Bill Newsinger’s “Memory 22” won third prize at the Mobil Film Festival 2013 In the following behind-the-scenes narrative, Bill shares some of the tricks that went into his magical movie.

Memory 22 was shot on my iphone 4s using the Hipstamatic app and the Tintype Snap Pak. Most of it was hand held but a couple of the sequences were shot with the phone stuck onto a tripod with blu tac. It is a series of stop motion sequences that were collected in bursts of about 50 photos each time, wherever I happened to be over a period of a couple of days. I think I took about 4,500 photos in all and these were then made into an image sequence in QuickTime movie at 12 fps.

I decided to create 3 identical versions with slightly different grading in each and arrange them side by side and did the final edit in Final Cut 6. I create my own music for my work and this was the last thing I did. I just kept picking my guitar in a minor key until I came across something that fitted the tempo of the film and the wintery images.

My inspiration for the film was a short film by a vimeo friend called Vituc who had made a film called “Chiaroscuro” using the same Hipstamatic Pak. You can view it here

I had a desire to experiment with stop motion at the time and the Tintype Snap Pak photo contained an unexpected magic that was not instantly noticeable. The Tintype Pak adds randomly placed borders and grunge to each image and this gives an extra movement to the film when the image sequence is assembled which I loved.

The film is part of my Memorybox series on Vimeo, which is really no more than a regularly updated scrapbook of experiments and observations with film and photography. The film racked up about 12,500 plays and was featured on the Hipstamatic website for a few weeks which was great.

I haven’t trained as a filmmaker but like many others, I have developed a love for digital filmmaking driven by passion and the desire to learn. My interest has more to do with art than technology and I love the fact that amazing works can be created with everyday devices like phones and simple point and shoot cameras.

I like the challenge of shooting film on an iphone. The main issue is keeping the image steady and dealing with the fact that it is often nearly impossible to see what you are shooting. There are gadgets to solve these issues but I kind of like the problems… they make you have to think and get creative to achieve the shots you want. The image is stunning at times and with some of the film apps like filmic pro you can have more control over exposure and focus. And then of course there’s the 120fps slow motion feature. What more could you ask for.

I make films for my living now and have been freelance for nearly 3 years. Most of my work is corporate and sometimes very dry so making films like Memory 22 is a great antidote to this. It keeps me tuned in and inspired to be creative and to experiment which is why I started making films in the first place.