Full-length movie shot entirely with a Nokia N8 to get U.S. theatrical release

Smartphone cameras have improved so much in recent years that we find use for them beyond casual photography. Take for instance, the Tron-endorsed Nokia N8, that was recently used to shoot a stunning stop-motion video. In fact, the phone's high-quality lens is so good that filmmaker Hooman Khalili chose to film an entire full-length movie entitled Olive using the device. Curious how it turned out? You can see it for yourself if you live near one of the more than 2,000 theaters across the United States that will screen it in the future.

If you're thinking of following in Khalili's footsteps, know that he and his team didn't use the Nokia N8 right out of the box. They had to hack it to remove autofocus and autozoom, because as Khalili says, "the camera thinks it knows what you want to focus on, but it doesn't." They even had to build a 35 mm lens adapter from scratch to achieve a shallow depth of field, attached to the phone with double-sided tape. Some tape is also used to secure the phone to a helicopter drone to capture aerial shots.

When Nokia declined the team's request for funding, Facebook's former chief privacy offer Chris Kelly stepped in to finance part of the project. Khalili is currently raising $300,000 on Kickstarter to cover the cost of the film's promotion, as he aims to submit it for Oscar consideration. This means the movie has to hit the theaters before the year ends. Thankfully, at least one theater agreed — Laemmle's Fallbrook 7 in West Hills, Los Angeles will screen the movie for a week starting December 16. If you're nowhere near West Hills, you can still catch the first five minutes of Olive right now by watching the video below.



[via LA Times]

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