Here’s a little video I shot on my iPhone. Yes, my telephone doubles as an HD camcorder. I shot it using an app called FiLMiC Pro, and edited it in Final Cut Pro. The creepy music is from Cliff Martinez’ awesome soundtrack to the film “Contagion”.
The event was a 9/11 vigil on Alki Beach in West Seattle on September 11, 2011.
I did this mainly as an experiment. Could I get decent looking video from my phone? Would it be too shaky to be watchable? What’s the video editing workflow like with videos taken on the phone?
I guess my opinion now is that the video looks OK. Not as good as my real video camera – which shouldn’t be a surprise – but OK considering it’s a freaking telephone. But the audio isn’t very good. If we’re going to do more of these, I think I’d want to use a separate microphone of some kind; maybe even the microphone that’s built into the iPhone earbuds. Also, I found I just couldn’t resist using dissolve transitions between clips, and adding some music. I also tweaked the audio a little. There’s a version of iMovie that runs on the phone itself, but reviews of the app are terrible. That left me doing the editing in Final Cut, which is a little overkill.