#minidocumentaries

Mobile Movie of the Week: “A Homeless Woman Was Given an iPhone to Share Her Experience” This 10-minute mini-doc is memorable for many reasons. What especially stands out for us is the way it combines self-portraiture (selfie video) and external observation. We get to see the homeless woman as she sees herself, and we view the world from her perspective, for example, the shot of passers-by under the theater sign “hilarious.” First in a Home Stream series of movies about homelessness, this episode was co-directed by Lily (the homeless woman) and by Giulia Gandini (@g-gandini), the co-producer. “A Homeless Woman Was Given an iPhone to Share her Experience” has been chosen as the Mobile Movie of the Week. You can see it at MobileMovieMaking (link in profile). #mobilemovieoftheweek #homelessness #minidocumentaries #verticalfilmmaking https://www.instagram.com/p/B87lXZnpTok/?igshid=17fzakly6cknh

Close-up Video Contest —People’s Choice Award: LIFE IS LIKE A BEACH. This frame is from Varun Mehta’s “Life Is Like a Beach.” A philosophical mini-doc, the movie won the People’s Choice Award (views) by attracting more than 1,600 visitors. Search CloseUpVideoContest to see this movie plus all the other entries. And get ready for our next contest to be announced November 1, 2019. #mobilemoviemaking #thesea #oceans #minidocumentaries #videocontests https://www.instagram.com/p/B3XxgZ4hOA3/?igshid=12z3cak9ee5nw

MobileMovieMaking Tip #88: USE TEXT FOR NARRATION. The smartphone has given rise to the impromptu documentary. With a camera always close at hand, you can capture any interesting event that unexpectedly takes place in front of you. An example is “El Colacho,” Leonor Suárez’s two-minute documentary about an ancient Spanish “Baby-jumping Festival.” In it, an athletic devil leaps over tiny babies lying on mattresses placed in the town plaza. Because Suarez didn’t have an external microphone, getting quality sound was impossible. So she gathered information and presented it in large, colorful text blocks accompanying the various shots. This technique could be used in a variety of genres including instructional videos and travelogues. You can view “El Colacho”—chosen as a Mobile Movie of the Week—on MobileMovieMaking (link in our profile. If you’ve made—or seen—videos that use this text-for-narration technique, we hope you’ll tell us about them. #documentaries #minidocumentaries #mobiledocumentaries #mobilemovieoftheweek https://www.instagram.com/p/ByObLsqBGAN/?igshid=1r6q0tbhgfhii