Shooting a three minute film on an iPhone 8 Plus

Smartphones are getting smarter. And with the aid of specialist filming apps, they're getting smarter still.

Here's an example of a 3-minute film I shot using an iPhone 8 Plus. The conditions were challenging, particularly the light; evening fading into night, with streelighting the only illumination.

Take a look at the video. It's not perfect, and I know that a conventional camera with a range of lenses and low-light capability could have done the job better. But for me, it shows just how far smartphones (especially iPhones) have come.

By the way, the subject was the spectacular Moros y Cristianos fiesta in the Spanish town of Villajoyosa, near Alicante on the Costa Blanca. The fiesta celebrates the defeat of a Moorish attack on the town back in 1538 and has been held every year for more than two centuries.

Below are the technical details of the shoot. Enjoy the video...

Camera: iPhone 8 Plus (which has a built-in 2x optical zoom camera. Invaluable for this shoot)

I used a Manfrotto monopod and Shoulderpod smartphone clamp to get some height and put my iPhone above the crowds lining the streets. I didn't use a gimbal.

Filming app: Filmic Pro. This shoot would not have been possible without Filmic Pro, especially the ability to vary the exposure as the light levels dipped during the evening.

In low light, I tend to lock the ISO to the lowest setting, and then use the shutter speed arc slider to fine-tune the exposure. The "false colour" function of Filmic Pro is really useful...it overlays the entire screen with green (if the exposure is correct) and with blue and red colours indicating areas that are under and over-exposed.

I also used the focus peaking function, which uses a blue outline to show items in focus, and a green outline for items in sharp focus. Focus is often hit and miss in such challenging lighting conditions and this definitely helped.

Audio: the iPhone's own microphone. Normally I would have wanted a shotgun mic, but I didn't have one with me. Such is life!

Editing: iMovie on a MacBook Pro. I could easily have edited brief excerpts on the iPhone itself with iMovie for IOS, but editing something this length on a smartphone is a non-starter.

Titles: put together on Keynote and imported into iMovie.

Subtitles: iMovie's own Lower Third title template with the top layer removed, and Tahoma font selected.