If You Have an iPhone, This Film Festival Wants You

Entering its second year, the Original iPhone Film Festival is a Web-based film festival that celebrates the work of filmmakers who use nothing more than their iPhones, iPod Touches, or iPads to create impressive works of art.

The festival, at which Yahoo Tech’s own David Pogue will be a judge, offers free entry to anyone as long as the work was shot on an iOS device and has a runtime of less than five minutes.

It was started by Matt Dessner and Corey Rogers, who both work in the advertising industry. They say they started the festival shortly after Apple debuted the iPhone 4 and the company’s iMovie video editing app.

This ability to share your homemade films with the Internet for the cost of a smartphone, Dessner said, brought about what he calls the democratization of filmmaking.

“The empowerment part got us started,” Dessner said. “It gives people the ability to share a story or a cause that couldn’t be shared before. This iPhone brought it all together to let the storyteller be completely autonomous.


“At that time there really wasn’t any platform that was an iPhone film or storytelling outlet. And we thought, wouldn’t it be great to see what people are doing with iPhones around the country? And when we got started, we found that it wasn’t just around the country, it was around the world.”

In its first year, the festival received more than 250 submissions. “We didn’t know what we were going to get from the beginning, but Corey and I were very surprised,” Dessner said. “Some of the videos were a little bit like what you might expect, but others blew our mind.

“We had a story about a unique local game that is played by men in Iraq. We got music videos that were made with multiple iPhones shooting at the same time, so we got these multicamera shoots that we didn’t even think of ourselves.”

A springboard for filmmakers
In addition to giving iOS owners the opportunity to express themselves artistically, the festival gives participants the kind of exposure that can catapult them into the larger film industry.

Michael Koerbel, a former participant and now judge in the Original iPhone Film Festival, was able to leverage his success with using the iPhone as a video tool to launch his commercial film career.

 

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