or not, there is no replacement for making and keeping your tool sharp and keeping your skills sharp. And I think always staying in the game, always going out, finding story, listening, making story all the time. Always refine your skills and keep going. Don't give yourself a year
off from filmmaking. You need to keep making. Wherever you are, whatever you're doing, you need to keep making. Whatever that story is that's in front of you, keep making it.
And three of your favorite films of all time.
Three of my favorite films of all time. I'm going to keep it to documentary because that's probably my passion.
Okay.
The first one I would say would be, uh, Blackfish, probably one of my old Yeah, that's a crazy story. Kill a while, incredible what well killed it?
It killed an entire company? I mean yeah, absolutely, I mean we're here, I'm here in La so I saw I saw what had happened, like I went to see World like with my family. Girls wanted to go. I was like, I don't really want to go. Let's that support it or we're gonna go once and that's it. Man, they changed everything. It was pretty remarkable that one movie knocked down a multi million dollar corporation.
It's pretty amazing completely and if you want inspiration as a documentary filmmaker, there is no greater inspiration than something like that when you see the cause and effect of the film, like, that's incredible. The second film I would probably pick is Searching for Sugarman.
Or what I wondered film. Oh god, I love that movie.
It was so loved and sorry, go ahead, I just said. Large chunks of it were actually filmed on iPhone.
Really, I didn't know that.
Yes, I looked it up. Large chunks of the the recreated historical footage I think was filmed with a eight millimeter film app on a smartphone.
That's because he was doing that. It's sad that he passed away, but I remember the filmmaker. He did it almost all by himself, like he was editing for like two or three years, and and then he got the Oscar, which is just like, oh my god, what I saw.
I mean, that is the ultimate indie film. Hustle searching for sugar and this this guy made it happen. An incredible story made with with with really sparse resources. Yeah, beautiful.
What was that other one that just came out a few years ago? Was it The Walk Walk the line about what you don't want to talking about? The one that the guy acrossed the twin Towers?
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yes yeah.
Type yeah yeah yeah, something like that. What an amazing documentary. I fell in love with that guy. He's crazy. I love him. All right, I'm sorry I was in the.
Third I got a third one for you. I got a third one for you. And that's a filmmaker called Brian Hertzlinger and his documentary was My Date with Drew, came out in.
Yes, I remember that. I've seen that movie.
That one. Yeah, he was about making it.
When the stalker laws were a little less back then, apparently. But he wanted to he wanted to make he wanted a date with Drew Barrymore, and he made a old dock you merry about.
It in thirty days incredibly just the ultimate challenge, you know, can you make a film in thirty days. He didn't even own a camera. That was an incredible thing. He and his two friends had to go and beg borrow and steal a camera on a credit card, which I had to be able to get a refund on within thirty days. That was a premise to making their film, Window to make thirty days to go and find a
date with Drew Barrymore. And I think Rotten Tomatoes actually called it the Love It or Hate Its Stalkerazzi like it was like I said, you probably could not make that film in twenty eighteen, but back in two thousand and four, it was just it's one of those heartwarm, I mean, very simply made films. The aesthetics in it are a very pure, very basic, but a super sweet story. And as a documentary filmmakers, so much hope in there for making story with minimal means.
So that was awesome. Ask great choices, my friend, Great choices. Now, where can people find you in the work you do?
Look? Probably the best place would be on Facebook to look up film breaker FI L M br E a k E. That's the page where I've been sharing most of my knowledge, bombs and work of late. We've got a few influences on there contributing. Basically, it's a space where people who want to learn how to make films with their smartphones can be tooled up, can be inspired.
And we set that up in March this year with an aim of finding ten thousand people around the world that had a similar mindset, and we're now up to just over thirty thousand. So yeah, a film breaker on Facebook is definitely the place to connect to stay in touch with got making and yeah, check out our what awesome man.
Thank you Jason again so much. This has been an amazing interview, amazing conversation, and I really do hope it inspires people out there in the tribe and whoever is listening to this to get out there and just go tell their story. Man, it doesn't matter what you could. You have the power in your.
Hands and play Alex wonderful being in the show. Thanks so much for the opportunity and I really appreciate it.
I want to thank Jason again for being on this show.
Man.
Thank you for those knowledge bombs. Jason, and guys, I'm telling you it is in the power of your hands. Don't let the lack of big movie gear stop you. You can make your movie, you can make your short, you can make your feature, you can make your series with an iPhone, with an Android phone. They are so
so so powerful. I would have killed to have something like this when I was coming up in the business, to just even practice with, let alone to take it to the next level and actually shoot professional projects with So thanks again Jason for the inspiration. If you want to get links to Jason's work what he's doing, as well as links to the movie Tangerine and our interview with Sean Baker, and also a link to the video podcast of this, head over to Bulletproofscreenwriting dot tv. Forward
slash for zero one. Thank you so much for listening, guys, as always, keep on writing no matter what. I'll talk to you soon.
Thanks for listening to the Bulletproof Screenwriting podcast at Bulletproof Screenwriting dot tv.