We’ve seen the fashion shoot on the iPhone and the short film shot on a Nokia N8 mobile phone. It wasn’t going to be long until there was a film made on an iPhone, was it? It’s being released today. It’s called Paranmanjang, which translates literally as Ups and Downs but seems to be going under the English-language title of Night Fishing, and was made by Park Chan-wook. This dude has won prizes at Cannes, so it’s hardly a tin-pot production, either.
iPhone’s South Korean distributor shelled out $130,000 to fund the project, a 30 minute film that tells the story of a fisherman who trawls up the body of a woman. Park used eight iPhone 4s to film it, and it’s mostly in black and white. I get the feeling its moody and menacing, then.
I’d love to give you a full review, but it has been released in Seoul, and the Small Aperture travel budget doesn’t extend quite that far this year. But it just goes to show what you can do with an iPhone. As Park told the Los Angeles Times, ‘Find a location. You don’t even need sophisticated lighting. Just go out and make movies.’