Smartphone Filmmaking

Book excerpt: Mobile, smartphone and pocket filmmaking is a global phenomenon with distinctive festivals, filmmakers and creatives that are defining an original film form. Smartphone Filmmaking: Theory and Practice explores diverse approaches towards smartphone filmmaking and interviews an overview of the international smartphone filmmaking community. Interviews with smartphone filmmakers, entrepreneurs, creative technologists, storytellers, educators and smartphone film festival directors provide a source of inspiration and insights for professionals, emerging filmmakers and rookies who would like to join this creative community. While not every story might be appropriate to be realized with a mobile device or smartphone, if working with communities, capturing locations or working in the domain of personal or first-person filmmaking, the smartphone or mobile device should be considered as the camera of choice. The mobile specificity is expressed through accessibility, mobility and its intimate and immediate qualities. These smartphone filmmaking-specific characteristics and personal forms of crafting experiences contribute to a formation of new storytelling approaches. Stylistic developments of vertical video and collaborative processes in smartphone filmmaking are evolving into hybrid formats that resonate in other film forms. This book not only develops a framework for the analysis of smartphone filmmaking but also reviews contemporary scholarship and directions within the creative arts and the creative industries. Smartphone Filmmaking: Theory and Practice initiates a conversation on current trends and discusses its impact on adjacent disciplines and recent developments in emerging media and screen production, such as Mobile XR (extended reality).