I wasn't altogether happy to read that one of my favourite modern filmmakers was embarking on a project as gimmicky as this, but I was eager to see it nonetheless. The copy I received wasn't subtitled, so I'm not entirely sure about how good the story is but it still kind of made sense. Mostly I was watching to see how good the image was and it pains me to say that it was surprisingly good. The black and white night scene looks like an early Kurosawa night scene, and the blurriness of the image only adds to the effect, as if you're watching an old, dirty print. There are some daylight scenes near the end where it's obvious that they're using this cheap camera but it's not as bad as some of the Dogme 95 films I've sat through...
All in all, it looks good and if no one told you it was shot on a phone you'd just think it was part of the 'look' of the movie. I'm not sure how good it will look on the big screen but I'm guessing that's where the image will start to fall apart.
I hear they made it for $130,000 which was funded by Korean mobile carrier, KT, so basically it's a big ad for Koreans to splash out on the Iphone 4! It's disappointing information to learn, but at the end of the day I'm still left wondering whether I should buy one of these fucking things...
This video is a Behind-the-Scenes look at the film. It shows exactly why your Iphone film won't look nearly as good...
