FiLMiC Pro – The Gold Standard of Mobile Videography by Rachel S

FiLMiC Pro is one of the most popular and feature rich iPhone videography apps out there right now.  Winner of a ‘Best App Ever’ award, it’s the go-to app for serious iPhone filmmakers and as luck would have it… the FiLMiC team is based right here in Seattle.  I sat down with Neill Barham, Founder & CEO of Cinegenix, LLC to learn more about the app, his partners in crime and the landscape of mobile videography.

L:   A small part of (!) the extensive FiLMiC Pro Settings Menu.  R:  Our beloved FiLMiC UI in the midst of a TimeLapse somewhere in northern Europe.

R:  Why did you start your company in Seattle and why do you stay?  Is there something special about Seattle that makes it a great place to be a software startup entrepreneur?

N:  This wasn’t so much a conscious decision, as “Here’s where we are”. We definitely recognized that Seattle had all the elements to successfully launch a tech business. But we weren’t focused on the startup environment as we were about product, and I think that’s largely why we’ve succeeded as well as we have. Now, a few years on, we recognize the depth of talent and the benefits of a smaller, tight knit tech community.

The FiLMiC Pro Content Team putting the FiLMiC Pro beta through its passes off the coast of Flensberg, Germany with an iProLens kit atop a repurposed Joby Gorilla Pod.

R:  Tell us about yourself and the FiLMiC team.  What brought you all together?

N:  Film. And now further on photography. I’m a frustrated filmmaker and film school brat in a former life, Jonathan and Sam are both filmmakers. It was Jonathan’s rather successful storyboard app Storyboard Composer that inspired me to get into app development and we had been friends for forever. Later, I met Sam when he was running NFFTY (the National Film Festival for Talented Youth) and I had been invited to speak. We hit it off famously and I got that he “Got It”, the democratizing power of mobile video, and I invited him to join the team the next time I saw him at SIFF. And now with the addition of Susan and her highly visible interconnected role with the world of photography at creativeLIVE we are having our minds challenged by the needs of some of the best and brightest in the photography world.

L:  A canal ride in Copenhangen is about to turn tragic, when Neill nearly loses his arm when the operator puts the boat in reverse. Neill keeps his arm, the iPhone and the mCAM Lite but watches as Koerbel;’s Joby Gorilla Pod splinters into pieces.  R:  Majek Film Director Michael Koerbel suspends his iPhone from back top of a tour bus in Stockholm. With the versatile mCAM Lite, some C-Clamps and some wide angle glass with a lens hood.

R:  Does your team develop solely on your own filmmaking and design experience or do you bring in other experts to develop the UI and features?  If you brought in outside contributors, who and why?

N:  We were filmmakers first and foremost so we designed the app that we wanted to use. None of us were programmers so the first two iterations of FiLMiC Pro were developed with some of Seattle’s great boutique development shops, such as General UI. But developing a product as complex as FiLMiC Pro with outside labor proved insanely expensive and fraught with schedule overruns so we knew we needed to hire our own. Through that process we’ve found that we needed to hire serious semi pro photographers as programmers to retain our edge in the space. One expert who deserves special mention is Jack Davis, or as I and most other people like to call him Jack “Wow” Davis. We knew we wanted to get into filters and color grading as the processor speed of mobile devices improved, but we also knew we didn’t want to cash in by simply offering the same one touch Core Image sepia filters as everybody else. That led us by fate or chance to Jack Wow Davis, one of the original designers of Photoshop, the author of the Photoshop “Wow” Book and a traveling member of the Adobe Dream Team. Bringing Jack on board was a perfect example of a target team member to bring a measurable level of expertise the rest of us did not have. And it has been wonderful being a part of what he does best. And now the upcoming batch of Pro Series Video Filters aren’t simply going to be competitive they are going to be exceptional, world class! And that is very satisfying.

R:  What’s so special about this app, and why has FiLMiC Pro been topping the list of must have video apps since 2012?

N: We build the apps we want to use. Simple as that. We spare no expense and don’t remove or avoid building features because they might meet analytic use thresholds. We think if someone’s going to be able to put this feature to creative and expressive use, we should try our best to build it for them. We’re very proud of that and immensely grateful that the creative community has responded as favorably as they have. We don’t want to take out a feature like the 35mm image flip even though maybe only a few hundred people are crazy enough to use an adapter to enable them to use their 35mm glass, just because it hinders “the margins”. Those couple hundred people create stuff of crazy beauty with those lenses and for us, that is so rewarding!

The FiLMiC Pro iPad interface and a beautiful beach scene in Positano, Italy.

N: The community. To be plugged into a creative ecosystem of hundreds of thousands of people in over 130 some odd countries, all making amazing stuff and contributing wonderful ideas, it’s the most satisfying thing in the world. So in that respect it’s very easy to get out of bed every morning. I think of the job as listening to the people and trying to give them what they need to tell a good story.

R:  How has the universe of mobile photography and video accessories evolved since you first started developing FiLMiC Pro, and how have you adapted?  How are you leading the pack?

N: FiLMiC Pro was ahead of its time in taking mobile video seriously. I had a very distinct vision after the iPhone 4 of the mobile camera either killing or complimenting all levels of image capture. Not just for photo but for video. I think at the time there were a couple super 8 type apps out there for admittedly very fun low res graphics and we just approached it from a whole other angle, as a serious broadcast tool and the people just responded. Now the BBC and the Wall Street Journal are all using mobile video as a way of empowering staff and with the advent of Vine and Instagram video you’re beginning to see a tidal shift as the mobile photo world gets their feet wet with video. Presently we’re leveraging our years of experience in the field and broad feature set to work with partners in news, education, medical and audio to deliver a whole range of new tools that will continue to blow minds.

Neill and UI Design Lead Jonathan Houser, saddle up Michael Koerbel on the streets of Stockholm with a Kessler Pocket Dolly atop a Carbon Fiber Manfrotto Tripod with an mCAM Lite and a wide angle lens.

R:  I saw a photo, I think on your Kickstarter page, of that crazy awesome camera rig of Michael’s… can you tell us about some of your favorite accessories for filmmaking with your iPhones?

N:  I love MK’s hydra headed dual FiLMiC Pro/GoPro Hero 3 all in one interview tool. It’s built on a framework of Action Life Media Magic Arms and then from there you can mount anything you want, mCAM Lite, Fostex AR-4i. There’s a lot of good gear coming out now. Second gen Olloclips are pretty good, the iProLens kit both gen 1 and gen 2 are outstanding and my favorite mobile lenses by far. The Fostex AR-101 is an interesting successor to the AR-4i and I recently received a shipment of microphones geared toward the iOS market from a high end broadcast manufacturer and they should have the competition nervous by the early looks of things. Cinevate and Kessler produce extremely well made back pack sliders. Good audio, stabilization however you get it, they are the essentials. A few more that are certainly worth a mention, the Galileo and the Kick Light open up crazy new opportunities for mobile videographers.

R:  Being a team of creatives, I suspect you have a number of personal projects swimming around in your heads.  Who are you excited to collaborate with this year and why?

N: We’re excited about two new products and collaborations that will soon be on Kickstarter and I encourage people to support those when they see the light of day. Presently we’re under NDAs with two manufacturers but I am certain they will further legitimize the space. Our personal projects are centered around our ongoing relationship with the Star Clippers and our annual working vacation where we sail around some beautiful part of the world aboard a huge 360-440 foot sailboat and spend day and night shooting mobile photo/video, trying out new features in beta with a hand selected team of photo and video experts, learning from each other while having the time of our lives. This year we’ve invited some of our most enthusiastic supporters to come along.

 Testing out the enCinema adapter with a Canon 35mm 1.4 lens on the beaches of Punta Cana, DR.

R:  Recently, director/photographer Dutch Doscher told Juxter Jen Pollack Bianco that his go-to app for film making on iPhone is none other than FiLMiC Pro.  It has to feel good when some of the best “big camera” shooters turn to your app when they shoot Mobile.  How do you balance developing for the pros with developing an app for the average iPhone user?

N: We haven’t balanced it out successfully yet and still build for the pros. And yeah, we never get tired of hearing that successful professionals appreciate what we try to do. There will be a pivot soon, to try and bring some of our feature set to a broader audience with a different user experience. We’ve had a hard time dealing with the influx of non filmmakers who are attracted to the app due to its visibility and critical success but don’t understand the concepts of undercranking a camera, something we foolishly took as a given for our audience until our audience started to be broader than the niche we envisioned for ourselves.

R:  Who are your favorite filmmakers shooting with FiLMic Pro?

N:  Conrad Mess is world class and I think he just took home another trunk full of awards for his mobile work. His work may be a little dark for some taste but nothing can hide his sense of style, authoritative tone and controlled pacing. Conrad would be a success no matter what he shot on, but that’s kind of the point. Put a quality, affordable tool in anyones hands who has talent and let him or her show the world what he can do. Obviously, Michael Koerbel is another favorite of mine and I never cease to learn new things when I go traveling with him. But equally important are the unsung heroes, the quiet people trying something out on their own with their family or friends, discovering the full range of their creativity. The following are just a few samples that highlight some of my favorite random bits of greatness:

The Other Side” Phonetastic-Sitges Best Film Winner (iPhone Short Film)
Isobel & The Witch Queen
Attack of the Zombie Clones
Vintage Trouble – “Nancy Lee” feat Carmit Bachar (iPhone 4) R:  When WeAreJuxt produced the first Darkroom Series back in January 2012, we knew the documentary team for a mobile photography art opening would be shooting with mobile devices.  Every one of the filmmakers used FiLMic Pro.  It was the first time I’d heard of it, and I bought it immediately.  Admittedly, it was pretty intimidating to me at the time.  Can you give some advice for mobile artists who are just getting into shooting video and want to try FiLMiC Pro?

N:  Stability is key. Whether you use the image stabilization from within the app or a mini tripod or stabilizer, the weight of the phones is so slight that something as incidental as your breathing is going to greatly affect your shots. Secondly, think through your shots; where’s your light source, what’s my starting frame or composition, where do I want to end up. Third be judicious in your pans, especially with regard to speed, the scan rate of the camera reads of the sensor incrementally so if you move too fast the image isn’t fully recorded to disc before the image is no longer there and that is why you’ll sometimes see the earthquake effect where the image destabilizes and breaks into layers. Expose more for the highlights and let the balance of the image be a shade under exposed if need be. You can recover shadow detail just fine with our new post imaging tools in the version 3.4 update. And any NLE of course will do a stellar job with that as well.

Know your intended broadcast medium and that will help you make selections with your frame rates, 30 for US broadcast, 25 for EU/ROW markets, 24 for achieving a cinematic look. We base all our motion fx defaults of 24 fps playback as that’s what we’re partial too, but the app makes it possible to overwrite all those fx for the playback frame rate of your choice. Balance your need for resolution versus your need for speed, bandwidth and storage availability. We’re truly leaders in the world with more frame rates, resolutions and variable bit encoding rates than any other app.

The indented Camera UI with Zoom Speed indicator.

Know your device, if you have a 16 gig iPhone you probably don’t want to be shooting 1080p at 30 fps at FiLMiC Extreme 50 bit rate encoding. You’ll be out of hard drive space in ten minutes. On the other hand you could conceivably shoot 540p at a custom 15 fps at Economy Bitrate and have hours of space available. So it isn’t always as simple as select these settings and your footage will come out great. And that’s why broadcast professionals take so well to the app, as they know what they want or need in a particular setting and by and large the app offers it.

Let’s see a few other helpful tidbits, always lock white balance, always lock focus, and then lock exposure or, if you are in the right variable light setting, say driving in and out of a canopy of trees or a tunnel trying riding the exposure unlocked and see how good it is at oscillating back and forth between the varying exposure zones.

R:  The We Are Juxt community started out iPhone centric, however we’ve grown into a community with Android, Windows Phone and many other mobile devices that have stepped up their game to compete in the mobile photography realm.  What have you got in the mix for platforms outside of iOS?

N: We’re testing out the market demand for FiLMiC Pro on both Android and Windows with avenues such as Kickstarter campaigns because we are attracted by some new compelling features on the hardware side. The 41megapixel Lumia 1020, the 120 fps capture rate of the Samsung Galaxy 4 and even Google Glass. I think its safe to say that the Windows campaign is DOA and that’s a shame because the hardware is impressive buts its still an uphill battle and a small market share that we weren’t able to successfully engage. Android is more promising but has the notorious fragmentation issues which for an app as complex as FiLMiC Pro is a big deal. We ran a couple Kickstarter campaigns recently and while neither was funded, they were great learning experiences and we’ll definitely be continuing our foray into the Android world. Here in the words of T.E. Lawrence, the future is unwritten.

 L:  With locking focus and exposure, FiLMiC Pro makes gorgeous work of these waves off the coast of Lipari and the sun light sales of the 439′ Royal Clipper sailboat.   R:  High atop the crow’s nest on the 366′ ft Star Flyer sailboat on the Baltic Sea.

All told, this has been a wonderful time for us. We’re pleased to make new friends on new platforms and to further relationships with creatives like the We Are Juxt community. We’re excited about a new batch of products and features that we’re going to be launching on iOS7 imminently, and we’re thrilled to be contributing a series of video tutorials for We Are Juxt readers over the next few weeks.  We definitely have some fun things to share.

Cinegenix Founder and CEO Neill Barham on the backstreets of Trestevere, Rome.

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Thanks to Neill for sharing the FiLMiC Pro story and inspiring us to shoot more video!  Also, thanks to pro photographer and creativeLIVE host Susan Roderick for sparking this relationship.

Look for our FiLMiC Pro video tutorial series coming up on Fridays in December on the 6^th, 13^th & 20^th.