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You Can Shoot a Movie on a Phone. Just Don't Expect It to Be Easy

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Today’s mobile devices may have learned Hollywood’s cinematic tricks, but directors are still dealing with the limitations—and stigma—of making films on them.

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Today’s mobile devices may have learned Hollywood’s cinematic tricks, but directors are still dealing with the limitations—and stigma—of making films on them.

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Jessica Yu-Li Henwick, who recently made her directorial debut with a short film called Bus Girl. Stick around until the end and you'll see a title card that reads, ”Shot on Xiaomi.”

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Today's mobile devices may have learned Hollywood's cinematic tricks, but directors are still dealing with the limitations-and stigma-of making films on them.

The biggest challenge in making a film with a smartphone? Finding people to help you do it. At least, that's according to Jessica Yu-Li Henwick, who recently made her directorial debut with a short film called Bus Girl. Stick around until the end and you'll see a title card that reads, "Shot on Xiaomi."

Henwick, who acts in films like Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery and The Matrix Resurrections, used six Xiaomi Mi 11 smartphones over the course of three days to complete her first shoot as a director. Using a phone as the primary camera in a film isn't groundbreaking. Henwick joins the likes of Steven Spielberg, Steven Soderbergh, Michel Gondry, and Sean Baker, all directors who have filmed full-length movies, shorts, or even music videos with a phone. But Henwick's effort does highlight how the cameras on these personal devices are getting more and more sophisticated.

The Mi 11 has one of the larger camera sensors available in a smartphone today-superseded recently by Xiaomi's very own Mi 12S Ultra and its 1-inch sensor. A larger sensor means the phone can pull in more light for brighter results during low-light scenes, capture more detail, and output higher-resolution video. This camera tech can greatly improve still photos, but phone makers have increasingly had their eyes set on video, and they've prioritized the porting of cinema-like features into these pocket devices. The Mi 11's tagline, for example, is "Movie Magic."

iPhones and Google Pixel phones now have their own Cinematic video mode to replicate the shallow depth of field (the "bokeh" blur effect) you'd get by using a camera lens with a wider aperture. Both devices can now film in this mode at 24 frames per second, which Apple highlights as " the film industry standard." They can also shoot in 10-bit HDR, which creates a video that has a broader array of colors and exhibits better exposure in high-contrast scenes. Samsung phones can even film in 8K. These improvements and features are designed to make filmmaking more approachable and accessible than ever. Within the film industry, however, using a mobile camera instead of a "real" camera still carries a stigma.

Bus Girl tells the tale of a young woman, played by Henwick herself, trying to break into the culinary scene. It's currently making the rounds in festival circuits-Henwick just won the Mary Pickford Award at the Coronado Island Film Festival-but Xiaomi has already approached her about making another film. She's working on a sequel called Sandwich Man, which is currently in postproduction. Henwick jokes that once you've made two, you have to go for three, so there will be a third short film to put a cap on what she calls the Phone Trilogy.

Why bother with a phone in the first place? Henwick says she saw using a mobile device as a challenge, and a way for her to see if she had what it took-and the interest-to direct. She dropped out of school at age 16 and energetically educated herself about cinema, reading every book and article about filmmaking she could get her hands on, watching all the behind-the-scenes featurettes on DVDs, listening to what directors have to say about the creative process, and subscribing to film magazines.

"I don't think you have to go to film school," Henwick says. "I don't think you have to go to drama school. I don't even really think you have to go to university if you want to be in this industry. It works for some people, but we say something in hiking: 'Hike your own hike.' My path is not your path. If you want it bad enough, you will come to it on your own."

The process of making Bus Girl and Sandwich Man was Henwick's film school. She says she wasn't comfortable using Arri or Red equipment (the cinema camera systems favored in Hollywood), but she realized she was comfortable shooting with the thing she handles every single day. "I don't know about you, but I actually think I use my phone more for taking photos and videos than I do for calling or playing games or any of the other apps on my phone."

Henwick didn't want the audience to know these shorts were filmed on phones; she was fearful that knowledge might influence viewers' reactions. It's why the "Shot on Xiaomi" title card is placed at the end of Bus Girl instead of the beginning. Patrick Stettner, chair of the Rutgers University Filmmaking Department, echoes this idea and says going into a film knowing that it's shot on a phone might frame expectations in a particular way. "Like it's not to be taken as seriously as their other films," he says.

That meant Henwick's team had to sell the visuals, and they didn't want to follow the path of other directors who have shot feature films on phones souped up with different lenses, which can dramatically change the look and feel of a film. "You see a lot of these short films made on phones, and what you don't see is the rig that they've attached to the phone," Henwick says. "We really didn't have that at all. It was just a little hand gimbal and the phone."

The hardest constraint for Henwick in shooting Bus Girl wasn't the smartphone itself but the stigma around it. When she was interviewing people for positions on the crew, she felt a lot of reluctance after she mentioned the short film would be shot on a phone.

"There's definitely a stigma in the industry. I wouldn't really say from the audience's perspective-a good film is a good film. But within the industry, I think there's a stigma." She ended up working with Nick Cooke, who she says, like her, viewed using a phone as a challenge rather than an obstacle.

Stettner believes this reluctance to take phone cameras seriously stems from the fetishization of high-end equipment in the film industry. Using a professional cinema camera can make your work feel like it's "professional," even if that's not always the case. Students also come to film schools to use and learn about high-end cameras and lenses, so having to then use a smartphone doesn't seem attractive.

However, using something as familiar and common as a phone can make it harder to think critically about the details of a shoot. "The contemplation of the image-the composition, the blocking, all of it-becomes a much more considered element when you're dealing with something that can't be captured immediately," Stettner says. You basically have more opportunities to stop and think. It makes sense. We use phones every day for reading the news, playing games, responding to messages, and capturing content. A cinema camera is a focused tool that lets you home in on your creativity. A phone might not put you in the same mindset.

Every year, phone makers highlight the improvements to their respective image-processing algorithms, which affect what a video clip will look like. That can include automatically brightening up footage, boosting color saturation, or removing noise by smoothing out the details. Henwick says her team overrode all of that proprietary processing and instead used an app called Filmic Pro to access the raw hardware in the Xiaomi phone. "We would actually have two phones. We would be pulling focus on one phone, and we would be using Wi-Fi to control the main phone. It worked very similarly to a normal crew, except the gear fits in your palm."

Cutting out all of Xiaomi's processing offered Henwick and Cooke greater control over the look of the film. However, there were still things the camera did that they couldn't control. Smartphone cameras are designed to capture good pictures no matter how poor our photography skills are, so they often "help" improve the shot by automatically tweaking the camera settings in a way that elevates a bad photo, but scuttles artistic attempts to break the rules. Cooke explained a scene where he deliberately wanted to keep an actor's face in shadow, but the phone would automatically compensate to make them look nicer in a "glowing, beautiful, shiny way." The phone also kept trying to auto-correct scenes-even changing exposure mid-shot-when the team was trying to make sure every frame was consistent.

The team found a few ways to trick the camera to stop doing this by lighting scenes in a certain way or pointing the sensor at a bright or dark surface to "reset" the camera's exposure setting. Often, they just ended up fixing these issues in postproduction, a process Henwick says was comparable to what's done on other short films that use cinema cameras.

Of course, shooting on a phone also has tremendous advantages. A phone is light and maneuverable, while a cinema camera rig weighs a dozen pounds or more. Changing a shot on the fly is easier with a phone because doing so doesn't require resetting or moving a bunch of camera hardware. Cooke loves the compact nature of the phone too. "We could squeeze through shelving units with little thought or even place it in a pan of water," he says.

Stettner says the ease of use and versatility of the smartphone remove barriers to entry in filmmaking, which in turn may allow for the diversification of storytelling. More students are mixing and matching too-using their phones in spaces where a cinema camera would feel out of place. But at the end of the day, he stresses that "toys don't make the film." It's the ideas and the creativity of the artists and the filmmaker.

For Cooke and Henwick, the decision on which piece of camera equipment to use is all about the amount of control it affords. They know phone brands build out these features to let the average person access cinema-like quality without having to know anything about how it all works. But for anyone actually shooting a film on a phone, control is key.

"These features should be accessible, and it should be possible to bypass them," Cooke says. "iPhones and Pixels want people to look great and feel great, and capture magic moments; this is the main aim. But if you're making a film, you might want someone to look cold and blue, or for it to be dark and scary. It's a choice."

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You Can Shoot a Movie on a Phone. Just Don't Expect It to Be Easy

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Today's mobile devices may have learned Hollywood's cinematic tricks, but directors are still dealing with the limitations-and stigma-of making films on them. The biggest challenge in making a film with a smartphone? Finding people to help you do it. At least, that's according to Jessica Yu-Li Henwick, who recently made her directorial debut with a short film called Bus Girl .

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Everything You Need to Know About Captioned Videos | Meryl.net home

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Born profoundly deaf, I've depended on captioned videos since getting my first big clunky decoder in 1983. It was a box about the size of the older VHS and DVD players.

Back then, captioned shows and movies were hard to find. Few things excited me more than seeing the caption symbol on the cover of a movie or at the start of a TV show.

Thankfully, they're easy to find when it comes to TV networks, streaming services, and movies.

But the same can't be said for the many, many videos companies and individuals put out on YouTube, LinkedIn, Facebook, and elsewhere.

In recent years, captioning has gotten so much easier and more affordable. This guide will dive into why captioning matters, how it provides a huge ROI, 10 rules for creating great captioned videos, and how to caption your videos.

Do you caption your videos? Why or why not?

World Health Organization reports that more than 5 percent of the world's population is deaf or hard of hearing. [Source WHO]

And guess what.

The main users of captioned videos are NOT the deaf and hard of hearing! So, captioning your videos reaches far more than those who are deaf like me.

For some businesses, accessibility isn't enough of a reason to add captions. But you know what? Accessibility can make you a profit as you can learn in this video.

Though it's the right thing to do and good for business, they still want reasons that help them reach as many people as possible and yield ROI.

Here are some reasons you want to caption your videos. There's more, but these are the ones that tend to change someone's mind about captioning.

1. Reach far more than the deaf and HoH

Two separate surveys ( OfCom and Verizon Media) have found that 80 percent of the people who use captions are not deaf or hard of hearing. The OfCom survey is older than I'd like it to be. So, I conducted two separate polls. Eerily, they had the same results: 86 percent who use captions aren't deaf or HoH. It's not surprising the number has climbed.

Many people who aren't deaf or hard of hearing tell me they don't watch videos with sound. Part of this is because more people are watching videos in public without their headphones. LinkedIn finds that 80 percent of video views occur with the sound off.

A study by Verizon Media and Publicis Media reveals that 69 percent of people view videos without sound in public places. What about when they're in private places? Still, one in every four watch videos without sound.

Plus, everyone can experience temporary or situational hearing differences. A person with an ear infection or cold may not hear as well. People talking while wearing masks can also affect the sound.

Why do people watch videos without sound? Here's what Verizon Media has found:

In a quiet space.

Didn't have headphones.

Waiting in line.

Multitasking.

Video creators can expand their video's reach by adding #Captioned in their post with the video. This helps caption viewers find captioned videos without scrolling through their feed and feeling disappointed in seeing non-captioned videos.

Sometimes other noises get in the way or the person may have an accent like I do.

Friends and colleagues tell me they turn on the captions when watching videos because they catch more of what's said. They say that some programs have actors or speakers who are hard to understand. Or there's a lot of noise interfering with the voices.

Just like everyone has a different learning style that works, everyone has a different preference for how they like to watch videos.

Some prefer sound only.

Some prefer captions only.

Some prefer the text only. (The text that accompanies the video.)

Some like two or all three options.

You give people options for consuming content, thus giving you greater reach.

In Why Gen Z Loves Closed Captions, Lance Ulanoff explains how Gen Z tends to multitask. Captions help them focus. This is especially true for people with ADHD and auditory or language processing disorders. Some people with no disabilities say they use captions for focus, too.

Gen Z also likes captions because they can text while they watch. For many folks, captions help them catch things they miss without going back.

5. Boosts overall brand awareness by almost 19%

Captions increase brand awareness by 18.8 percent according to research from AdColony and Millward Brown. Furthermore, a LinkedIn survey reports that marketers' No. 2 priority is to build brand awareness, only 1 percent behind the No. 1 - no surprise! - the priority of driving more leads.

Several companies have been hit by not one, but two lawsuits. It hurts their reputation as customers boycott their brand. And adding captions costs very little compared to the cost of a lawsuit.

6. Avoid lawsuits and reputation damage

What do Hulu, Netflix, Harvard, MIT, and PornHub have in common? Yes, that PornHub. They've all been sued over the lack of captions. A man sued PornHub because some videos were not captioned. He's probably one of those who reads Playboy for the articles.

Harvard and MIT lawyers said the videos had captions and pointed to automatic captions. This wasn't good enough. They ended up settling and now provide high-quality captions.

Usablenet accessibility lawsuit report has found more than 20 percent of accessibility lawsuits are against companies that have been previously sued. And the rate of filing for ADA website lawsuits is one per hour. Contrary to what these companies may think, it's NOT cheaper to deal with lawsuits over baking accessibility into the organization.

Caption users are a passionate lot. They will speak loudly and boycott brands. It can hurt the company's reputation. So, the lack of captioning costs more than the price of a lawsuit.

7. Benefit from search engine optimization

This only applies to videos that contain a text file - such as .SRT - with the captions. You can caption one of two ways: open or closed. And in some cases, SEO does not matter. For example, posting a video on LinkedIn, Instagram, or Tik Tok.

Open captions

Open captions are also known as burned-in or permanent captions. They always show up on the video. You can't turn them off and on. The captions turn into an image. The viewer can control the captions. If the captions aren't readable, they'll move on.

The advantage of open captions is the captions always work. You don't have to upload a second file (the SRT text file). Not everyone has captions turned on, so they may not realize a video is captioned.

Closed captions

Closed captions only appear if you have the captions turned on. Unlike with open captions. anyone who doesn't want captions can turn them off. Many video services allow you to change the font, color, and style of captions.

They also require a text-based file like the .SRT file to work. The text file has time codes to tell the video when to show each line of captions. Search engines can read this text file, which optimizes your video for search engines.

For a deeper dive into this topic, see What You Need to Know About Types of Captions.

For me, I choose open captions over SEO. Why? Because captions have disappeared or not shown up for the viewer. That's unacceptable. If there's a guarantee the caption file will never disappear, I'd choose closed captions. It gives the viewer more control.

There are many more reasons, such as helping second language learners. When a company says its target audience has no deaf people or second language learners, here are six reasons that do apply to them.

Report from Preply has more statistics. Here are the highlights:

50% of Americans watch content with subtitles most of the time.

55% say it is harder to hear dialogue in shows and movies than it used to be.

72% watch captions because the audio is muddled.

86% of 156 people polled who use captions are not deaf or HoH. [Source: Meryl poll]

80% of the people who use captions are not deaf or HoH. [Sources: OfCom and Verizon Media]

80% of members use subtitles at least once a month. [Netflix]

A survey of U.S. consumers found that 92% view videos with the sound off on mobile and 83% watch with the sound off. Source: Verizon Media and Publicis Media]

10% of broadcast viewers use subtitles regularly, increasing to 35% for some online content. [BBC]

80% of viewers react negatively to videos autoplaying with sound. So now, many social media outlets now autoplay videos on silent. [Facebook]

Almost 80% of video views on LinkedIn occur with the sound off. [LinkedIn]

Video content designed for silent viewing is 70% more likely to be watched all the way through to the end. [LinkedIn]

69% view videos without sound when they are in public places and 25% in private [Verizon Media and Publicis Media]

Video Captions Benefit Everyone [Policy Insights from the Behavioral and Brain Sciences] [PDF]

About 90% of all students who use closed captions find them at least moderately helpful for learning. [Educause]

Increases overall brand awareness by 19%. [AdTechDaily]

40% using Instastories have the sound off. [AdWeek]

80% more likely to watch the entire video with captions available [Verizon Media]

Increases engagement. [Instapage]

Avoid potential lawsuits and negative publicity. [The Hollywood Reporter]

Gen Z prefers captions: no stats, but here's why.

Captions help reading according to a study [Kids Read Now]

Orgs filled petition with FCC about ASR captioning [Vitac]

Why Your Brain Loves Closed Captions [Salon]

"More than 100 empirical studies document that captioning a video improves comprehension of, attention to, and memory for the video." [HHS Manuscript]

With more do-it-yourself software hitting the market to caption videos, we're seeing a new problem. And that's the quality of the captions. Yes, we want more videos with captions. However, it sometimes interferes with the user experience.

When you watch captions for decades, you learn what works and what doesn't work. The key to great captions is invisibility.

Invisibility? Meryl, are you kidding me? If they're not there, how can you read them?

By invisibility, I mean that I won't notice anything about them.

If I notice something about the captions, that's usually not a good sign.

Captions up top? I notice. (Unless it's when the credits appear.)

Captions hard to read? I notice and quit watching.

Captions riddled with typos and clearly inaccurate? I notice and quit watching.

Captions that disappear. Ditto.

You get the idea.

Even though it's been more than 30 years since I got hooked on the Carrington and Colby family feuds on "Dynasty," the components of excellent captions haven't changed much.

That's because simple works.

Great captions are boring!

And simple leads to effortless captions. Adding captions is only half of the equation for great captions. The other half is quality. You can do a lot of things right and still make these common caption mistakes.

Why Good Captioned Videos Are Important shows you some of these Caption10 guidelines in side-by-side videos. One video follows the rule. One breaks it. See what a difference great captions make.

(Or you can watch all the videos of the Caption10 guidelines for great captions.)

1. Readability

If you only follow one rule, make it this one:

*** Captions should be readable ***

If they're not readable, nothing else matters.

The accuracy, the position, nothing.

Four things factor into readability: size, color, background, font, and case.

Size

Small captions can be tiring to read even for people who don't wear glasses.

Large captions can cover up too much of the video.

Goldilocks learned the hard way. You want to aim for just-right, not too big or too small.

Color

The key is contrast.

White text with no background can make or break the readability.

Check out Contrast Ratio, a useful tool for visually showing the readability of colors. [Hat tip: Marguerite Efdé]

The thin, white font strains the eyes because it tends to blend with the background. Like in this example.

The interesting thing about this example is that if you expand the video to full size, the readability is so much better.

Remember to check your captions on small and large screens. People may be watching on mobile devices. Or they don't expand the screen to full size.

A little bigger, a little bolder white font can work because there's enough contrast like this one. But it's a far better experience to have a background for contrast.

I've seen some videos with more than one color in the captions.

The recommendation is to use one color mainly because many people are colorblind.

According to the National Institute of Health, about 8 percent of men have red-green color blindness.

Using one color ensures a consistent and effortless reading experience.

Remember, captions need to be invisible. People will notice the captions when it has more than one color. You want viewers to grasp what the captions say, not what they look like.

Background

The background is the color behind the text. Standard captions use a black background with white text. It works well.

It's my personal favorite.

But some think it hides too much of the video.

A possible compromise is to use a transparent background like this one.

After creating the video, I saw a video with transparent captions. The action behind the transparency from the person's movements distracted me so much that I missed the content.

If you use transparency, use it wisely. Verify nothing behind the captions distracts the viewer.

White font and black background work well because of the strong contrast and muted colors. Some colored backgrounds like red and yellow feel harsh.

In short, A solid background *beats* a transparent one. Those using standard captions with an .SRT file may have slight transparency. And that's OK.

Font

The Goldilocks rule applies to fonts too. The font needs balance in that it's neither too thin nor too thick that the letters blend together.

As for the font style, aim for simplicity because fancy fonts can hurt readability.

Case

Case wasn't originally part of readability. However, there's a bad trend happening in captions. It's not progress over perfection.

It's a step backward.

When I first discovered captions, they were in UPPERCASE. They also had a black background with white text.

The black and white captions continue today. That's because they work. At one point, the captioners experimented with other colors, but that didn't last long. For good reason.

Subtitles are meant to be plain and readable. They're not for branding or getting creative.

Anyway, one thing changed from the early days of captioning. The captioners switched to mixed case or sentence case. That's because they're far more readable than uppercase.

Let's look at an example with my name.

MERYL

Meryl

All caps show zero shape variation. MERYL has a flat top edge and a flat bottom edge. That's it. No change in shape. It's like a rectangle block.

Meryl shows three variations on the top:

Meryl also has three variations on the bottom:

Once before the y

Once for the y itself

Once after the y

Visual differences in mixed case captions boost readability. The lack of visual differences in UPPERCASE adds friction to the reading experience.

People with disabilities and even no disabilities struggle with uppercase captions.

Some live shows resort to uppercase captions to increase speed. The purpose is to increase delays between when the words are spoken and when they appear in the captions. So with live programs, the choices are speed vs. delay, which affects synchronization.

Personally, I try to avoid live captions and catch the recording. But that's not always possible. Sometimes the recorded version isn't cleaned up, so it's the same captions as the live version.

It'd be great if the networks would re-air live shows with cleaned-up captions. Or at least, post it on their streaming networks with cleaned-up captions and free access.

Uppercase captions are also a problem in recordings as I see more and more recorded shows using uppercase captions.

Some captioners use uppercase letters for speaker identification like this:

MERYL: Please use mixed case captions.

Here's a better way that improves readability:

[Meryl] Please use mixed case captions.

Subtitle viewers know that words in brackets aren't spoken or represent sound. The brackets are a better differentiator than all caps.

Please use mixed case captions, including on Instagram and other social media networks. One of the options there is all caps and it's animated. This isn't a good option. Pick one of the latter two options out of the four available.

Captions will never win beauty contests because pretty and colorful defeat their purpose.

The readability of great captions is effortless. It allows the viewer to quickly read the captions while watching the action on the screen.

That's why readability is the No. 1 rule of great captions.

Why does readability get dibs on No. 1 over accuracy in captions???

Because accuracy won't matter if it's not readable.

So, No. 2 of #Caption10 to create great captions is Accuracy.

Great captions correctly capture everything that's said word-for-word. Even bad words. Would you believe some captions have swapped out bad words with clean words?

Accuracy also means completeness. I've seen captions that paraphrase what's actually said instead of showing every word. The paraphrasing misses important things.

Why should the viewer reading captions get a different script than those listening?

Accuracy means no disappearing captions. One TV channel is notorious for having one or two lines disappear. A character was reading a note she found. To this day, I don't know what it said. Captions disappeared.

That's why autocraptions have earned their bad reputation. Autocraptions are rarely better than no captions. Even W3C Web Accessibility Initiative says automatic captions are not sufficient. They need to be edited.

Automatic captions lead to a confusing and tiresome user experience because the viewer must work harder to figure out what's said. It's not simply filling in the blanks of a word here or there.

In her awesome weekly Marketing Minute tip email, Marcia Yudkin shared a story about an ad that claimed: "Learn 80% of Chinese in 3 months." Even if this is true, this is a terrible accuracy rate.

She gave the following example:

"That's two out of every ten _____ that are _____."

"It's the 20 percent missing words there that indicate the real meaning, the critic said, and if that's as far as you've gotten, you're barely out of the gate," Yudkin wrote. "You're not amazingly near the finish line at all."

Example of automatic captions.

I assure you I did not say birth disrupting the utopian. Sounds like a bad scene from The Handmaid's Tale.

That's why it's better to skip watching a video with automatic captions otherwise a person walks away frustrated from a lousy captioning experience.

You can use automatic caption files as a starting point. They can save time for some folks and reduce editing time.

Damn (sorry, y'all!) good captioning is about capturing everything that's said correctly. When captions show everything that's said and happening, we enjoy the experience knowing that we're getting the same experience as those listening.

Muddled and incomplete captions create a crummy experience.

That's why Rule No. 2 of good captions is accurate.

*** Just say no to autocraptions ***

3. Synchronized

Yes, we can tell when the captions are not in sync with what's being said even with the sound off. That's why the third element of #Caption10 for creating great captions is synchronized.

It could be the captions do not match what's happening on the screen.

It could be the speaker's lips say something completely different than what the captions show.

You want to ensure the timing follows the action as closely as possible. YouTube makes it easy to set the timings with its slider tool.

If you watch the video ... wait until you see the example clip. Boy, talk about a headache. If you want to challenge yourself, turn the sound off.

Ready?

I tell ya, when the captions and the video are out of sync, it's dizzying whether or not you can hear it. Your eyes see one thing happening, but the captions say something else.

That's why Rule No. 3 of great captions is synchronized.

You want to ensure the timing follows the action as closely as possible.

Clip source: ABC's 20/20 "The Dropout"

Yes, size matters ...

Really, really matters ...

... in great captions

Oh ... my ... goodness! I've seen some videos that use an app, which shows the captions ...

One ...

word ...

at ...

a ...

time ...

Here's a short clip.

Mine is slower than some of the one-word-at-a-time captioned videos I've seen. Picture a two-minute video showing captions one word at a time ... FAST.

Exhausting! Even for fast readers.

It takes away from the video. You're so focused on following the captions that you ignore the action on the screen. It also makes it harder to take in the message.

Then there's the opposite problem. Captions that run 3, 4, 5 lines long and take up the entire length of the screen. It's easy to lose your place. They disrupt the experience.

Check out the next example.

This one block of captions would work better when split up into four blocks.

You also want to avoid making them so wide that they take up the full length of the screen.

The reason you want them shorter is that it keeps you from losing your place or reading from the far left side to the far right side like you're watching a long tennis match.

Good captions tend to run about one or two lines long with up to 60 characters. Viewers follow along better. Bonus points if you make the two lines about even in length depending on the text as per the next tip.

Another tip discovered after the filming series: watch where you cut off the captions aka breaking points or line division.

Let's say you have one or two lines of captions. And the last word is of, to, the, and, or something similar that leaves you feeling like you're facing a cliffhanger. Try to avoid leaving people hanging by ending with a preposition, conjunction, or another short word.

Keep names together. In other words, I wouldn't break "Meryl" and "Evans." They stay together.

You can find a detailed guide on line division at Caption Key. Aside from these points, I'm not quite that picky about it as a reader.

Sometimes, the top line may be longer. And sometimes the bottom line is longer. It depends on the cut-off. They don't have to be identical in length, just balanced.

Here are two examples where the two lines are NOT balanced.

It would be better to have the second line start with "by"

You can make these two lines more even by inserting a break to split the captions like this:

I overcame the first one
by making a short video.

Better ... and it can be even better by moving "about" to the second line

The second one is better but could use a little more tweaking by moving "about" to the second line. First, because it's a preposition. Second, because it'll make the two lines more even.

Also, check your captions on a mobile device. (I need to work on this!) They sometimes turn a two-line caption into three. Here's an example of how two-line captions went to three on mobile. It was not like this on a monitor.

Two lines turn into three on a mobile device

I now make both lines shorter to avoid the mobile problem of it turning into three lines. Then, I check it on mobile to ensure it looks right.

How do you make sure your captions aren't too long or have too many characters?

I just finished re-captioning one of my first videos because it had too many characters. I've learned a lot about captioning since I first started creating videos.

How long should captions be? One line to two lines at 32 characters each.

But who has time to count all the characters in all the captions?! Copy, paste, and do word count take too long!

Great news! Here are two shortcuts to figuring out if your captions are short enough.

Get a 3″ x 5″ index card and mark one inch from both sides. Or cut a strip of paper that's three inches (7.62 cm) long. (You may have to test and adjust based on your caption app.)

Put the strip of paper on the screen where the captions are to see if they stay inside. If they hang over, then it has too many characters or the line is too long.

Tested this and it worked great. The longest line was 34 characters. Good deal!

Deborah Edwards-Onoro uses another method. She set up a text editor to hold 60 characters and uses that as her guide. Great tip, Deborah! Often, I'll open a caption file in a text editor to check the length and breaking points. It can be faster than editing it in a caption editor.

So yes, size matters in good captions? That's why length is Rule No. 4 in the #Caption10.

Do you like the bottom or top position?

In captions, of course!

Like size ... position matters ... in great captions!

Where the captions appear on the video matters. And It needs to be consistent.

I've seen videos with captions shifting for no reason. This hurts the user experience.

When you use a text file with captions, the text appears on the bottom. It's standard because it works.

It places the captions below people's faces. So, the captions are closer to the mouth. And the eyes naturally look upward to view the entire screen.

But when captions show up top, When eyes look upward, they'll see nothing.

You won't find data on this. It's not scientific. When you've watched captions for decades, you've seen it all.

Captions at the top disrupt the experience. I notice them when they're up top and feel like I'm missing out on the video action.

Here's an example.

Yes, there are valid exceptions as you'll see in No. 7: Credit.

You want to stay consistent and keep the captions in one place for the entire video. And the best place tends to be on the bottom.

In an informal survey, everyone has picked the bottom. No one has said top. Some people didn't have an opinion until seeing the video.

Recently, I caught a video with captions in the middle! The middle! It totally wreaked havoc on the viewing experience!

Not because it's always been done that way, but our eyes get the best experience reading on the bottom while catching the action.

People viewing your video may have the sound off.

Or they can't hear it.

Sound plays a critical role in videos.

It foreshadows.

It reveals what's happening.

It explains why someone reacts.

It makes us dance.

It lets viewers know the captions didn't break.

And so much more.

Take a look at this video showing what a difference captioning sound makes.

A simple way to indicate a sound is to put it in [brackets].

Silence is also important to note. The opening of one TV show's episode went on and on without nary a caption. Did the captions muck up? Is it music? What?! After putting on my bionic ear, I watched it again. It was music. The captions should've noted that and any [silence].

This clip shows laughter, music, a phone ringing, and even moves the captions up top during the credits.

It also shows two speakers in one scene.

Take a look.

See how much the captions communicated just by highlighting all the sounds?

Would you believe there are times when a song plays with lyrics, but the captions show nothing or just musical notes? <headdesk>

That's a surefire way to have unhappy viewers.

But of course, you want to make them happy.

Just caption those sounds and it'll be music to their ears!

7. Credits / Chyron

Although I covered this a little bit in the fifth rule, which is position - credits deserve their own rule!

Position covers where the captions show up. Some videos have the captions shifting up and down, left and right, for no reason. There are no chyrons.

Even when reading the captions, the viewer wants to see credits and any other non-captioned text too.

Way back in 1980-something, I recorded a musical special.

When I watched it, my heart sank.

Fort Worth had bad weather that night.

Naturally, the local station scrolled the weather report on the bottom of the screen.

The captions disappeared.

Now when I watch it all these years later, I still get this weather report and no captions!

The trick is to ensure the captions and the text don't overlap each other.

A lot of captioning apps put the captions on the bottom.

In this case, you'll want to put credits or text up top or somewhere that's logical without hiding behind the captions.

Generally, the credits end up in the bottom and the captions move up top ... temporarily.

Here's how many TV shows do it. It works great.

People often ask if the spoken text appears on the screen as a chyron, do you caption it? No. This is common when a show announces guest stars and displays their names on the screen. No captions are needed here.

The important thing is to let viewers see both ✌️

Clip source: ABC's Modern Family

[Clears throat]

I shall attempt to speak with a British accent. [Does not sound British. #AccentFail]

That's why voice plays an important role in captions. Voice refers to voice changes. Not who is speaking, but how a person speaks.

Voice changes can reveal when someone ...

Imitates a person, character, or something else

Talks hoarsely

Changes their tone of voice

Uses a different accent

Screams. A big deal in horror films

The best way to explain it is by sharing these two clips in which one character claims she can do five ranges. I cannot tell much of a difference between the ranges. Thanks to captioning, I understand what happens. You might want to turn your sound off for the full effect.

See what a difference captions make to someone watching it without sound?

If it weren't for captions, I would've never known what this performer did in this clip.

A voice changes for a reason. And viewers need to know when this happens. That's why the eighth rule of the #Caption10 series on how to create great captions is voice. So caption those voice changes to keep everyone in the loop.

What are some other ways you might use captions with voice changes?

Clip sources: TV Land's Hot in Cleveland and ABC's America's Got Talent (May 26, 2020)

Who said that?!

There are times when it's not clear who's talking on the video.

Sometimes the speaker isn't on-screen or two people speak and the captions show dialog from both in one shot.

Here are two different ways the captions show this.

The first clip uses a person's name.

Take a look.

The second one puts the captions underneath the speaker.

Letting viewers know who speaks the line is important.

You have different ways to show this with captions.

Use a person's name like this:

[Caesar: To be or not to be]

[Brutus sighs]

Put the captions under the speaker.

Indicate two different speakers with a dash as in:

Speaker identification tells us ...

Who apologizes.

Who is singing.

Who cracked a joke.

Who is acting like a villain.

Clip source: ABC's Modern Family

Live show captions ...

Well ...

Suck ... (I'm sorry for such a strong word, but it's the truth.)

Every year, I look forward to one live TV show. The Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. What I love about it is watching the performances from the musicals playing on Broadway.

While watching, I do this almost every year.

[Facepalm]

Why?

Because the captions almost always mess up.

Part of the problem is that it's live. Live shows come with their own captioning challenges. The other part is that it uses rollup captions, a caption style commonly used in live programs. I call it scrolling because people understand what it means better than rollup.

This is one of two styles of how captions move.

The other is more common and that's the pop-in. [Crowd cheers]

This video uses pop-in. The entire line or two of captions pops in and stays until I finish saying what you see. Then, it disappears.

In talking to other caption users, the consensus is we prefer pop-in.

But we know sometimes ... scroll happens.

A lot of us quit watching live TV because of the flaws and the frustration with rollup captions. They tend to create a bad user experience.

It's very hard to get it right.

The problem with rollup captions is they create a bad user experience.

I looked high and low for a good example of rollup captions. I couldn't find one when I originally published this. Most of them had uppercase.

Then, I came across one from Microsoft's Ability Summit. The live event captions not only used mixed case but also pop-in! A miracle! Granted, the captions aren't perfect because some of the lines are long. But it's a far better experience than what scrolling captions provide.

The video has four clips. The first is a side-by-side video with two of the same clips of me talking. One side shows pop-in captions. The other side shows moving captions. It was so hard to make because not many automatic captioning tools like my accent!

The second clip is a scene from ABC's "The Good Doctor." One side shows pop-in captions with mixed case. I viewed this on Hulu. The other side aired on TV and shows scrolling captions in uppercase AND ridiculously out of sync.

The third clip is from "Something's Coming: West Side Story - A Special Edition of 20/20" from ABC. This is a recorded program yet it's using live captions. One side shows pop-in captions with mixed case that I viewed on a streaming network. The other side aired on TV and shows scrolling captions in uppercase, and with a notable delay from the audio.

The fourth clip is from Microsoft Ability Summit. Its captions shocked me. First, they use mixed case! [Cheers] Second - and the miracle - they used pop-in captions! Granted, the captions aren't perfect because some of the lines are long. Still, this is a huge improvement in the user experience.

For those of us not in the entertainment industry, a lot of videos contain motion because they're choosing the most inaccessible caption styles. Instagram has two styles of motion. Facebook has three. The fifth clip shows all three.

The only time rollup captions are acceptable is in live programming. There's just not always a way around it. But it's possible as the last clip in the previous video shows.

If you use rollup captions, ensure they follow these guidelines:

1. Capture audio accurately. (The biggest problem in live captions.)

2. Use mixed case.

3. Follow readability recommendations.

4. Move from left to right and top to bottom. (Get this! There have been times when the captions moved in the opposite direction. It was dizzying!)

5. Keep up with the sound. (Little delay between the audio and the caption.)

6. Scroll smoothly.

7. Do not fade-in or fade-out.

8. Do not block anything like credits and chyrons.

Why no fading? Because the animation from fading adds friction to the caption experience.

Many times in this series, I mention that good captions are simple and effortless.

The animation from fading adds friction to the caption experience.

As for examples of bad rollup. They weren't hard to find.

As you watch these clips, think about the problems you see in the captions.

Ready?

Here we go.

Can you handle another one?!?

Are you sure?!

Pretty painful, eh? Bet you spotted a lot more problems than the rollup.

To do rollup effectively requires satisfying a lot of requirements.

Make it easier on yourself with good old-fashioned pop-in captions.

As hard as the captions try, I won't let them stop me from watching that Thanksgiving parade!

Make it easier on yourself and stick with good old-fashioned pop-in captions.

Whichever you choose (hint: pop-in!), thank you for captioning your videos. That's what matters most.

Apps and social media captioning tools that add open captions don't provide accessible captioning styles. Here's an example.

When you post a captioned video online, be sure to add #Captioned so we can find it!

I hope you've found the #Caption10 series helpful.

Here are the captioning videos frequently asked questions in a separate article.

Here's what's available. If anything is missing, contact me so I can add it to the list.

Audio or Video to Text

Expand your video's reach by adding #Captioned when you post your captioned videos. This hashtag is unique in that doesn't tell you the topic of the video. Rather, it tells you the video has captions. This allows people to find videos that are captioned.

Yes, YouTube's search tool has a "Captioned" as an option. However, if a video has open captions, it will not likely show up as a captioned video. And most social networks do not have a search tool to find captioned videos. Thus, #Captioned is the way to search for captioned videos.

Why not #Captions? Because it refers to a lot of things besides captioned videos.

What's the Difference Between Subtitles and Captions?

Although some people say "subtitles" when they mean "captions," they are and they are not the same thing. Confusing right?

English spoken outside of the U.S. typically refers to captions as subtitles, which is one reason why so many use captions and subtitles interchangeably.

The names don't matter. However, to explain the important difference, subtitles refer to captioning foreign language in the viewer's language. An example of subtitles is a film with the dialog in Spanish that contains English subtitles.

Subtitles do not show sounds or voice changes. They don't identify speakers when it's not obvious. And they don't show the words when the speaker speaks the same language as the viewer.

Subtitles only show the translation of what the speaker says. Nothing more.

Here's a unique situation that's a reverse of what usually happens with subtitles.

So, viewers still need captions in subtitled programs to cover the gaps.

Fortunately, many TV programs and movies are good about it.

Still, captions and subtitles run into problems:

Captions overlap the subtitles.

Subtitles are not always readable.

Subtitles cannot always work alone.

Three things that make great subtitles and captions:

1. Are easy to read

2. Play well with each other

3. Leave no gaps (Captions should cover anything subtitles don't)

When you apply these three things, your viewers will be happy!

There's no right or wrong answer here as long as the captions are readable, accurate, synchronized, and all the other factors in the #Caption10 Rules.

You want to know about both to help you decide which is better for your video.

They have a little war going on like the Cola war between Coke and Pepsi wars. Some folks are passionate about one over the other.

So, the two types of captions are open and closed.

Open is burned-in. It's permanent.

Closed only appears if you have captions turned on.

Before we dig in, a couple of points. One is that the apps that add captions to video vary in their features.

Some give you more options than others.

Some give you more control than others.

So, this will cover general differences.

Open Captions

Let's start with open captions.

One plus is that these always show up on the video.

You won't have to worry about whether the captions work. Sometimes, a social network or website has a glitch that won't let you upload the caption file. This isn't a problem with open captions.

Depending on the app you use, it may give you more control over the placement and look of captions.

Another plus is that you don't have to take the extra step of uploading the text file along with the video. I once had a caption file disappear weeks after I originally uploaded it. (It worked for at least two weeks.)

Viewers can see the captions no matter what. But for some people, this is a drawback. Not everyone wants captions. You can't turn off open captions.

It's also not optimized for search engines. Search engines can't read burned-in captions like they can read a text file.

The other downside is that open captions may not be readable. Remember, some people may view your captions on a mobile device.

The No. 1 rule for great captions is readability. So, check your captions on various screen sizes as well as when the video is small and full-screen.

Closed Captions

Text-based captions known as closed captions don't run into this problem.

The default is a white font with a black background. They get bigger and smaller when you resize the screen.

Closed captions require a second file. It's a text file with a time code. The time code tells the captions when to appear on the video.

Closed captions also have one huge advantage.

Search. Engine. Optimization.

Because the captions appear in a text file, the search engine can read the captions. That's music to marketing's ears.

Of course, SEO is not always important. For me, captions showing up is No. 1. LinkedIn has lost my caption SRT file at least twice. (And it worked for at least one or two days.) This is unacceptable. So, I started posting videos with open captions.

The other upside of closed-captions is that some networks or services allow you to pick the font, style, and color. Not all of them do.

LinkedIn doesn't. But Netflix, Hulu, Facebook, and all the major video networks do.

Closed captions have a standard look and tend to show up at the bottom of the screen. Since you know where the captions show, you can make sure any credits and text don't overlap them.

Closed-captions are adaptable like responsive websites. These are websites automatically resize for the screen or device they're viewed on. Closed-captions resize and move based on the screen or device. If you're working with the player controls, the captions will shift up. If you flip your phone sideways, the captions will adapt and get larger.

The disadvantage of closed captions is that sometimes people may not realize the video is captioned because they don't have captions turned on. To view captions on mobile requires going into the mobile device's Settings > Accessibility and turning on the captions.

Not everyone knows to do this. Hopefully, the mobile operating systems will receive an update so that people can see the CC button even if their Accessibility settings aren't set for closed-captions.

Here's a clip that uses both open and closed captions. Can you figure out which is which? Take a look.

Did you figure it out?

So, back to the Cola Wars. Which do you prefer? Open or closed-captions and why? Please let me know in the comments below.

Read this before you hire a company or freelancer to caption your live event.

Some reported ACS's captioning service went downhill after another company acquired them.

I didn't think anything of it other than not to hire them.

Then, a colleague shared her experience at a conference. The captions didn't work. The company blamed the equipment. She stopped the conference, which forced them to fix it.

That company was Ai Media, which bought ACS. Ai uses different methods for captioning. One of which is respeaking, which greatly lengthens the captioning process. Here's a quick demo of how respeaking live captions work. The company labels it as "live" or "human-generated" captions.

Here's the full process as Samantha Evans explains:

1. Human listening to the conversation

2. Human respeaking the words

3. Machine-generated captions being generated

4. Human editing those machine-generated captions

5. Delivering the captions back to the "live" audience

Can you imagine the delay in this process?!

I'd pick autocraptions over this! This will have errors and the delay will be too long.

Ai calls these "human-generated captions" and "live captions." This confuses people.

Also, be aware of C-Print and Typewell for captioning. Their purpose is better served elsewhere. Mirabai Knight explains it better than I can.

"C-Print and Typewell are non-verbatim text expansion systems typed on a regular QWERTY keyboard, and their speed is much lower than steno. Steno captioners can type up to 260 words per minute or more. Text expansion systems don't often get faster than 160 or so, so they tend to paraphrase and summarize quite a lot in order to keep up."

As you search for a captioning service, ask questions. Find out exactly how the captioning company does its captions. Transcripts are NOT a substitute for captions.

Quality captions matter. Here's a list of recommended live captioning providers in a separate article.

More special video captioning topics in a separate article.

Here are resources on captioning that you might find useful.

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Originally published April 9, 2019

Updated September 29, 2022

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Everything You Need to Know About Captioned Videos | Meryl.net home

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Born profoundly deaf, I've depended on captioned videos since getting my first big clunky decoder in 1983. It was a box about the size of the older VHS and DVD players. Back then, captioned shows and movies were hard to find.

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Seeing Chicago differently with iPhone and iPad

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Seeing Chicago differently with iPhone and iPad

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Now in its fourth year, The Chicago Lighthouse’s Photography for All program uses Apple technology to teach photography skills to teens who are legally blind or low vision. Participants use iPad and iPhone to capture and edit images taken while exploring the city.

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/08/seeing-chicago-differently-with-iphone-and-ipad/

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Adetokunbo "Toks" Opeifa loves exploring Chicago. She travels the city unconcerned about losing track of a planned route, immersing herself in her environment and capturing photos of her surroundings with her iPhone. "Chicago is a grid system," she explains. "Even if you get lost, you don't really get lost, you just walk in the opposite direction and you'll end up somewhere."

In the first grade, Opeifa, now 18, was diagnosed with cone-rod dystrophy, a retinal disorder that causes progressive vision loss and light sensitivity. This year, she is participating in Photography for All, a program for youth who have low vision or are legally blind, launched by nonprofit The Chicago Lighthouse in partnership with the city of Chicago's Department of Family and Support Services (DFSS) and Apple. Over the course of the six-week program, participants have learned technical photography, coding, and career-readiness skills, but most importantly, they've gained tools to help them navigate the world around them independently and confidently.

Photography for All is part of the city's One Summer Chicago youth employment initiative, which provides people ages 14 to 24 with internships and job opportunities at government institutions, community-based organizations, and companies throughout the city. Since 2017, Apple has supported the city's One Summer Chicago program through its Community Education Initiative, helping create opportunities for youth to develop new skills with Everyone Can Create and Everyone Can Code guides. This summer, more than 200 students experienced opportunities in photography, videography, game design, coding, app development, augmented reality, and more through Apple-supported programs.

The Chicago Lighthouse provided each of the Photography for All participants with an iPad Air, Apple Pencil, and Magic Keyboard to support their creativity. The iPad setup offered an expansive screen with tools to shoot, edit, and share their work. Many participants, including Opeifa, also used their own iPhone to capture photos on the go, seamlessly switching between devices depending on their needs.

Apple experts trained the students on using the camera and photography settings they would need, as well as the accessibility features built into the devices - including VoiceOver, Apple's built-in screen reader, and Zoom, which magnifies on-screen elements. For those using VoiceOver on iPhone and iPad, Image Descriptions available in the Camera app uses on-device machine learning to help position a subject and describe the objects, setting, and people in the field of view.

While visiting the Adler Planetarium and the surrounding Northerly Island Park for a final day of shooting, Opeifa double-taps her iPhone screen with three fingers in the Camera app to zoom in on the subject of her photo. "Before I discovered Zoom, I'd just hold my phone up all the way to my face," she says. "This way I can actually see better."

Opeifa has been using Apple technology since she was in kindergarten when her parents purchased the first-generation iPad to help her read her schoolwork digitally. She laughs at a memory of herself running around her family's home in Nigeria a few years later with an iPad mini, excited to add to her collection of Apple devices. Having spent much of her life using Apple technology, she is comfortable using her iPhone to get a better view of the world, and she's also learning how to edit her photographs on iPad. Whether she's navigating from one corner of the city to the next, or capturing flowers, the city skyline, and any other snapshots of urban life around her that pique her interest, Opeifa is hooked on visual storytelling.

I like when pictures tell a story. This program is a nice starting point for writing actual scripts because I'm learning [how] to actually portray visuals.

Adetokunbo "Toks" Opeifa

"I like when pictures tell a story," Opeifa says. "This program is a nice starting point for writing actual scripts because I'm learning [how] to actually portray visuals."

Opeifa prefers film and television as a visual medium to bring her stories to life, and she sees photo editing as a way to hone her screenwriting skills. "Screenwriting and editing photos are kind of the same thing - especially working with other people who are blind, you have to be very descriptive," she explains.

"I never get to see myself represented in television as a Black woman who is also a visually impaired, legally blind individual," adds Opeifa, who is heading to California this month to attend Chapman University to pursue screenwriting. "Television is a way for people to see themselves in different lights and different identities."

Opeifa is just one of several Photography for All participants with bold, big ideas for their future. Lance Gladney, who is passionate about pursuing a career in art, hopes to produce his own anime franchise. Gladney joined the program to experiment with a new form of visual art. John Johnson - participating in the program for a second year - is interested in electrical engineering or game design. And Alaula "Aihua" Sprecher is considering colleges where she can study computer science, physics, and astronomy.

Shelle Hamer, The Chicago Lighthouse's director of youth transition, and Lisa Davis, the former director of One Summer Chicago who brought the idea for Photography for All to The Lighthouse, are excited about the growth every participant experiences.

"Confidence and self-esteem are hard - or I thought would be hard - to zoom in and teach," says Davis, who also served as director of youth employment at DFSS before she retired. "But this program helped them open up and expose their confidence. It takes away the idea that they can't do this."

An artist herself, Hamer has enjoyed a four-decade career equipping individuals with disabilities with tools and education to help them lead more independent lives. When she and Davis launched Photography for All four years ago, she was intrigued by the prospect of how people see differently and express themselves creatively - and saw an opportunity to use Apple technology and Everyone Can Create resources to support that work.

"The tool of photography has a real benefit to people with vision loss," Hamer says, "from both the artistic side and the functional. All of the kids feel that they have expanded their ability to feel that they can travel anywhere, go to places they've never been before. The training they received on the accessibility features available on their iPhone and iPad has given them the confidence to navigate the city and feel independent in traveling around unfamiliar areas on their own."

And that's the overarching goal of the program, after all: supporting youth in their quest to be independent and instilling in them the confidence to take their future into their own hands. "It's just opened the world for them," Hamer says.

Latest News

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Seeing Chicago differently with iPhone and iPad

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Adetokunbo "Toks" Opeifa loves exploring Chicago. She travels the city unconcerned about losing track of a planned route, immersing herself in her environment and capturing photos of her surroundings with her iPhone. "Chicago is a grid system," she explains. "Even if you get lost, you don't really get lost, you just walk in the opposite direction and you'll end up somewhere."

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Chronicling the faces of Juneteenth with iPad Pro and Apple Pencil

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Chronicling the faces of Juneteenth with iPad Pro and Apple Pencil

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Illustrator, comic creator, and scholar Ajuan Mance brings the past into the present through portraits of historical Black figures to celebrate Juneteenth

https://www.apple.com/newsroom/2022/06/chronicling-the-faces-of-juneteenth-with-ipad-pro-and-apple-pencil/

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Apple Newsroom needs your permission to enable desktop notifications when new articles are published

The Combahee River flows southeast through South Carolina, a 40-mile route that spills into the Saint Helena Sound. More than a century and a half ago on June 1, 1863, the Combahee turned the tide of emancipation when Harriet Tubman and her regiment of 150 Black Union troops led more than 700 escaped slaves to freedom aboard two gunboats. For Tubman, the river marked her heroism as the first woman to lead an armed US military operation in the Combahee Ferry Raid. For illustrator, comic creator, and scholar Ajuan Mance, it's symbolic of the movement - geographically, between the North and the South, and politically, from the Emancipation Proclamation and Juneteenth, to the Civil Rights Act - Tubman and other activists have made throughout history.

"Their activism challenged prevailing systems and policies that limited when and how Black people could move through the world," Mance says, comparing Tubman to civil rights activist Rosa Parks. "These limits on Black movement were not only the practical tools for oppression, but also the symbols of white control of Black bodies. Harriet Tubman used movement from the South to the North as a tool for freeing other Black people, and Rosa Parks rejected Black people's conditional access to transportation. These women's activism was really about restoring to Black people the right to move freely throughout their world."

In celebration of Juneteenth, Mance is revisiting a series of digital drawings created on iPad Pro titled "The Ancestors' Juneteenth," in which she places historical Black figures in present-day settings to reflect on Black people's journey from the 19th to the 21st century. In these illustrations, Mance draws ink on paper before she snaps an image in Adobe Scan on her iPad Pro. In Procreate, Adobe Photoshop, and Adobe Fresco, she colors her scanned image non-photo blue, simulating the process of creating comics, while using Apple Pencil to add layers of color - a workflow she previously completed using a light table and analog tools.

As an artist who often works on a larger scale, Mance appreciates the ability to zoom all the way in on a snippet of a giant canvas on iPad Pro. "iPad and Apple Pencil make it easy for me to draw, manipulate, and add color and effects at the micro level," she says. "So the closer people look, the more they will see."

As part of the Juneteenth series, Mance pictures Parks and Tubman at a picnic on the banks of the Combahee River. "They were pioneers for whom freedom of movement was so much a part of their impact that they hold this iconic role in our minds. All of the marching Rosa Parks did, getting arrested, walking up the courthouse steps, so that we have less obstacles today than we did during her lifetime; and Harriet Tubman, walking from the South to the North at least 13 times to escort other Black people to freedom - both of these women deserve a respite. I thought that all they might want to do today is sit by the river, take a load off of their feet, and just let the water do the moving," Mance says.

Mance describes herself as a history detective. She will spend hours digging through archives, hunting for the unknown in the 19th-century Black experience, and poring over primary sources, religious texts, photos, and other historical documentation. Whether she's preparing for a lecture at Mills College in Oakland, California, where she teaches African American literature, or beginning a new piece of art, she will always start with research to call to mind an image of the people and the time period she is exploring.

iPad and Apple Pencil make it easy for me to draw, manipulate, and add color and effects at the micro level. So the closer people look, the more they will see.

Ajuan Mance

For "The Ancestors' Juneteenth," a work of speculative fiction, as she describes it, Mance contemplates which historical figures across different periods of time would be friends, and even what their dialogue would be. At Parks and Tubman's picnic, intricately detailed down to the books they are reading, she emphasizes that whatever they are saying will have a touch of humor to it.

"My goal is to really humanize them," Mance explains. "These are esteemed people who I respect, but I also think we need to understand them and experience them as people who walkedthe earth the same way that we do. That creates a sense of intimacy with our history that I find really empowering and inspiring."

Part of humanizing these historical figures lies in their dialogue, but it's also in their features. To bring those features into focus, Mance casts them in a light and mood uncommon to the way the world knows them. For Tubman, who was almost never seen smiling, Mance emphasizes a jovial grin. In all of her portraits, she starts with the nose, works her way down to lips, up to the eyes, and then finally the hair and the shapes it creates. "That African heritage that is almost written on the body and that signifies our history - all the ways that we wear our heritage are really compelling to me," she says.

Mance first started using iPad Pro and Apple Pencil for her artwork while teaching a digital drawing class at Mills College. She remains impressed with how iPad has streamlined her workflow. "I can create a sketch and then ink over it all in the same app and all on the same device," she says.

She also credits iPad for making the arts accessible to her students and equipping aspiring artists with skill sets that work across multiple devices, whether they're working in Adobe Fresco or Procreate on iPad, or transferring a project to Mac.

"iPad has put the production of art into the hands of everyone," Mance continues. "Voices and aesthetic visions are getting out there that would not have been able to reach a broad audience just 10 or 15 years ago."

Though the Emancipation Proclamation was signed into law on January 1, 1863, it took more than two years for the legal right to freedom to be recognized for all Black people. On June 19, 1865 - celebrated as Juneteenth today - slavery officially came to an end in Texas as federal troops marched to Galveston.

"Juneteenth is the day when legally all of America saw Black people the way they'd always seen themselves: as human beings with the right to be free," Mance says. "My hope is that pairing Black people together from throughout our history and setting them in the present will be a symbol of unity that demonstrates that no matter how spread across the nation we are, even with divided historical experiences of Civil War and freedom, we are one community."

Latest News

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Chronicling the faces of Juneteenth with iPad Pro and Apple Pencil

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Apple Newsroom needs your permission to enable desktop notifications when new articles are published The Combahee River flows southeast through South Carolina, a 40-mile route that spills into the Saint Helena Sound.

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https://propelcenter.org

Mia Moore - Living in Legacy, Beats design introduction
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CazkCwslEy1/

Robert Norwood - Living in Legacy
https://www.instagram.com/tv/Cb-b5cVMYP7/

Living in Legacy series finale
https://www.instagram.com/tv/CdMeqXwrwvg/

Living in Legacy impact grants
https://www.instagram.com/p/CbijBZ5pyoI/

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Rev. Dr. Bernice A King Challenge for Change

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Rev. Dr. Bernice A King Challenge for Change

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https://twitter.com/AppleEDU/status/1351160531953082368

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We’re excited to launch our second challenge in our #ChallengeForChange series focused on making meaningful impact in your community. Watch this special message from Rev. Dr. @BerniceKing, CEO of the @TheKingCenter. Download our discussion guide, and get started.

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We’re excited to launch our second challenge in our #ChallengeForChange series focused on making meaningful impact in your community. Watch this special message from Rev. Dr. @BerniceKing, CEO of the @TheKingCenter. Download our discussion guide, and get started.

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We’re excited to launch our second challenge in our #ChallengeForChange series focused on making meaningful impact in your community. Watch this special message from Rev. Dr. @BerniceKing, CEO of the @TheKingCenter. Download our discussion guide, and get started.
— Apple Education (@AppleEDU) January 18, 2021

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We’re excited to launch our second challenge in our #ChallengeForChange series focused on making meaningful impact in your community. Watch this special message from Rev. Dr. @BerniceKing, CEO of the @TheKingCenter. Download our discussion guide, and get started.

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We’re excited to launch our second challenge in our #ChallengeForChange series focused on making meaningful impact in your community. Watch this special message from Rev. Dr. @BerniceKing, CEO of the @TheKingCenter. Download our discussion guide, and get started.

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We’re excited to launch our second challenge in our #ChallengeForChange series focused on making meaningful impact in your community. Watch this special message from Rev. Dr. @BerniceKing, CEO of the @TheKingCenter. Download our discussion guide, and get started.

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2 photos of crew filming Dr. Bernice King inside of the King Center in Atlanta, GA. 

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Behind the scenes of Dr. Bernice King Challenge for Change video

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Behind the scenes of Dr. Bernice King Challenge for Change video

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Filmed on 2 iPhones, both using the app Filmic Pro. Filmed in 4K HDR. Rode shotgun mic on a boom pole connect to primary iPhone, and a lavalier microphone attached to a third iPhone for backup audio. (that phone is sitting on an apple box in front of the camera)

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Steve Douglass and Chicago Summer Stories

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Steve Douglass and Chicago Summer Stories

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https://www.chicagosummerstories.com

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Don Goble's site with information about St. Louis Summer Stories

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Don Goble's site with information about St. Louis Summer Stories

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https://www.dongoble.com

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Chicago Summer Stories student reflection videos

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Chicago Summer Stories student reflection videos

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Student projects and reflection videos from Chicago Summer Stories and LFHS New Media.

https://www.instagram.com/lfhsnewmedia/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y%3D

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LFHS New Media (@lfhsnewmedia) * Instagram photos and videos

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St. Louis Summer Stories student reflection videos

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St. Louis Summer Stories student reflection videos

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Started in 2019 St. Louis Summer Stories has grown into a video storytelling program many students in the St. Louis area have benefited from.

https://www.instagram.com/stlsummerstories/

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St. Louis Summer Stories (@stlsummerstories) * Instagram photos and videos

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St. Louis Cardinals Ted Simmons Baseball Hall of Fame

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St. Louis Cardinals Ted Simmons Baseball Hall of Fame

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Short interview with the St. Louis Cardinals catcher from 1968-1980 talks about his feelings being inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame.
Ted Simmons will be officially inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame on Wednesday, September 8, 2021.

https://youtu.be/7VqKkW1xbMs

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St. Louis Cardinals Ted Simmons Baseball Hall of Fame

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Steven Spielberg directs his first music video — on a phone

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Steven Spielberg directs his first music video — on a phone

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After years of directing acclaimed Hollywood movies, Steven Spielberg has helmed his first music video and he did it using his smartphone.

The video was for the song ‘Cannibal’ by Marcus Mumford, who is best known for being the frontman for British folk rock band Mumford & Sons.

https://gulfnews.com/entertainment/music/watch-steven-spielberg-directs-his-first-music-video--on-a-phone-1.89355585

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Iconic director shot the video for Marcus Mumford's song 'Cannibal'

After years of directing acclaimed Hollywood movies, Steven Spielberg has helmed his first music video and he did it using his smartphone.

The video was for the song 'Cannibal' by Marcus Mumford, who is best known for being the frontman for British folk rock band Mumford & Sons.

"On Sunday 3rd July in a high school gym in New York, Steven Spielberg directed his first music video, in one shot, on his phone. Kate Capshaw was the almighty dolly grip," Mumford wrote on Instagram, along with a picture of Spielberg shooting with a phone while seated in an office chair and his wife Capshaw holding the back of it.

"I've been overwhelmed by the support of the people around me to bring this music to you, and I cannot hope to express all of my gratitude. When people get it, it blows my mind. Kate and Steven just got it, and I cannot thank them enough. Thank you Kate. Thank you Kristie. Thank you Steven," the singer added.

Mumford's wife Carey Mulligan was listed as being responsible for costuming and sound, with Capshaw being credited as the producer and art director.

'Cannibal' is Mumford's first song as a solo artist and is part of his upcoming debut solo album called '(self-titled)', which will release on September 16.

"In January 2021, facing demons I danced with or a long time in solution, I wrote a song called 'Cannibal,'" Mumford shared in a hand-written note posted on Instagram. "I took it to my friend Blake Mills, and we began the process of making this album, dear to my heart, called (Self-Titled)."

He also tagged people who'd be featured on the album as guest artists - Brandi Carlile, Phoebe Bridgers, Clairo and Monica Martin.

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Jennifer Barretto, Assistant Editor Features

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Watch: Steven Spielberg directs his first music video - on a phone

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Iconic director shot the video for Marcus Mumford's song 'Cannibal' After years of directing acclaimed Hollywood movies, Steven Spielberg has helmed his first music video and he did it using his smartphone. The video was for the song 'Cannibal' by Marcus Mumford, who is best known for being the frontman for British folk rock band Mumford & Sons.

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Filmic Pro - Mobile Filmmaking in Hollywood

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Filmic Pro - Mobile Filmmaking in Hollywood

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A filmmaker using FiLMiC Pro on their smartphone is only constrained by their imagination and creativity. Of course, it wasn’t long before Hollywood came calling. Check out some of the recent Hollywood productions that have utilized FiLMiC Pro to bring their vision to screens of all sizes!

https://www.filmicpro.com/more/hollywood/

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A filmmaker using FiLMiC Pro on their smartphone is only constrained by their imagination and creativity. Of course, it wasn't long before Hollywood came calling. Check out some of the recent Hollywood productions that have utilized FiLMiC Pro to bring their vision to screens of all sizes!

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A filmmaker using FiLMiC Pro on their smartphone is only constrained by their imagination and creativity. Of course, it wasn't long before Hollywood came calling. Check out some of the recent Hollywood productions that have utilized FiLMiC Pro to bring their vision to screens of all sizes!

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A Year in the Pit: A Voyage into Music Photography

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A Year in the Pit: A Voyage into Music Photography

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A Year in the Pit: A Voyage into Music Photography is a one-hour documentary about still photographers commonly found front stage in the pit at music festivals. Shooting “in the pit” requires intense, split-second decisions to capture the ultimate on-stage moment. The symbiotic relationship between image-maker and musician provides the backdrop for a great story. The film explores the artistry and images of some of America's finest music photographers.

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A Year in the Pit: A Voyage into Music Photography | The 7th Annual SF3 - SmartFone Flick Fest

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A one-hour documentary about still photographers commonly found front stage in the pit at music festivals

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Smartphone Studio: Make amazing contentwith the camera in your pocket

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Smartphone Studio: Make amazing contentwith the camera in your pocket

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We Make Movies has been teaching aspiring filmmakers and influencers all over the world how to make amazing content with the Apple content creation ecosystem

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SmartPhone Studio - Make Amazing Content with the Phone in Your Pocket!

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We Make Movies has been teaching aspiring filmmakers and influencers all over the world how to make amazing content with the Apple content creation ecosystem. We teach how to shoot with the native camera or Filmic Pro Apps on your iPhone, record sound with Apogee Metarecorder, and edit with Final Cu…

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Maggie Gyllenhaal. The actor turned director makes her mark with The Lost Daughter.

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Maggie Gyllenhaal. The actor turned director makes her mark with The Lost Daughter.

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Having developed a profound love of cinematic storytelling from an early age, Maggie Gyllenhaal always assumed that, as a woman, there was one obvious profession where she might channel her passion — acting. “I didn’t even allow myself to even consider directing,” she says.

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The actor turned director makes her mark with The Lost Daughter.

Having developed a profound love of cinematic storytelling from an early age, Maggie Gyllenhaal always assumed that, as a woman, there was one obvious profession where she might channel her passion - acting. "I didn't even allow myself to even consider directing," she says. "I do think that has something to do with the culture we live in, the world we live in. When I was young, there were a couple of incredible women making movies. Jane Campion is definitely one of them and someone I continue to admire. But there weren't very many."

It wasn't until she was on the set of The Deuce, both producing the acclaimed series and starring as a call-girl-turned-adult-film-director, that she began to seriously consider stepping behind the camera on a project of her own. "Something about playing Candy on The Deuce and letting myself imagine that I was a director is actually the thing that opened my heart to it," she says. "As soon as I allowed myself to imagine it, to consider it, I couldn't stop."

Judging from the uncompromising filmmaking on display in Gyllenhaal's hypnotic feature film directorial debut The Lost Daughter, it's possible the Academy Award-nominated actor has now found her true calling. Adapted by Gyllenhaal from Elena Ferrante's bestseller, the powerful drama features an all-star cast led by Olivia Colman as Leda, a brilliant if haughty comparative literature professor who arrives in Greece for a working holiday only to develop a fascination with Nina, the beguiling young mother played by Dakota Johnson.

Nina's frustrations with her spirited daughter prompt Leda to candidly reflect on her own experiences as a young mother to two girls. Gyllenhaal expertly guides the narrative from present to past and back again, with Irish actor Jessie Buckley portraying the young Leda and Gyllenhaal's husband Peter Sarsgaard as a professor who unexpectedly upends Leda's life.

The Lost Daughter premiered to rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival in September, where Gyllenhaal took home the coveted prize for best screenplay. Buzz around the film grew louder following a Telluride Film Festival screening - since then, the drama has continued to amass accolades and acclaim, recently winning four Gotham Awards, including Best Feature.

Krista Smith: I feel like I'm witnessing a once-in-a-lifetime, lightning-in-a-bottle moment. How are you feeling right now?
Maggie Gyllenhaal: I'm on the moon. I don't really totally have words for it. It's as if my movie was born, and no one had seen it before. It's like a birth. It's like the couple of days after a birth when you're in ecstasy.
The confidence with which you directed this film is staggering. Talk me through your process and how you pushed through at every turn.
MG: I have always been an actress with an ear toward something bigger artistically, like, Why are we making this movie? What are we exploring? I had been reading Ferrante, and I had been feeling like she was saying things out loud that nobody was talking about - about motherhood, but also about being a woman in the world, sexually, intellectually, artistically. As women, we see depictions of ourselves all the time - this is how women feel about sex; t his is how women feel about their work; this is how women feel in relation to motherhood - and we're offered images of ourselves that don't feel quite right. You're like, Oh, maybe there's something wrong with me because that's not exactly how I feel about any of these things.

How difficult was it to get the rights? Elena Ferrante is a pseudonym, so how did you go about making contact?
MG: The only people who know who she is are these two people, a husband and wife, who run this publishing house. We reached out to them, and they thought that she and I would make a good team, which was already enough for me. I spent a long time writing this letter to her. I asked her for the rights to adapt it and also to direct it. She said in response to my letter, "Yes, but this contract is void if you don't direct it." I have no insider information, but there's no doubt in my mind that she's a woman. My fantasy, I guess, is that she's a woman in her seventies. It felt as if this wise woman from across the universe was offering me her support. I do feel like adapting a book into a screenplay is a similar process as an actor taking a text and going, Here are the lines. These are two people ordering a sandwich together at a deli counter, but what's the essence of it? What purpose does it serve inside the story? It's the same thing with the book. Here's this little section - what is the point of it? And then how do you distill it into something that's cinematic?
When you finally got to set and you were directing, what were some of the challenges of being at the helm?
MG: I've been on many, many sets, so the actual shooting of the movie, in some ways felt like the least scary part because I've done that. Of course, when you're shooting, you only have a small amount of time, so that sometimes made me anxious. But mostly when we were on the set, I was in the current. I could hear the tone or the vibration of where the story needed to be told. There are times when you're feeling around in the dark for where that is. Then it clicks into gear, and you're like, We're in the current. We're there. When I was on set, I was listening for that tone. The things that were the scariest were more irrational kinds of fear, like: Can I do this, just fundamentally? The antidote for that really is tackling one small thing at a time. Can I take on directing an entire movie at this moment? No, but can I move through the scene and think it through? Yes, I can.

The way that you shot the flashback scenes was seamless. Even though there's not a physical resemblance between Olivia Colman and Jessie Buckley, it's so clear you're watching the same person.
MG: It's so wild that that works. Part of the reason it works, is that Jessie Buckley and Olivia Colman are two total artistic powerhouses. We're asking the audience to believe that they're the same person, which is such an interesting ask because, of course, we know they're not the same person. It's almost as if we're saying, Here's a poem for you. I even told Jessie, "If you want to have bleached blonde hair, I don't mind. You don't have to look like her. We're just going to believe in our hearts that these women are having the same experience."
The performance that you got from Dakota Johnson was something I had been waiting for. I always knew she had that kind of depth and you brought it out in her.
MG: She basically came to me and said - she didn't say it in these words, but this is how I think of it - "I want to go scuba diving. I want to go down to the bottom." I was like, Yeah, let's go. One intellectual thing I wanted to experiment with was playing with the tropes of objectification, but the most interesting, compelling kind. She's like a Monica Vitti or a woman in a Godard film. Then the shock is that here comes this woman who we've just been like, She's so gorgeous. She's so compelling from afar - she opens her mouth, and she's starving, and she has huge needs. She now, all of a sudden, is a human being. I was just really interested to see what would happen.
Is there some experience from having made this film that you'll carry with you for the rest of your life?
MG: There are so many. One thing I remember: We finished the shoot at midnight on Halloween, and I'm kind of stunned. My kids have been on set - Peter's out of town, so I have my babysitter there - and they're in their Halloween costumes. I'm trying to do everything at once. It's COVID. We've all had masks on the whole time, and we go outside and we start to take our masks off. The sound guy, who was very by the book, he says, "We have some music, and I put a song on for you." He takes me over to this spot where there's a little speaker, and he puts on Talking Heads, "Once in a Lifetime." Everybody just started dancing. We danced in the middle of this pandemic, in the middle of this island, having just finished this film, for hours. I heard that they were still dancing when the sun came up.

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How Maggie Gyllenhaal Became the Director She Was Meant to Be

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The actor turned director makes her mark with The Lost Daughter. Having developed a profound love of cinematic storytelling from an early age, Maggie Gyllenhaal always assumed that, as a woman, there was one obvious profession where she might channel her passion - acting. "I didn't even allow myself to even consider directing," she says.

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6 films made on iPhone since it debuted 15 years ago

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6 films made on iPhone since it debuted 15 years ago

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https://datebook-sfchronicle-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/datebook.sfchronicle.com/movies-tv/6-films-made-on-iphone-since-it-debuted-15-years-ago/amp

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6 films made on iPhone since it debuted 15 years ago | Datebook

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On Jan. 9, 2007, the course of modern technology changed forever right here in San Francisco. That’s when Steve Jobs took to the stage at the Moscone Center during the MacWorld conference to announce Apple was releasing the iPhone, a new device he promised would be “revolutionary.” Fifteen years lat…

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The iOgrapher was invented to empower users to create better video with their iPhones and iPads.

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Ring Light Kit

Look like a pro with a dual ring light kit

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Bundles for iPad

Create amazing videos with your iPad!

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Mobile Filmmaking case for the iPad and iPhone

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Look like a pro with a dual ring light kit SHOP NOW Tell your story. SHOP NOW Create Better Video SHOP NOW Create amazing videos with your iPad! SHOP NOW

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Built with the mobile creator in mind, the FiLMiC family of photo and video apps will help you make the best-looking content of your life!

https://www.filmicpro.com

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Artists reimagine the baseball card with iPad Pro and Apple Pencil

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Artists reimagine the baseball card with iPad Pro and Apple Pencil

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Last year, Efdot started working with Topps, the official trading card company of Major League Baseball (MLB), for Project 2020. It was a limited edition release of 20 baseball cards illustrated by 20 different artists that attracted not just collectors and sports enthusiasts, but art and culture lovers too. It’s part of the reason that topps.com saw an astounding 250 percent increase in sales from 2019 to 2020.

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In his Brooklyn studio, artist Eric "Efdot" Friedensohn sets up his tools for his next project. It calls for a little bit of nostalgia, mixed with his signature bold and graphic art style. He sits down at his desk, picks up his iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, and gets to work.

"iPad Pro is very intuitive," says Efdot. "And together with Apple Pencil, it's like an extension of my hand and my brain."

His canvas today is a baseball card. While it might seem like an unexpected place to find modern art, there's a renaissance under way for these collectables, thanks in part to visual storytellers who are transforming sports memorabilia into pocket-sized masterpieces.

Last year, Efdot started working with Topps, the official trading card company of Major League Baseball (MLB), for Project 2020. It was a limited edition release of 20 baseball cards illustrated by 20 different artists that attracted not just collectors and sports enthusiasts, but art and culture lovers too. It's part of the reason that topps.com saw an astounding 250 percent increase in sales from 2019 to 2020.

This year, Efdot is part of Project 70, which enlists even more artists and tastemakers to reinterpret cards from the 70 years that Topps has been immortalizing baseball players. New cards are released online every weekday through the end of the year and each card is available to buy for 70 hours only.

Efdot begins each of his cards with extensive background research on the player's life and career. Then he sketches rough composites on paper with pencil or markers.

"If I do a piece of lettering that says the team name or the player's name and I really like it - maybe there's some cool drips or accidental textures that happen - I will snap a photo of that with my iPad," says Efdot. "That part of the sketch goes right on the card."

Once he moves over to his iPad Pro, Efdot uses Apple Pencil to illustrate each card in the Procreate app.

"I think the digital tools help me work faster and help me work in layers so I can easily combine ideas," says Efdot.

One of the cards Efdot is designing features Josh Gibson, a powerhouse hitter from the Negro Leagues who never got the chance to play in the Major Leagues because of segregation. It's a tribute that means a great deal to Josh Gibson's family.

"We're very excited about it," says Sean Gibson, Josh's great-grandson. "It's also perfect timing - there are a lot of things going on right now to recognize Negro League players."

In December, the MLB announced that it is retroactively bestowing Major League status on seven Negro Leagues that operated between 1920 and 1948. As a result, 3,400 Negro League players, including Josh Gibson, will have their records and stats entered as part of Major League history once the MLB completes the review process.

"In 1943, Josh hit .441," says Gibson. "If that stands, he would be the MLB's single season all-time batting leader. It's one of several categories where Josh's stats would make the top five, and so we're hoping that this helps bring more recognition to Josh and our campaign to have the MVP trophy renamed in his honor."

Telling a story through details is critical to Efdot. It's the reason the card he designed has the letters MVP prominently displayed, as well as a number of nods to Gibson's life, including a catcher's mitt to symbolize his position and a mention of Josh Gibson Field in Pittsburgh, where he started playing sandlot ball. The field is now home to the Josh Gibson Baseball Academy for youth players.

Artist Keith Shore, who works out of his home studio in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, also contributed to both Project 2020 and Project 70. He uses iPad Pro and Apple Pencil to lay down his initial sketches as he conceptualizes the idea for each of his cards.

"I use iPad Pro to replace drawing on paper," says Shore. "It's super smooth and I can have fun with it. It makes starting the process so stress free."

Both Shore and Efdot drew on their own memories of collecting sports cards and going to baseball games with their fathers for the Topps projects.

"You know what the magic of this is?" says Shore. "I got so many emails from people thanking me for reminding them of their childhood and bringing a smile to their face during this horrible year, and that feels incredible."

Efdot also felt a sense of connection illustrating each card, especially as he dug in and learned more about so many giants of baseball history.

"I wasn't expecting this experience to be so powerful for me," says Efdot. "Getting to illustrate these players and add my style to these cards - I just feel so grateful to be able to honor these legends. But what's most important is telling these stories, and my art is simply a vessel for that."

Images of Eric "Efdot" Friedensohn and Topps Baseball Cards

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Artists reimagine the baseball card with iPad Pro and Apple Pencil

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In his Brooklyn studio, artist Eric "Efdot" Friedensohn sets up his tools for his next project. It calls for a little bit of nostalgia, mixed with his signature bold and graphic art style. He sits down at his desk, picks up his iPad Pro and Apple Pencil, and gets to work.

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Shot on iPhone Student Films — Behind the Scenes

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Shot on iPhone Student Films — Behind the Scenes

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See what it takes to make movies Shot on iPhone, as we go behind the scenes with four student filmmakers. Each reimagines cinema tradition in a different way: from classic noir to magical realism to stop-motion animation and more.

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Shot on iPhone Student Films — Behind the Scenes

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Shot on iPhone 12 Pro by Emmanuel Lubezki — Apple

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Shot on iPhone 12 Pro by Emmanuel Lubezki — Apple

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On set with three-time Academy Award ® winner Emmanuel "Chivo" Lubezki and the iPhone 12 Pro - the first device ever to capture, edit and playback in Dolby Vision.

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Shot on iPhone 12 Pro by Emmanuel Lubezki — Apple

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Musicians Luke Wang and Peter Feng formed Yaoband on a shared vision of musical experimentation. Inspired by the real life sounds of modern China, they developed a genre-bending electropop style that evolves with each beat. iPad helps them capture, record, and perform their innovative music.

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Tecnifix - Servicio Técnico Apple Autorizado

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iPad at Work – on the Set of a Spielberg Movie

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iPad at Work – on the Set of a Spielberg Movie

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"Well I think people who are making movies now, I can’t imagine they’re not doing it [using the iPad] because, I’ve got to tell you, I’ve got every previz thing on there, I have every storyboard on there, I have every script and every script note,"
-D.J. Caruso Director, I Am Number Four

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The director of the new sci-fi thriller I Am Number Four, D.J. Caruso, is just a tad impressed with the iPad:

"Well I think people who are making movies now, I can't imagine they're not doing it [using the iPad] because, I've got to tell you, I've got every previz thing on there, I have every storyboard on there, I have every script and every script note," he said. "I make my shot list on there and from that shot list I just send it... it's become an amazing tool and I never would have thought it would have kicked in that fast. In fact, I talked to Steven, because I was sending him something from my iPad and he sent something back from his iPad and I thought, 'Oh you got one!' and he's like, 'Yeah.' and I told him all these things I was using and he was like, 'Which apps do you have?' so here you are sending back which apps you have to Steven Spielberg. everyone's starting to use it because it really is an amazing tool."

Sounds like the iPad has played a starring role in the production. Very cool to hear that Steven Spielberg appears to be a serious iPad user. Oh, and once again, how does that theory go about the iPad being all about consumption, not a device fit for creating anything on?

News Via: Gizmodo

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iPad at Work - on the Set of a Spielberg Movie

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The director of the new sci-fi thriller I Am Number Four , D.J. Caruso, is just a tad impressed with the iPad: "Well I think people who are making movies now, I can't imagine they're not doing it [using the iPad] because, I've got to tell you, I've got every previz thing on there, I have every storyboard on there, I have every script and every script note," he said.

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The Hot New Hip-Hop Producer Who Does Everything on His iPhone

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The Hot New Hip-Hop Producer Who Does Everything on His iPhone

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Steve Lacy's smartphone has been his personal studio since he first started making music.

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Steve Lacy's smartphone has been his personal studio since he first started making music.

A few minutes after Steve Lacy arrived at a dingy, weed-clouded recording studio in Burbank, the 18-year-old musician flopped down in a plush leather chair in the control room. Vince, one of the studio's proprietors, came in to show Lacy how the mixing boards and monitors worked. Lacy didn't care; he was just in it for the chair. He picked up his new black-and-white Rickenbacker guitar, then reached into his Herschel backpack and yanked out a mess of cables. Out of the mess emerged his iRig, an interface adapter that connects his guitar directly into his iPhone 6. He shoved it into the Lightning port and began tuning his instrument, staring at the GarageBand pitch meter through the cracks on the screen of his phone.

Guitar ready, Lacy relocated into the studio. He usually works in the vocal booth, where he'll light candles and hang for hours, but since I had a cameraman with me he agreed to sit somewhere a little more visually appealing-and bigger. Lacy, wearing jean shorts and a plaid khaki shirt underneath an unzipped blue hoodie, sat on a drum throne in the center of the studio and re-assumed his previous pose: right leg crossed over left, Beats headphones on his ears, iPhone perched precariously on his bare knee (he swears this isn't how he cracked the screen) and connected to the guitar in his lap. Then he went to work, kind of. He'd never call it work. He doesn't even call it recording, or songwriting, or producing. He calls it "making beats."

It's a weird recording setup, but it's working for Lacy. Last year, he was nominated for a Grammy for executive-producing and performing on the 2015 funk-R&B-soul album Ego Death, the third release from The Internet and Lacy's first with the band. He's a sought-after producer, featured on albums like J. Cole's "4 Your Eyez Only" and Kendrick Lamar's new "Damn." Earlier in 2017, he released his first solo material, which he's playing as part of the setlist for The Internet's worldwide tour. (Somewhere in there he also graduated high school.) The only connection between his many projects? All that music is stored on his iPhone.

That night in Burbank, Lacy had no real agenda or deadline. It was just a brainstorm, a jam session. He paged through the drum presets in GarageBand for a while before picking a messy-sounding kit. With two thumbs, he tapped out a simple beat, maybe 30 seconds long. Then he went back to the Rickenbacker. He played a riff he'd stumbled on while tuning, recording it on a separate GarageBand track over top of the drums. Without even playing it back, Lacy then reached down and deleted it. It took three taps: stop, delete, back to the beginning. He played the riff again, subtly differently. Deleted it again. For the next half hour, that's all Lacy did: play, tap-tap-tap, play again. He experimented wildly for a while, then settled on a loose structure and began subtly tweaking it. Eventually satisfied with that bit, he plugged in his Fender bass and started improvising a bassline. A few hours later, he began laying vocals, a breathy, wordless melody he sang directly into the iPhone's microphone. He didn't know quite what he was making, but he was feeling it.

All night, Lacy goofed around. He found a sword in the studio, and made up a shockingly catchy song called "Sword in the Studio" that's still rattling around in my brain. He paused every few minutes to snack on Sour Patch watermelons or let out a deafening burp. Occasionally, when I asked him a question, he'd respond with a British accent. He paced around the room, took a call from his mom, and joked with his manager, David Airaudi. And even when he'd get back to making beats, it still looked more like play.

Lacy's smartphone has been his personal studio since he first started making music. Even now, with all the equipment and access he could want, he still feels indelibly connected to something about making songs piece by piece on his phone. He's also working this way to prove a point: that tools don't really matter. He feelds a tension that's been part of the music industry since the Tascam 424 Portastudio made mobile recording easy in the 80s, and has come up time and again since then. He wants to remind people that the performance, the song, the feeling matter more than the gear you use to record it. If you want to make something, Lacy tells me, grab whatever you have and just make it. If it's good, people will notice. Maybe even Kendrick Lamar.

The Accidental Grammy Nominee

One of Lacy's earliest music memories comes from fifth grade or so. This was circa 2009, when Jerkin' was the new dance craze. At school in Torrance, California, a bunch of eighth-graders would tell him to grab two pens and tap out beats while they jerked. "I was so honored," he says, "because they were the cool kids!" He quickly learned to use erasable pens, which are plastic, because the glass ones would break and get ink all over his hands. He also learned he had a knack for making beats, though everyone else seemed to know that already.

When Lacy and I first met, on the Venice beach a few hours before heading to the studio, he seemed to be thinking about his musical history for the first time. (He was also distracted by the half-finished cheetah tattoo on his abs, which itched like crazy.) Most of his stories go the same way: our young protagonist shows up, goofs around, and something magical happens. Like when Jameel Bruner, a high school senior when Lacy was a freshman, took Lacy under his wing. Bruner played keys; Lacy had learned guitar and bass. "He puts me on all this new music," Lacy says of Bruner. "I looked up to him a lot. On keys, that man? Crazy. Playing with him felt so good."

Bruner started bringing Lacy around to a Hollywood recording studio in 2014, where he was working on a new album with his band, The Internet. Lacy watched and learned, seeing the production process first-hand. Then one day, Matt Martians, one of The Internet's founding members, needed a bass player. Bruner said, hey, Steve plays bass. "And we get to the studio," Lacy says, "and we're just instantly making bangers." Much of what Lacy and Martians made in those early sessions wound up on Ego Death, but at the time Lacy just thought he was jamming. "When people ask how it felt to know you're co-executive producing an album," Lacy tells me, "I'm like, I didn't know?"

It was only after Ego Death got a Best Urban Contemporary Album Grammy nom that Lacy decided a music career was for him. (Some signs are hard to ignore.) But he was going to school in Harbor City, 25 miles and untold traffic away from the Hollywood studio. He didn't own a laptop, either. But he did have a phone. He jailbroke his iPhone, which gave him access to an app called Bridge that could save songs straight from the internet. He also tore through the App Store, experimenting with iMachine, BeatMaker 2, iMPC, GarageBand, and others. Mostly he started making beats all the time. At home. While driving. In class. Once outside a barbershop, when there were a bunch of people ahead of him in line and he had a hook idea in his head. Lots of musicians use voice memos to record and remember snippets of songs, of course. It's just that for Lacy, the stuff stayed on his phone. He'd build tracks in pieces, then put them together and upload to Soundcloud or Tumblr. At first, nobody was really listening, but song by song, beat by beat, he gained a following.

Making music on his phone is mostly about the simplicity, the convenience. It's a little about skipping the traffic on the way to the studio. But there's one other advantage: since it's all in his pocket, Lacy is ready to play his stuff at any time. Which was particularly handy last fall, when Lacy found himself in the studio with Kendrick Lamar.

Normally, Lacy does all his dealing artist-to-artist. He'll DM other musicians who follow him on Twitter, or just call them. But he got to Lamar a slightly more traditional way: through producer DJ Dahi, who he met thanks to Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig. Dahi, Lacy says, "brought me in to see Kendrick just to make some beats with him, just work on some ideas." At one point, as things naturally do, the room got quiet. Everyone was on their phones, nothing was really happening. So Lacy pipes up. "Let me play you some stuff," he told Lamar. That's how Lacy likes to work-not jumping straight to collaborating, just playing everyone what he's working on. If they're into it, great. If not, no worries.

With Lamar's attention, Lacy played him a couple of songs from his demo, and then a track he'd worked on with singer Anna Wise, a longtime Lamar collaborator. Wise and Lacy had recently been in the studio together-Lacy's more versatile with his tools when he's working with other artists, some of whom think the whole iPhone thing is weird-and all the equipment was screwing up. So Lacy told Wise, "OK, let me make a lick on my laptop, bounce it to my phone, and we'll play this acoustic." He showed Wise how to use GarageBand, and sent her into a vocal booth with a phone and a pop filter. As soon as she sang the track, which they called "Wasn't There," they both knew they had something special.

So Lacy played this track for Lamar, his beat with Wise's singing. "And as soon as I played it," Lacy says, "[Lamar] goes, 'Yo, put your number in my phone.'" Lamar hit Lacy up later, saying he might want to do something with the beat, so Lacy sent it to him. He hoped for the best, but didn't expect much-plans change all the time, especially when you're Kendrick Lamar. A few months later, after never hearing back, Lacy texted Lamar to see if he wanted to get together again. Lamar responded he couldn't, he was in the studio finishing his album. So Lacy replied, "Got the tracklist?" followed by the eyes emoji. Lamar responded, "Lol, 'Wasn't There' is Track 4." (It's actually track seven on the album, now called "Pride.") Suddenly Lacy, who's been a fan of Lamar's since middle school and still rues the day his M.A.A.D City CD got stolen, had a hand in the most anticipated hip-hop album of 2017. He sat in his car for a while, screaming with joy.

When I ask Lacy what he thinks of how far he's come, he seems almost afraid to overthink it or jinx it somehow. Nothing he's accomplished so far was planned, he says. "I literally had no fucking idea what I was doing," he says. "And from that, I got a Grammy nomination. So I'm like, OK, this is my life." Not planning got him here; he's going to keep not planning. But now that he's out of high school, and putting off college for now, there's a lot more to do. Lacy and Airaudi are trying to figure out how to make more money off all these collaborations, for one thing. And there's that tour coming soon, too. Lacy's still deciding how that'll work: He digs the idea of a backing band playing his songs, but says "the DIY in me wants to do a one-man show."

It's immediately clear that Lacy's not interested in fitting into anyone's idea of what a musician should do or what music should sound like. Some of Lacy's songs are 90 seconds long, verse and chorus meant to be played over and over. Others are more traditional. "He talks about changing what it means to be pop music," Airaudi, his manager, tells me. "Why doesn't that include song structure? Why doesn't that include song length?" Lacy refuses to call his solo debut, "Steve Lacy's Demo," an album, and hates that iTunes labeled it an EP.

Even the style of his music is hard to pin down: he'll take the melody from a folk song, pair it with a soul-heavy bass, and then funk the funk out of the guitar line. "The hybrid sounds a little odd at first glance, I know," The music website Consequence of Sound wrote about his song "Dark Red," "but just think of Mac DeMarco kicking it with some Motown records." Lacy calls his style "Plaid," a jumble of colors and patterns that somehow work together to make one awesome design. Whether it's wild shirts, Prince songs, or the movie Get Out, Lacy says he has a thing for art that's one of one. Musically, he experiments with everything, trying not to sound like anything you know.

One thing won't change, though: Lacy's going to keep making music on his iPhone. He does own a laptop now, and he knows how to use the producer-preferred Ableton software. But there's something about the freeform creativity the phone allows, the fact that recording in GarageBand isn't the hacky first step in the process but the whole thing. He's even come to like its sound better. He's made a few songs on his laptop, which "sounded too clean," he says. "The beats I make in Ableton, I feel like I have to get those mixed by a professional to beef them up. But GarageBand masters it so it's at a cool level already." But it's more than that, even: When Lacy tried to work on his laptop, he says he found himself creatively bare, just completely out of ideas. So he grabbed his phone and starting goofing around. Suddenly the juice started flowing again.

The most recent addition to his studio setup? A second phone. Mostly because too many people now have his number and it won't stop ringing long enough to let him work, but also because it helps with the process. "I can play the instrumental" on one handset, he says, and "and record the voice memo on my other phone." The previous setup was clunkier-and the way Lacy did it, downright dangerous. "I would have to drag the beat into GarageBand, try to get the vocal as I'm driving." What he does now is just as illegal, but probably a little safer.

The problem is, the new phone is an iPhone 7, which doesn't have a headphone jack. That means he can't plug in the iRig and hear the track played back at the same time-he tried a bunch of dongles at the studio, and nothing worked. So it was back to the cracked iPhone, at least until he can get his hands on the iRig HD2 and its integrated headphone jack. The cracks don't seem to bother him, though. He doesn't care what he's using. He's just there to make beats.

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The Guy Who Produced Kendrick Lamar's Best New Track Did It All on His iPhone

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Lacy's smartphone has been his personal studio since he first started making music.

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One person can change the world — Apple commercial

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One person can change the world — Apple commercial

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One person can change the world — Apple commercial

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We Uplift the World - eARTh project teaser trailer

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We Uplift the World - eARTh project teaser trailer

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This is a teaser video about the Compton Smartphone Studio project created by filmmaking community We Make Movies (wemakemovies.org) and The We Uplift The World Foundation.

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See what’s possible given an iPhone, simple materials, and boundless creativity.
Our Experiments series creates immersive, dazzling worlds, all Shot on iPhone.
Lose yourself in the abstract visuals of each episode before going behind the scenes to see how it was made.

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See what's possible given an iPhone, simple materials, and boundless creativity. Our Experiments series creates immersive, dazzling worlds, all Shot on iPhon...

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Developing Student Storytelling Skills To Set Up Future Career Success

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Developing Student Storytelling Skills To Set Up Future Career Success

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To better understand the importance of storytelling in education, I spoke with Michael Hernandez, an award-winning media arts teacher and consultant in Los Angeles. With over two decades of experience teaching multimedia storytelling.

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Getty

Anthropologists have long understood that storytelling helps us engage with others, share emotions and find common ground through personal experiences. It's a part of our makeup as humans. Even neuroscientists have explored the workings of the brain to extrapolate the nuances of what happens when we communicate.

In the world of business, storytelling is used to attract audiences and customers while helping communicate with management teams and stakeholders. Storytelling consultants and trainer services are sought after to help leaders, entrepreneurs and speakers gain an edge. According to Lani Petersen at Harvard Business Publishing, "Storytelling has the power to engage, influence, teach and inspire listeners. That's why we argue for organizations to build a storytelling culture and place storytelling at the heart of their learning programs."

Considering the importance of storytelling in our adult lives, it seems logical that leaders in education examine the skill development of storytelling as part of a child's learning. There is a science behind effective storytelling that can be beneficial in the process of developing curriculum and setting up students for success.

To better understand the importance of storytelling in education, I spoke with Michael Hernandez, an award-winning media arts teacher and consultant in Los Angeles. With over two decades of experience teaching multimedia storytelling, documentary filmmaking and digital literacy, he offers innovative teaching and learning strategies for students and educators. His new podcast series, Change the Narrative, explores innovation in education.

Rod Berger: Describe your perspective on the concept of storytelling and why it's an essential factor to support learning.

Michael Hernandez: The key to success for any business or future leader is surprisingly straightforward. And, it's not about how good you are at taking tests.

Katya Adresen, SVP at Capital One, said that storytelling unlocks everything of consequence: knowledge, influence and innovation. Even the World Economic Forum has highlighted creativity, originality and active learning as upward trending skills for future workers.

Businesses have to pitch [a story] to investors, scientists have to submit grant proposals, politicians develop a narrative about themselves, and everyone seems to have a LinkedIn profile. These are all complex and important stories crafted to have an impact on others. Ultimately, our students' future economic success depends on being able to tell professional stories effectively.

But more than a business skill, storytelling is actually a better way to learn. Research shows that rote memorization isn't as effective as higher-order learning. There's a saying that to truly learn something you have to teach it. That means you have to take complex ideas and present them in ways that make them clear to others. So really, teachers are storytellers.

Instead of essays and tests, students should be researching, curating and synthesizing information. They can present it in ways that resonate with audiences beyond the classroom-in other words, teaching and telling stories. This process also develops empathy, design, data visualization and performance skills that storytellers need to convey ideas more clearly.

Berger: What are the issues surrounding access to technology that impact the ability of schools to teach students digital literacy skills?

Hernandez: The cost of tech and internet infrastructure can be an obstacle for many schools and can contribute to the widening gap between affluent and under-resourced schools. Many are concerned about the inequity it can cause. The United Nations has declared media and information literacy a human right because it's central to access to knowledge and one's ability to make decisions in life. When students lack access to technology, we deny them the opportunity to develop the skills they need for future success, and that, in turn, perpetuates economic inequities.

Access to technology is as important, if not more important, than textbooks and other school materials. Like most challenges in education, the solution for the edtech gap should be a holistic one where stakeholders accept some of the responsibility. Education codes need to adapt more quickly to reflect the evolution of society and technology.

Government policies need to redefine what we mean by "infrastructure" to include internet access as a utility and make it free or low cost to all schools. Taxpayers and businesses need to view children as our digitally literate workforce of the future and invest in them appropriately. Parents, educators and universities need to rethink what we mean by "literacy" and advocate for sound pedagogy that integrates digital literacy throughout a student's academic career.

The mistake we made in the past is that we laid the burden for investments on the shoulders of individual teachers, schools or districts. Instead, we should be working together to develop creative solutions to the problems that are interrelated.

Berger: What type of value do you see in creating your own content versus buying textbooks?

Hernandez: Textbooks are expensive, heavy, go out of date quickly and are a logistical nightmare for schools. Some are flat out inaccurate. There are a lot of advantages to self-publishing ebooks or creating digital collections of content, not the least of which is cost. Teachers can keep content up to date, include current events and curate content that best meets the needs of their students and their school's curricular goals. It's like an education mixtape that you can shape and adapt as your needs change and you discover new ideas.

One of the biggest advantages of ebooks and other online tools over print is that they are alive and interactive. You can include multimedia content like video, audio, interactive maps and hyperlinks, and students can mark up, search and expand their learning within the content you've created. They also have accessibility features like text-to-speech that can help the visually impaired or students with learning disabilities.

When educators create their content, it models the kind of authorship we would like to see from our students. We use digital tools for professional purposes, applying rigorous research and ethical frameworks. It can be a great way to collaborate with colleagues around the world, or even with students who can contribute content to the resources you create.

Berger: How does storytelling set students up to grapple with the complexities of an ever-changing modern world?

Hernandez: One of my students told me that he learns more from YouTube than he does from his teachers or parents. His bold statement told me two things. First, he found that much of his formal education lacked relevance in his life. Second, our students are curious about the world, and they will turn to digital, online resources to find answers.

We know that teens consume online stories at a massive rate and that there are social media posts that have a negative impact on our democracy. There are major political, economic and social costs for neglecting the literacy of our students, yet we find teachers, administrators and parents doing just that.

Whatever your stance on technology in the classroom, it's important to acknowledge that students are consuming digital stories outside of class. They struggle to navigate digital media well, and it's our responsibility to teach them how to use those tools wisely and safely, and become savvy consumers and ethical authors. The best way to do that is to embrace technology and help students learn to craft their own digital stories to model productive and professional results.
The conversation has been edited and condensed for clarity.
... Read More

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Developing Student Storytelling Skills To Set Up Future Career Success

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According to Lani Petersen at Harvard Business Publishing, "Storytelling has the power to engage, influence, teach and inspire listeners. That's why we argue for organizations to build a storytelling culture and place storytelling at the heart of their learning programs."

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The Insanity of 'Unsane' Shows That iPhones Are the Future of Movies

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The Insanity of 'Unsane' Shows That iPhones Are the Future of Movies

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"Get a script and an iPhone and start shooting."

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Unsane, director Steven Soderbergh's compelling new thriller about a young woman who's being held against her will at a mental health facility, isn't the first feature-length film that was shot entirely on an iPhone; that distinction goes to 2015's critically praised Tangerine.

But the movie, which stars Claire Foy ( The Crown) and opens in wide release on Friday, shows just how technically capable video has become since Sean Baker made Tangerine with three iPhone 5s models in early 2014. Crucially, Unsane continues the democratization of filmmaking. Apple iPhones aren't cheap, but you don't need to max out your credit card for cameras. And Unsane may nudge traditionalists to considering what a phone can do when an Oscar-winning director uses one.

The three years that passed between Tangerine and Unsane saw even better camera tech released by Apple. At each new iPhone event, CEO Tim Cook and his fellow Apple executives often open their presentations by showing off the phone's improved camera tech - their marketing savvy is just as sharp as their technical ingenuity. People want better cameras, and filmmakers have made use of them in increasingly ambitious style. But they often don't use a stock iPhone, as Soderbergh revealed ahead of the release of Unsane.

To shoot Unsane, Soderbergh used three iPhone 7 Plus phones, outfitted with three Moment lenses (18mm, 60mm, and a fisheye). On occasion, he used the phone's standard lens. The 4K resolution is close enough to a film camera in all its 4,000 glorious, horizontal pixels that there's no difference on the big screen.

"I looked at it as the future."

- Steven Soderbergh on using iPhones to shoot Unsane.

That big screen picture opens with the English Foy, adopting an American accent that is at times Dorchester and at others Savannah, as Sawyer Valentini, a banker with rough edges who's leading the messy life familiar to any young person. She's clearly working through some mental illness, and a visit to a therapist at a mental health care facility ends with her signing papers that unwittingly see her committed.

Sawyer's 24-hour stay is extended to seven days, and all the while Soderbergh - directing from Jonathan Bernstein and James Greer's script - keeps viewers guessing as to Foy's mental state, and if her stalker, David Strine (played by Joshua Leonard), has really taken up a job at the facility - or if it's all in her head. Other patients there, like Jay Pharoah's Nate Hoffman, offer her guidance, but we're left wondering about their motivations. Juno Temple, nearly indistinguishable with cornrows, plays Sawyer's obviously disturbed antagonist.

Time moves slowly as Sawyer tries to come to grips with her situation and secretly calls her mother (Amy Irving) for help. The film's cathartic final scenes reveal answers to the questions you'll wonder about during the movie's first hour, culminating in a scene set in the padded room of a solitary confinement ward in the basement.

To record these intimate, sometimes distorted scenes, Soderbergh used the $15 video app FiLMiC Pro, also used by Baker to shoot Tangerine. Soderbergh also used the $10 FiLMiC Remote app, which allowed him to view the video being shot from one phone on a different phone, if the shooting phone was positioned so that the screen wasn't easily viewable (like if it was on the floor).

"We have seen pictures in articles showing him shooting with FiLMiC Pro, and this is one of the highpoints in the journey of our company," Neill Barham, CEO of the Seattle-based FiLMiC, tells Inverse, adding that the app has "seen exponential growth in the last few years as the mobile filmmaking trend has exploded."

Shot in secret primarily with Foy, Leonard (the actor-director's resume is long, but just know he was in The Blair Witch Project), and Pharoah, the movie's largely set at an unused hospital.

"There wasn't enough money to modify the location in any significant way, including painting it," Soderbergh says. "The good news was that there turned out to be an interesting, unusual palette existing in the hospital. This facility had such a distinctive approach to its walls and wallpaper, as if research had been done into a color scheme that would 'relax' people. I liked the fact that it wasn't a typical scary locale, but the reality of this facility made for a strange place for us to be in - which totally worked for our movie."

Joshua Leonard in 'Unsane'.

The film shows off the iPhone's ability to capture light and warmth in this creepy hospital, and motion when things go awry.

"I think this is the future," Soderbergh said at the Sundance Film Festival in January. "Anybody going to see [ Unsane] who has no idea of the backstory to the production will have no idea this was shot on the phone. That's not part of the conceit."

In the production notes, Soderbergh said it was inevitable he'd ditch the film camera. "I've been experimenting for years with this equipment, with these phones and with the lenses that are available to put onto these phones," he says. "I looked at it as the future."

All the equipment used to film Unsane could fit in a backpack, which quickened the pace during the June 2017 shoot.

"Part of the pain in the ass about making films is how much time it takes between creative impulse and the execution," Leonard tells Inverse. "Anything that reduces that amount of time so you can get an impulse on screen is fantastic, and I think that's really what this kind of technology is allowing us to do."

Not everyone knew the movie was going to be shot on an iPhone, though.

"I found out when I was on set and I saw him sitting in a chair, and I was like, 'Yo, where's the camera?'" Pharoah tells Inverse. "It was a surprise for me; I didn't know. Y'all knew, I didn't know."

A movie like Unsane - with its close-up shots so intimate viewers may feel some mental osmosis coming off Foy's character - feels suited to the setup of an iPhone. It may not work for all movies, says Leonard.

"I don't think we're ever going to be at the point where we're shooting Dunkirk on an iPhone," he tells Inverse. "And I don't think we should be, but in terms of accessibility, it really opens the doors and there's a lot fewer excuses to sit at home as opposed to going out and making a movie."

When asked for advice on how to make a movie during a Reddit AMA in August 2017 ahead of the release of his caper Logan Lucky, Soderbergh offered this DIY recommendation: "Get a script and an iPhone and start shooting. Seriously."

At this point, Soderbergh had already taken his own advice.

Unsane opens in theaters on March 23.

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The Insanity of 'Unsane' Shows That iPhones Are the Future of Movies

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Unsane, director Steven Soderbergh's compelling new thriller about a young woman who's being held against her will at a mental health facility, isn't the first feature-length film that was shot entirely on an iPhone; that distinction goes to 2015's critically praised Tangerine.

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The Washington DC area native, who goes by the name “Rob Zilla,” is an art teacher and illustrator who uses iPad Pro, Apple Pencil and the Adobe Illustrator Draw app to create work that Mashable has described as "bright, arresting sports imagery.”

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iPad Pro artist illustrates NBA stars Kevin Durant and Bradley Beal.

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Intelligent Details, a short documentary film commissioned by Bentley Motors. Filmed in the Bentley Mulsanne in New York.

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Saramonic is known for its innovation, quality and value, with a broad range of microphones and audio adaptors for DSLR, Mirrorless and Video Cameras, as well as unique, powerful microphones and audio tools for use with smartphones, tablets, and other devices.

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Saramonic USA | Professional Audio - DSLR's, Smartphones, & GoPro

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Manufacturer of Audio Adapters for DSLR Cameras and Camcorders, Smartphone Mics, Portable Recorders and GoPro microphones. All your portable, pro audio needs!

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A collection of project guides that bring creative expression to every subject.

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Education Community - Apple Education Community

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Join the professional learning hub for educators using Apple technology. Learn new skills and connect with others for collaboration and inspiration.

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Switcher Studio lets you capture video from multiple camera angles — and edit it in real time — helping you connect with your community in the most engaging way yet. Stream it live or record it for later.

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"What a brilliant invention. A sat truck, a cameraman, a graphics system, a video server, a director, and vision mixer all in your pocket."

CHRIS JAMES, Broadcast Editor for Wireless Group, Ltd.

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"What a brilliant invention. A sat truck, a cameraman, a graphics system, a video server, a director, and vision mixer all in your pocket." CHRIS JAMES, Broadcast Editor for Wireless Group, Ltd.

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We’re helping everyone move from single camera video to a full multi-camera studio setup you can use anywhere and faster than ever before.

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We are proud to announce the winner of the October MACBOOK PRO and 3-Year Subscription to CINAMAKER SWEEPSTAKES! Jackie W., a musician from St. Petersburg, FL upon being notified as to winning the Sweepstakes,...

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We are proud to announce the winner of the October MACBOOK PRO and 3-Year Subscription to CINAMAKER SWEEPSTAKES! Jackie W., a musician from St. Petersburg, FL upon being notified as to winning the Sweepstakes,...

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LumaFusion is a powerful multi-track video editor used by mobile journalists, filmmakers, and professional video producers to tell compelling video stories.

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"I’m committed to transforming the way we tell stories of BIPOC with disabilities to ensure they’re centered around human truths in the positive lights and changing behaviors in the advertising, films, media and digital platforms.

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Storm Smith is a steller storyteller where her work has often helped to shine a positive light on critical societal issues, i.e., people with disabilities, youth, gender equality, people of color, LGBTQIA.

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If High School Kids Can Do It, So Can You… The Apple Short Film Project Workflow Pt. 1

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If High School Kids Can Do It, So Can You… The Apple Short Film Project Workflow Pt. 1

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Making high end filmmaking accessible to everyone.

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If High School Kids Can Do It, So Can You... The Apple Short Film Project Workflow Pt. 1

Do you remember Apple's 10.4 presentation from the LACPUG? Afterwards three of the filmmakers from the Apple Short Film Project got to present and talk about their entry. Sam Mestman takes a look behind the scenes of the productions with the finished films and recorded presentations from that night.

Sam here. I've been waiting to write this article for a very long time, and it signals the beginning of something... and that is the beginning of complexity finally getting out of the way of high end filmmaking and truly making it accessible to everyone. We're talking turning high end filmmaking into a teachable, repeatable process.

At LACPUG in January, there were two presentations. In the first, Apple gave their update to 10.4 that you've all seen by now. In the second, the filmmakers from the Apple Short Film Project showed off the work they did with FCPX 10.4. I've never been prouder of anything I've done in my career.

The bottom line is that excuses have now been removed from making whatever it is you're passionate about. A group of high school kids, teachers, and a mom who has never edited anything before got together and made movies with FCPX, Motion, Compressor, and Logic Pro X that look as good as any independent movie you're going to see, and they did it in less time and for WAY less money. Video is now officially democratized, and the real question is whether you're ready to make the most of it?

There is a new world of content that is emerging and the paradigm shift from an ivory tower post production mentality where everything is complicated and no one knows how to communicate with each other is shifting to a model where anyone can make something that looks amazing if they take the time to become good at their craft. All you need is the right workflow, some affordable tools, a basic understand of storytelling and filmmaking fundamentals, and a willingness to learn.

There are no more gatekeepers, and the implications of this will be staggering in the years to come as everyone will gradually become video literate, and Hollywood style video editing will become an increasingly smaller (but still growing) subsection of the larger content creation market as video continues to replace the written word as the preferred form of communication.

What was done on the recent Apple Short Film Project can only be described as "high end postproduction that anyone can have access to". It delivered on the promise of a simple, teachable, repeatable process for connecting preproduction to production to post in a streamlined, simple, affordable process that emphasizes creativity and storytelling over technical functions. The basics were profiled in this Apple Newsroom article, and what we're going to be covering in this series are the workflow specifics of what was done and why.

Apple collaborated with my company LumaForge as well as RED Digital Cinema, and filmmaking teams from We Make Movies, Hollywood High School, and the Mobile Film Classroom. The three teams were given tiny budgets, the RED Raven package on the Apple Store, the new version of FCPX 10.4, Motion, Compressor, Logic Pro X, Izotope RX 6, some iMacs, and a Jellyfish Tower, and told to go make their movies.

They had 3 weeks for all of their post production, finished in 4k, and then screened their movies at LACPUG in January following the Apple Presentation, and their introductions and the movies themselves are all embedded below.

Whether you're a student, a documentary filmmaker, an independent filmmaker, or even a corporate video department, you now have everything you need to take the stories of your dreams and have it look as good as something Hollywood might do.

If you take one thing away from this article, it should be this; If High School kids can do this workflow, so can you and there is no longer any excuse for you to not make your movie anymore.

This is going to be a 4 part series. In coming articles, you can expect a basic approach to the FCPX color tools from me, a comprehensive HDR workflow guide from Patrick Southern, and how to take your sound design to another level with a FCPX-Logic-Izotope workflow from Raibar Chener. BTW, if you want to play with any of these projects in the real world, and you're going to be at NAB, you can come see them all in the LumaForge Workflow Suite in the South Hall. Sign up for an appointment here.

And now... here's what's cool about the workflow for all three of these movies:

The Dancer - A Studio Workflow for Indie Filmmakers

This one is pretty close to my heart, as the entire movie was created by my community, We Make Movies. They implemented a fully functioning, modern, high end narrative workflow that gives filmmakers a chance to create a compromise free movie at a fraction of the traditional cost by embracing the power of metadata and a few key concepts.

The workflow defined a new blueprint for production and post should work together to deliver an end to end experience that can set up any post production team using Final Cut Pro X for a smooth ride to the finish line working with high end 4k material.

For under $7,000, they shot over two days, everyone got paid, and they delivered a powerful short film without compromises that would stack up against anything you would see in a theater with a fraction of the resources and crew you might see with a studio movie.

Krista Amigone, a mom who has never edited anything before, wrote, directed, starred, and edited this movie, and the results are powerful. What was special about The Dancer that you wouldn't see other places? Well, here's just a few of the things this team accomplished that are pretty cool:

Shot over two days with the Apple Store RED Raven kit for less than $7000. All Cast and Crew were paid.

Script Supervisor used Shot Notes X, google sheets, and XML to allow all metadata to be instantly searchable in FCPX. No Scripty binders, camera or sound reports were needed on this shoot. Everything that happened on this shoot was searchable by the editor including scene, take, characters, shot types, locations, and more.

Jellyfish Mobile was used on set allowing the FCPX library to be built on one laptop while footage was ingesting on a second laptop.

Timecode was jam synced to the Raven using the Zoom F8.

Sound Recordist labeled mics using the Zoom F8 and iXML that allowed editors to work with correctly labeled audio components throughout the edit and then transferred directly into Logic via XML.

Sync N Link X was used to automatically sync dialogue in FCPX via timecode.

iPad with Movie Slate was used instead of a smart slate.

A fully synced, organized, properly named, searchable FCPX library (with keywords according to shot, scene, characters, and more) was created before production wrapped that allowed post to start without any organization, transcoding, or prep required.

Finished in 4k while working from their native RED Raw media the entire way through eliminating the need for any conforms.

Color corrected entirely within Final Cut Pro X.

Sound design done in one night with a Logic-Izotope workflow delivered via XML.

Titles and intro done with FCPX-Motion.

Edited in a collaborative FCPX environment off a LumaForge Jellyfish Tower where picture was edited in one room, while sound design in Logic Pro X happened in another.

Post Production from edit, sound design.

HDR master created directly with FCPX's HDR Tools

A stay at home mom edited this movie

La Buena Muerte - A modern day, efficient workflow for Documentary filmmakers

La Buena Muerte is a pretty amazing accomplishment. This short documentary, shot over the course of 4 days by the Mobile Film Classroom in Los Angeles over 4 days for under $3000 (everyone was paid), probably could not have been done in 3 weeks had it not been for the organizational and finishing tools in Final Cut Pro X.

This team went into the documentary planning to profile Los Angeles' Day of The Dead festival in Los Angeles, and they shot loads of material associated with everything that was happening at the festival. Like many unscripted projects, where they started is not where they ended, and they finally settled on a touching story of a mother with cancer who has found a way to reconnect with her daughter and the concept of death through the Day of The Dead Festival.

Putting an edit together like that requires a lot of revision and being able to sort through your clips in a fast and efficient way. By leveraging the power of metadata through tools like Lumberjack and Final Cut Pro's keywords and thumbnail view, the team was able to sort through all their footage far faster than it could have been done in any other NLE.

Also, because of the new color tools in FCPX, they saved countless amounts of time coloring in the app as opposed to having to go through a traditional conform round trip process. The truth is that there would literally have been no way they could have ever turned around a project of this high quality with another workflow or NLE. Here are some of the unique aspects to the La Buena Muerte Workflow:

Shot and finished with the standard RED Raven Kit from the Apple Store. The sensor on the Raven combined with RED's new IPP2 workflow created stunning footage from the always colorful DOTD festival, and made the piece look far more professional than a documentary of that budget would typically look.

Lumberjack was used to track metadata on set and apply it to their unscripted footage in post.

FCPX Keywords and favorites were used to isolate people, places, locations, and sections of interviews.

Rejections were used to non-destructively filter out footage that did not serve the narrative

Using keywords and favorites combined with FCPX's Thumbnail view made finding the right shot visually a seamless process.

FCPX's color tools allowed the filmmakers to finish inside their NLE without compromises and not need to go through a complicated conform process.

Noise reduction for low light shots was handled through Neat Video Plugins for FCPX.

Seamless sound delivery to Logic Pro X via FCPX XML for Sound Design. Noisy dialogue/interviews were cleaned up expertly with efficient Logic-Izotope RX Advanced workflow.

HDR master created directly with FCPX's HDR Tools.

The Box - A better way for students to learn filmmaking

The biggest problem when it comes to teaching filmmaking, in my opinion, is complexity. Honestly, there is no simpler way to teach editing for students than to start them on iMovie (that most kids have played with and is incredibly easy to learn) and then graduate them to Final Cut Pro X.

When it comes to being able to import your footage and get going quickly moving around pieces of footage to assemble an edit, there is no better way to learn the core concepts of that than with FCPX and the Magnetic Timeline. While I started on Avid and Final Cut 7 and have taught those to people, I have never seen people pick up editing so quickly as they do with Final Cut Pro X. When you're dealing with students and trying to teach video literacy, having something that kids pick up quick is the number one priority.

Many Teachers think they have to prepare their students to get a job, as if whatever kids are currently editing with in their lab is going to be the way students will be editing when they hit the workforce. This is just simply not the case.

As far as we know, VR may be the standard in 5 years and editing may be a completely different experience. The reality is that the most important thing you can do to help teach students how to make movies is to focus on core concepts and effective storytelling techniques. If you can teach students how to block shots, light for camera, connect shots together intelligently, cut for performance, and generally engage audiences, you are preparing them to be content creators, and you are teaching them to be self sufficient.

On The Box, students worked more efficiently than most Hollywood productions. They edited in 4k, finished entirely in their NLE, made the most of their metadata with Shot Notes X and Sync N Link X, worked from their original media throughout the edit, and delivered a complete edit, sound design, and color corrected 4k master in under 3 weeks. They also didn't need camera/sound reports, scripty binders, dailies, a complicated conform, or really any of the other things that tend to stand in the way of most students finishing their projects at a high level.

More specifically, here's what they did on the Box that you would be hard pressed to see on another student production:

Shot in RED Raw, worked with it natively in the timeline, and then finished in 4k.

Script Supervisor used Shot Notes X and Google Sheets to get metadata into FCPX.

Sound Recordist labeled mics using the Zoom F8 and iXML that allowed editors to work with correctly labeled audio components throughout the edit.

Sound design done entirely in FCPX using FCPX Audio Roles and Logic's built in Audio filters.

Color Correction done entirely in FCPX.

Edit, color, and sound design done in less than 3 weeks.

This was done by High School Kids.

We'll be back with 3 more parts to this series after NAB, but If you need to take a deeper dive on the the methodology behind everything you read above, check out this 5 part series we did last year for FCP.co last year with We Make Movies' Off The Grid Pilot here.

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If High School Kids Can Do It, So Can You... The Apple Short Film Project Workflow Pt. 1

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Do you remember Apple's 10.4 presentation from the LACPUG? Afterwards three of the filmmakers from the Apple Short Film Project got to present and talk about their entry. Sam Mestman takes a look behind the scenes of the productions with the finished films and recorded presentations from that night.

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Shot on iPhone Student Films — Behind the Scenes

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Shot on iPhone Student Films — Behind the Scenes

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Commissioned by Apple. See what it takes to make movies Shot on iPhone, as we go behind the scenes with four student filmmakers.

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Shot on iPhone Student Films — Behind the Scenes

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Traveling the World with iPad

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Deaf travel writer Chérie King's mission is to experience the world, and she wants to inspire others-both deaf and hearing-to do the same. Using her iPad, Chérie chronicles her adventures on her website Flight of the Travel Bee. Chérie shares the importance of overcoming difficulties as a deaf traveler and how travel can change your perspective on life.
Watch Chérie explore a world without limits on Apple.com and see her app collection on the App Store.

Deaf travel writer Chérie King's mission is to experience the world, and she wants to inspire others-both deaf and hearing-to do the same. Using her iPad, Chérie chronicles her adventures on her website Flight of the Travel Bee. Chérie shares the importance of overcoming difficulties as a deaf traveler and how travel can change your perspective on life.
Watch Chérie explore a world without limits on Apple.com and see her app collection on the App Store.

Chérie King: Traveling the World with iPad

Chérie King: Traveling the World with iPad

Travel writer Chérie King talks about the joys and challenges of being a deaf traveler and how she uses her iPad to share her adventures.
Watch Chérie explore a world without limits on Apple.com and see her app collection on the App Store.

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chérie king: traveling the world with ipad

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‎Chérie King: Traveling the World with iPad on Apple Podcasts

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‎Deaf travel writer Chérie King's mission is to experience the world, and she wants to inspire others-both deaf and hearing-to do the same. Using her iPad, Chérie chronicles her adventures on her website Flight of the Travel Bee. Chérie shares the importance of overcoming difficulties as a deaf trave...

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Why Apple's new in-store experience aims to fuel creativity in everyone

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Why Apple's new in-store experience aims to fuel creativity in everyone

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Angela Ahrendts, Linkedin Influencer, Former SVP Apple Retail, CEO Burberry.

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I'm humbled to be considered an "influencer" by the LinkedIn community. Though, truthfully, I consider myself more perpetual student than expert (evidenced by my ever-growing pile of reading material). I look to the many thinkers, leaders, and culture-makers who've crossed my path in life and work for inspiration, and they feed my curiosity and reinforce my ideas. And of course I continue to be blessed by the sustaining influences in my life- my parents, husband, kids and friends.

These various influencers continue to shape my world view, and direct my personal and professional paths by providing experiences beyond my wildest imagination. An influencer to me is someone who shares their journey-the ups and downs-and their approach to their craft or the spark that ignites a new interest allowing people to do more and go further. At their core, an influencer creates an empowering human connection.

This is the essence of our new in-store experience "Today at Apple," bringing a community of people together to influence one another, to learn, share, and experience their Apple passions like music, photography, videography, art and coding. Free and open to everyone, everyday-kids, parents, educators, entrepreneurs, and more.

At Apple, we believe that people with passion can change the world. In an era of social everything, we want to spark possibility and opportunity in the creative arts, in real life, person to person. Across our almost 500 stores through our 60,000 incredible employees impacting their local communities.

I can't imagine a greater influence than inspiring more people to fuel their curiosity and follow their passions. That would truly be leaving the world better than we found it. I hope you'll join us and share your experience.

See what's happening near you: apple.com/today.

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Why Apple's new in-store experience aims to fuel creativity in everyone

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I'm humbled to be considered an "influencer" by the LinkedIn community. Though, truthfully, I consider myself more perpetual student than expert (evidenced by my ever-growing pile of reading material).

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Featuring Sady, also edited by Sady.

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Create Professional Videos!

All with your mobile device! Let me teach you how!

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Welcome to MobileVideoSchool.com! Created by mobile video expert, award winning educator, and iOgrapher inventor, David Basulto, MVS is designed to teach you how to use your mobile device to create professional looking and sounding videos.

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Mobile Filmmaking Tutorials

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Working in FCPX Timelines

Now we dive deeper into FCPX's unique feature - the magnetic timeline. Trim clips, rearrange the order, adjust audio levels, learn L and J cuts, and more to become an efficient editor! Free 90 day trial here:.

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We Make Movies Smartphone Studio Tutorials

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Working in FCPX Timelines Now we dive deeper into FCPX's unique feature - the magnetic timeline. Trim clips, rearrange the order, adjust audio levels, learn L and J cuts, and more to become an efficient editor! Free 90 day trial here:.

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First woman to build a $500 million company from a web series

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I uploaded my first video in 2007. Social media wasn't even called social media yet. It was a place where people would just go online and congregate and share ideas and videos and content. YouTube was just my creative outlet. I didn't have sponsorship money, I didn't have people giving me free products. I had to go out and buy my own makeup products.

I was very motivated at a young age to find a better life, for my mom's sake. She wanted me to be a doctor, but I didn't see myself in that future. I promised her that I would take care of her but that I would still pursue what I loved.

Then I got this really amazing offer from a big beauty brand. When they told me how much money I was going to be making, it was so big-as much as a doctor would have made. The first person I wanted to tell was my mother. She's the reason I work so hard, and she inspires me so much. I said, "What are you doing?" She said, "Oh, I'm still at work, I'm doing someone's pedicure." I told her that it would be the last time she would ever have to do anyone's pedicure and she wouldn't have to work the next day because I would take care of her. We both started crying. It was a moment that I'll never forget. I want more people to have moments like that.
Phan launched the beauty subscription company Ipsy and the beauty brand EM Cosmetics.

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Michelle Phan: The First Woman to Build a $500 Million Company From a Web Series

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I uploaded my first video in 2007. Social media wasn't even called social media yet. It was a place where people would just go online and congregate and share ideas and videos and content. YouTube was just my creative outlet. I didn't have sponsorship money, I didn't have people giving me free products.

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Time Magazine:FirstsWomen who are changing the world

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Time Magazine:FirstsWomen who are changing the world

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All of these covers were photographed on iPhone by 18 year old Luisa Dörr.

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Introducing Firsts, TIME's multimedia project on 46 trailblazing women who are changing the world.

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A free online course

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Getting into filmmaking is the easiest it's ever been, and you can start today with that nifty little device in your pocket. In Smartphone Cinematography, we'll walk you through some tips on how to get the best video and audio from your smartphone, how to light a subject on a budget, and what to look for in a camera app.

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Getting into filmmaking is the easiest it's ever been, and you can start today with that nifty little device in your pocket. In Smartphone Cinematography, we'll walk you through some tips on how to get the best video and audio from your smartphone, how to light a subject on a budget, and what to look for in a camera app.