S'pore, Japan to make world's 1st dramatic film on the iPhone

By Satoko Nishimura

AsiaOne

Friday, Nov 18, 2011Singapore is collaborating with Japan to produce what is the world's first full-length cinema- standard movie shot entirely with the ubiquitous iPhone.The iPhone movie, Sheep That Cannot Sleep, is a two-hour science-fiction film that will be produced with a team of only 17 people - including actors, a make-up artist, a sound editor and Japanese director Yusuke Akamatsu.The S$335,000 production, which will take 34 days to shoot, is a joint production between Japanese company ENPRES and a Singapore company that has yet to be selected.The plot revolves around a young woman, Matinee, who suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder after witnessing her parents being murdered. She is then treated with a "life-recovery" machine, which takes away her memories and replaces them with a fictional reality.Singapore actress Mindee Ong will star as Matinee. Shooting will start early next month in Singapore, and will move to Gifu Prefecture in Japan.Sheep is not the first film to be shot using the iPhone.Notably, South Korean director Park Chan Wook shot his award-winning 30-minute film, Night Fishing, with the device. The 150-million-won (S$171,900) movie took 10 days to make.The upcoming Avengers flick, too, has some scenes shot using the iPhone; and the documentary This Is Not A Film by jailed Iranian director Jafar Panahi - screened at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year - was shot partially on his iPhone.But Sheep is perhaps the first full-length dramatic film - a full-length production is defined by major film academies as one with a run-time of over 40 minutes - shot using the iPhone.So, why shoot a movie with the iPhone? Sheep is director Akamatsu's second full-length film.The 44-year-old said: "After the death of Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, I wanted to challenge what iPhone can truly create - aside from its normal functions like taking photos and playing games".Akamatsu - whose first movie was Sentimental City Marathon (2000), and who has worked on TV drama serials in Japan - chose Singapore as one of the two locations for the movie because he remembers the vivid colours in the country that he first visited in the late 1980s.To reflect the transition from reality to fiction and vice versa in the sci-fi movie, he will take the movie to the snow-bound, rural Oku-hida region in Gifu.Ong, who was nominated in the most-popular-movie-actor category in the Singapore Entertainment Awards this year, told my paper: "I'm feeling nervous and excited at the same time as I've never experienced filming (a movie) entirely on an iPhone before."She added that she'll have to work very closely with Akamatsu, who is also the cameraman, and who will use two iPhones to shoot the entire film."The camera works - lighting, framing and movement - on this tiny gadget requires a lot of skill and cooperation from the actors," said Ong.Another Singaporean, Charlotte Hand - the runner-up in The New Paper's New Face 2011 contest - will play the role of Matinee's sister.Japanese actor Akihiro Kawai will play the role of the villain in the movie."As an actor, this is going to be a new experience - to shoot using only the iPhone," he told my paper. He added that "it is always very interesting work with Akamatsu as he always gives us difficult but challenging tasks".Akamatsu hopes to submit the final film for a showing at a major film festival - perhaps in Cannes or Berlin - next year. He added that Singaporeans will be able to watch the movie in local cinemas early next year.But before he gets that far, Akamatsu, who will edit the film as it's being shot - using the iPhone 4S and two MacBook Pros - will actually have to lower the resolution of the video shot with the iPhone.Such videos can have the same picture resolution - or higher - as that of a conventional movie."I will need to lower the film resolution for cinema screens as the (resolution of) videos taken with the iPhone is very high," he said, adding that this will be a major editing task.satokon@sph.com.sgThe writer is a multimedia designer with AsiaOne, Singapore Press Holdings' news and lifestyle portal.