An accident led BBC video journalist Dougal Shaw into shooting his features on a smartphone. One day, when he arrived at a café to produce a program about free wifi, he discovered that his traditional camera’s battery had been drained. Rather than go home without the story, he decided to record using his iPhone. Pleased with the quality, he began shooting other stories with the phone. “Viking Therapy” is a recent example, a mini-doc that deals with a controversial topic: “Can you fight violence with violence.”

Discussing this report, Shaw—who is the senior video journalist for BBC’s World Hacks program— says: ““I filmed all the interviews on my iPhone 6S Plus with FiLMiC Pro. I used the RØDE Microphone i-XLR to attach a condenser broadcast mic. An interesting workflow story is that the audio quality was high enough to be used separately for a long-form audio documentary that was broadcast on the BBC World Service Radio.

Because he wasn’t available to shoot the second day of the Viking Festival, Shaw enlisted the help of a colleague Charlotte Pritchard. “She shot many of the fight scenes using a DJI Gimbal. Its built-in camera uses the phone as the viewfinder.”

To learn about Shaw’s post-production approach, check out his blog post “Seven tips for editing smartphone footage.” You’ll find the whole story of Shaw’s journey into mobile journalism here. You can follow him on Twitter and Facebook. His website is dougalshaw.com

“Viking Therapy” was chosen as a Mobile Movie of the Week.