feature shot on a cellphone

"Looks" great.

Story's not any better because of the "Oh! Wow! Gee-golly!" factor.
Many of the same advanced amateur/pre-pro camera shots even dollies, tracks, and cranes can't fix.

Low interest novelty is my prediction.
 
It was only a matter of time. I think it'll give the next generations of kids who will all have advanced smartphones that sense of "Wow. I can do that." at the ages of ten or so. So it'll probably help the future generation. At least i hope.
 
Someone is going to use the "Oh! Wow! Gee-golly!" factor and
make a really good movie.

I saw "Rideshare" in July in Ventura. It wasn't bad. Very nice
use of the camera.

This one had quite a budget "less than $500,000" and some big
players. I look forward to that "little fat girl in Ohio" making a
good movie on a cellphone camera. I believe it can happen.
 
I keep hearing about this because one of the co-directors is part of a local radio morning show. Can't say I'm particularly impressed - shooting it on a cellphone is just a gimmick and without that nobody would have ever heard of this film.

Frankly I think the camera phone gimmick was a great idea because it did get them significant free publicity and that's often the type of creative promotion indie producers need to take advantage of. Unfortunately you need to back it up with solid filmmaking and I think they just failed to do so with this project.

It's also slightly disingenuous to claim it was shot entirely on a cellphone - it was shot with a 35mm adapter, so the phone was really just used as a recording medium and it isn't representative of the results you'd normally get shooting with the phone. The phone itself contributes nothing positive to the image; if anything it makes it worse than it otherwise would have been due to the low dynamic range, blown highlights and significant rolling shutter.

The co-director is particularly clueless as well - on the radio he keeps talking about getting it into sundance, getting a national theatrical distribution, even getting it oscar consideration. All the shortcomings of the phone camera could be ignored, but after watching the opening five minutes it's clearly got other fundamental issues that can't be ignored. Cinematography, editing, sound, acting, writing - everything's at what I'd consider decent film student level. Not terrible, but not enough to get it much traction in the festival or theatrical worlds.

Unfortunately I think they spent quite a bit of money on the production (I believe it was funded by Mark Zuckerberg's sister). What I find most offensive is that they are currently running a $300,000 kickstarter - not for production or post since the film is done, this is just to get them theatrical distribution (and make it the 'first camera phone film to get theatrical distribution'). I can't fathom how they came up with that number or how they think they'll achieve it. I have to assume they were hoping the publicity of the cellphone camera gimmick would get them there, and I have a feeling they were hoping to recoup some production costs through it as well. I find their appeals to support 'independent film' through their kickstarter offensive because I know there are people on indietalk who could produce and distribute a better film for less than what they're trying to raise for distribution alone.

Checking the kickstarter now it looks like they're not much more than 10% of the way to their goal with three days remaining - despite broad publicity due to the phone gimmick - so it looks like they won't hit the goal. Hopefully that helps them figure out that they need more than a gimmick to be successful filmmakers.
 
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