SAN FRANCISCO, CA, United States – Above you can see the first five minutes of Olive, the first feature-length film to be shot on a smartphone. Which one? The Nokia N8, of course. We keep telling you that the Nokia N8 is the world’s best cameraphone, but the proof isn’t in the spec sheets or what we say here – but rather in the results that people have managed to accomplish with the phone.
We’ve highlighted some stunning photography and some amazing short films before now. But Olive, directed by Hooman Khalili and starring Gena Rowlands (The Notebook, A Woman Under the Influence, Gloria) shows that the phone is capable of more than even we ever dared to claim.
Olive tells the story of how a little girl is able to transform the lives of the people she encounters without uttering a word. Hooman is also hoping that the film might also be unique in its distribution. He’s currently raising money to make it the first independently financed film to be shown on 2000+ screens across the US without the backing of a major studio.
Check out this second video to show more about how the film was made. The crew dismantled a 1940s-era movie camera to create their own secondary lens for the phone, held together with double-sided tape. For other scenes, they used the raw footage from the phone itself. For one aerial scene, they even attached the N8 to a remote-controlled helicopter in order to get the shot.
Are dedicated movie cameras and DSLRs on the way out, or will they always have a place?
