Who Says Hollywood Film Can’t Shot on a Phone?

How to be a director? It might not be easy in the past, but today, pick up your phone and shoot now. It is often believed that if a movie was shot on a phone, rather than a professional camcorder, poor quality and inferior results would be inevitable. But the rising popularity of smartphones, which is as good as - and in many aspects, better than - those of a dedicated video camera, makes people keen enough to record and edit a Hollywood-style short. And filmmakers have already found some success in the field. “Searching for Sugar Man”, a musical mystery directed by Swedish director Malik Bendjelloul, won the Oscar best documentary feature at the 85th annual Academy Awards on February 24th, 2013. It's worth mentioning that he ran out of money and had to finish filming his movie on his iPhone with the $1 8mm Vintage Camera app. “It was basically the same as the real stuff”, director said. These include “Olive”, which was shot on a Nokia N8 with a 35mm zoom lens and was the first ever smartphone film to get a cinema release. And as early as 2011, Park Chan-wook’s “Night Fishing” short, which was shot on an iPhone 4 and won the Golden Bear foe Best Short Film at the 61st Berlin International Film Festival. However, the mobile movie-making is no longer the studios just in Hollywood. Everyone or mostly everyone has a camera phone in their pocket. The world has come to know and love all sorts of story videos, especially in this age of YouTube shows and viral videos. For example, The Samsung Galaxy Note 3 has could shoot 1080p video at 60fps or 2160p video at 30fps, and soon more phones are likely to have 4K cameras, allowing for higher quality videos across a range of handsets. There are real advantages to shooting on a phone. For one thing, it’s cheaper than conventional camera equipment, and allows more risks to be taken as there's less money at stake. And because of small size and portability, you can put it and film almost anywhere, which potentially allows you to capture moments that would otherwise be lost because you didn't have your video camera with you. Of course, there are weaknesses too. A smartphone with a great camera for video but low storage space and power makes the movie-making worthless. So you’ll probably invest in storage card to ensure you have enough memory in your smartphone, and carry an eternal battery that you can plug in on the go, for example, Kinkoo Infinite One, which has the lightest and thinnest appearance in its real 8000mAh class, recharges your iPhone 5 times, and ensure your phone always powered. Nowadays, technology significantly lowers the users’ threshold and blurs the borders between smartphone and camera. The mobile movie-making is also going back to the basics and makes people remember what’s most important for a film, the story, the actors, the way it looks. So, this type of filmmaking isn’t necessarily a bad thing although smartphone films are still fairly few and haven’t yet hit the mainstream.

3 Keys to Taking Excellent Smartphone Photos

Often, the most inspiring pictures occur in everyday life when you do not have a standard camera with you. The smartphone in your pocket solves the problem perfectly and allows capturing those impromptu photo moments with its improvements in sensors, optics, speed and megapixel specs. And if you know the power of observation well, it’s possible to take great, memorable pictures and make your mobile photos stand out from the rest. 1. Find the Right Light That’s right! Light is absolutely the most important technical issue there is. Most smartphones do have flash lights, but there’s nothing better than natural or surrounding lights. So, you need to develop the light sensitivity to capture the look you want. The smaller your subject, the easier it is to modify light. Make your subject stand at a place with bright light. 2. Shoot to Impress Yourself Photograph is the expression of emotions, feelings and thoughts. Anyone can take pictures today, but everyone has different tastes. Just follow your own vision, convey what you feel and find something about you love, may be figurines, wastebaskets, old people, beautiful girls, hubcaps or patterns left by tires in the snow, sewage processing plants or cute little animals, go photograph them. You can spend a lot of efforts to try to make them look otherwise, rather than boring, or you can relax and go find better things to photograph. 3. Understand Your Device and Keep it Powered A lot of people are not really aware of the features they might or might not have in their smartphones. Well, there can be a lot of features that can actually boost the camera quality of your image, such as the flash, zoom, editing apps and so on. This way you will be able to use your camera in the best possible way. At the same time, you should take your mobile phone everywhere you go, and photograph often enough to gain practical experience. Keep it charged and carry extra Kinkoo portable charger too, which has the lightest and thinnest appearance in its real 8000mAh class so that you can easily take it in Jeans pocket, and do a good job via charging the average phone 4-6 times to ensure your phone always powered, so you don’t have to regret later on.

How to Keep Smart Devices Alive on Snow Sports

Winter in many places means skiing, ice skating, sledding and snowball fights. When we enjoy these sports fun, there’s nothing better than well-run electronics like iPhone, tablets, reassuring us. There are lots of useful apps to help us drive to a snow-covered terrain with turn-by-turn directions; locate the base of a route by using GPS coordinates; look at the weather forecast; identify local trees, birds, and flowers; take excellent photos and videos; and later share our experience with Facebook buddies or YouTube clips. The smart devices are so important for us everyone, but all that technology comes with a price. We have to ask ourselves: How are we going to keep the device charged when we are outside? How do we check the important calls if our fingers are freezing? How do we keep the snow out of our precious iPhone or iPad. Otterbox: Secure the Phone from Icy Mishaps The first thing to do before taking our mobile device out snow sports is to invest in a sturdy case to protect our phone from breakage and snowstorm. Not only do we get to tote our phones in the snow, but we also protect it from water, dirt, and shock. Otterbox's Armor Case is a bit pricey at 100 $, but it protects the phone from 10-foot drop onto concrete, can be submerged for 30 minutes in 6.6 feet water, and can withstand up to 2 tons of crushing force. We will never worry about the phone getting damaged with it. Kinkoo: Keep Our Device Always Powered A research from Infographicsmania.com says, the total time for everyone use electronics is 9 hours a day, and the average smartphone holds 5 hours on the premise of running at full speed while tablet 4 hours. So we must carry a portable charge in our pack so that we can have precious spare for an emergency call when some apps eat up most of power. One of the best and the one I use for my devices is Kinkoo Infinite One Portable Charger. It can work at minus 22℃ and contains a massive 8000 mAh capacity to recharge my iPhone 5 times. Most of all, it is the lightest and thinnest external battery at only 162g and 11mm in its class. Also, it’s not cheap enough because it uses the best A+ Quality Lithium Polymer battery inside, which charges faster and give a longer shelf life at least 15 months. Beartek: Take Control of the Phone with Snowsport Gloves We wear gloves to protect us. We use smartphone apps to entertain us. If we want to do both and don’t want to switch phones just for a supersensitive touchscreen, we can have a pair of Beartek’s Snowsport gloves. Wear the gloves like we would wear any other gloves and be able to use the smartphone without even taking it out of our pocket! Its finger touch control system lets us answer calls, play/pause and skip music tracks, and capture our ride in video or photos - all while simultaneously providing warmth. In addition, the gloves have premium goatskin leather outer and are windproof and waterproof. They could be one of the cooler ski/winter gadget gifts of the 2013-14 seasons.

How Can I Miss this Moment?

Game 6 of the 2013 NBA Finals was tense, baffling, infuriating, and cathartic. I watched the game on the field with my camera.The Heat eventually beat the Spurs in overtime, 103-100, ensuring there will be a winner-take-all Game 7. But no matter what happens next, I’ll think back to the end of regulation on Tuesday night, and the seven seconds that revealed why we watch all these games and what we gain by watching. During almost two hours, my cell phone camera records each unmissable moment. With 12 seconds left on the clock and the Heat down to their last possession, LeBron James misses a tying 3-pointer. Chris Bosh grabs the errant shot, just barely outleaping the Spurs’ Manu Ginobili, whose maximal effort leaves him sprawled out underneath the basket. As Bosh snares the ball, Ray Allen quickly backpedals out of the lane and into the corner. Allen’s toes scurry centimeters behind the arc, ensuring he’ll get credit for a three rather than a two; his feet lift off the ground the same way they elevate in the first quarter of a game in February; and his wrist snaps metronomically even as his right arm flails wildly off to the side. The ball goes in. The game is tied. But that’s not nearly everything that happens in these seven seconds. There’s Tony Parker, running out at Allen, desperately challenging his shot—the reason the NBA’s most prolific three-point shooter flails his arm as he releases the ball. Parker’s effort wouldn’t be all that remarkable except for the fact that, a few seconds before, he’d been the one challenging James’ shot, all the way on the opposite side of the court. As Allen’s shot arcs toward the net, Ginobili lurches up off the ground, getting ready to challenge for the next rebound. And at the top of the key, LeBron thrusts both of his arms above his headband-free noggin, desperate to take another shot to tie what could be the last game of the Heat’s season. Thank god. The Kinkoo Infinite One battery is my saver. It did not make me miss a free throw. How one does missed free throw—a shot that hovered over the rim, spun around, and fell out. It means winner or nothing. After a great game, we too often conflate what’s debatable with what’s worth debating. We can argue about Popovich’s substitutions and the refs and how to tote all this up on LeBron’s career ledger. But we shouldn’t let it drown out everything that went right, for both the winners and the losers, in those seven seconds: the way Ray Allen’s feet illuminated decades of preparation, Tony Parker was somehow managing to guard every Heat shooter simultaneously, and Manu Ginobili was getting off his butt only to see the ball splash through the net. The Kinkoo Infinite One portable charger is easy to access in my pocket, and keep my camera moving and catch the moments like these that make sports worth our time.