Movies move. So what’s a filmmaker to do with a static subject? That was the challenge facing Irish mobile journalist Philip Bromwell when making “The Wind Phone” for RTE news. This mini-doc is about a phone-booth-like structure that invites users to think about—and cope with—life and loss.

Filming with an iPhone 6S Plus and the FiLMiC Pro app, Bromwell uses a variety of techniques to bring action into his mini-doc. He sets the stage with a time-lapse sequence capturing the flow of clouds. His first interviewee arrives on a bicycle. And he shoots from many angles; this gives viewers the sense of moving around the star of the production, a phone booth that connects to people only via the imagination.

Bromwell’s one minute and fifty second movie was edited in part using the LumaFusion app, which also supplied the music. Epic Tutorials has a helpful video on getting the most out of this app.

The Wind Phone project was inspired by a similar structure erected in Northern Japan following the 2011 tsunami. CityLab posted an article about the effort here.

You can see more of Bromwell’s work at Vimeo. You can follow RTE on Twitter.  An interview with the filmmaker was published in MobileMovieMaking.

The Wind Phone was chosen as a Mobile Movie of the Week.

If you’ve shot a video that brings life to a static subject—such as monuments, buildings, or an object in nature—we invite you to tell us about it by emailing info@mobilemoviemaking.com