The Moving Selfie

Can you get quality results when shooting with a smartphone, tablet, or GoPro? The answer is a resounding YES! With the help of inexpensive gear and apps such as FiLMiC Pro, mobile moviemakers meet every cinematic challenge from lighting to depth of field to slow motion. Wander through this site and you’ll find prize-winning works in every genre—such as thrillers, music videos, comedies, documentaries, commercials—that rival movies shot using conventional cameras.

But the creativity don’t end with standard movie fare. Because of their small size, modest cost, and state-of-the-art technology, mobile devices are inspiring cinematic experimentation. An example is the moving selfie. As seen in Matt and Kim’s GoPro music video, we get autobiographical footage taken from a camera that circles the moviemaker—and anyone else in the scene. It’s like videos taken by a satellite circling the Earth, only instead of being held by gravity, the camera is on a wire.

To create their music video—shot at the 2016 Governors Ball—Matt and Kim used a wooden coat hanger, some fishing wire, and a GoPro filming 720p at 240 frames per second.

Like many experiments, such as the catastrophic early flight of the Vanguard rocket…

…Matt and Kim’s moving selfie crashed. But still it deserves our respect because such efforts often blaze the way to extraordinary developments, for example, Willis O’Brien’s modest stop-motion videos that led to the original “King Kong.”

If you’re interested in learning more about the moving selfie, you’ll probably want to explore the pioneering work of Nicolas Vuignier and his Centriphone, which uses an iPhone.