Ben Stahl is out to prove that you can make any kind of movie with a smartphone. A few months ago we featured his short thriller “The Sorting Room.” Now the cofounder of iMakeMobile Productions is back with “His Last Stop,”  a 23-minute iPhone documentary that seeks to unravel the mysterious death of Edgar Allan Poe. The movie, co-created by Wes Cianchette and Aaron Decker, includes all the elements of classic docs including expert interviews, artifacts, and re-enactments.

Interview with Ben Stahl on Making a Longer iPhone Documentary

MMM: What led you to undertake this ambitious project?

STAHL: I had made a shorter form documentary back in the summer and my buddy Aaron really liked it. He’d always wanted to do a documentary like that so he joined our team and we got to work. Poe was actually Aaron’s idea. We wanted a cool character in history to dive into. I had initially suggested HP Lovecraft because Aaron loves his work, but it would’ve been hard because his museum and burial place are states away. Aaron suggested we do Poe instead because there is so much Poe culture in Baltimore, which is where we live.

MMM: What were the key elements in preproduction?

STAHL: The first step was deciding what our story would be. There are a lot of books and movies about Poe, but none that really focus on his death. At least not to the degree we wanted to show. Once we knew the rough idea for the story, we spent an evening retracing Poe’s steps during the last days of his life in Baltimore. We went to his house, the approximate locations his body was discovered, his burial place and a couple others.

MMM: How was being on the ground important?

STAHL: We wanted see what we had to work with as well as get inspired for our shot list. Then, we reached out to the experts. They made the process of filming at their location and the whole interview process extremely easy. It was a great learning experience because none of us had done a project of this scale before. It felt good to be able to reach out to these people and for them to be so responsive.

MMM: What kind of script work went into this?

STAHL: Though we all had a hand in the writing process, the bulk of the research and scripting was done by Wes. He would come in with three or four pages of narration for a chapter. Then, the three of us would rework and condense as necessary. Once we incorporated the interviews we’d either restructure again to flow with them, or in some cases just rewrite some segments. We wrote a shot list that we tried to stick to during filming, but it ended up being more of a rough guideline in the end.

MMM: Why did you decide to shoot this on a phone?

STAHL: Using the phone is always such an inspiring process because you have every aspect of your project at your fingertips. As we begin to undertake more in depth projects, it becomes more and more crucial to work as efficiently as possible. Doing all the work with just one device helps tremendously.

MMM: What are the advantages of using the phone?

STAHL: Portability, speed, small footprint, and the one-stop-shopping for capture/edit/upload. Not only that, but it made other aspects easier too. The audio for all of Wes’s talking-head bits was captured using the Røde SmartLav connected to his iPhone in his pocket so he could be further away from the camera if necessary. Then, because we both use iPhone, he could simply AirDrop those tracks, and I could dump them in the edit in a matter of seconds. When I would  work on an edit, I could quickly screen record and send that to our group chat for us to discuss, instead of having to do a whole upload every time. Shaving off those valuable seconds and minutes really add up over time.

MMM: And the disadvantages of shooting with the phone?

STAHL: The normal concerns were there: battery life, storage, and low light performance. But with every project we get better at anticipating potential hiccups and working around them. The lighting and the audio require a little more attention. Low light is still a struggle for iPhone, but it is getting better all the time. As a team we’ve gotten better at lighting our scenes or knowing how/when to use natural light. For audio, we actually didn’t monitor the audio during the filming, aside from a quick mic test to make sure it was capturing. Obviously I could have monitored the whole time and saved a couple peaking sound bites, but we are doing this quickly and run & gun. Most of the time, it’s just me filming an interview or a talking-head bit so the less stuff I have to focus on the better. I’d much rather just strap a mic on the talent, give a quick test, and then roll!

MMM:  What gear did you use besides the phone?

Stahl: Typically we lean on the side of less is more. Decking my phone out with a bulky rig in some ways defeats the purpose of iPhone filmmaking. I mostly use a simple tripod that I’ve had a million years. Occasionally I’ll use my short Neewer slider for smooth motion. My phone is usually housed in an Ulanzi phone rig. Super simple one size fits all kind of thing, but it works great. One piece of gear that we had a ton of fun testing out for this project was our green screen.

MMM: How did you use that?

Stahl: We set up a little studio in Aaron’s basement using one of those Amazon lighting kits, with a few soft boxes and backdrops. We hung the green screen and tested out the lighting to make sure it was even. The shots of Poe lecturing as well as the two brothers sitting by the fire were achieved using the green screen and we think those shots turned out pretty well. We initially had planned to just film the brothers scene by a fireplace, but we couldn’t lock down a good location so we tried it with the green screen and it definitely did the job.

MMM: During production, did you encounter unexpected problem?

Stahl: After two months of editing,  I noticed a modern “Exit” sign in the background of the tavern scene with the brothers. I had to go in and mask it. Not super hard, just a little cumbersome. A fun little challenge that I’m glad I got to learn from.

MMM: Anything else?

Stahl: In the first of our three interviews with Poe experts, there was too much ambient noise. We ended up just scrapping it, which is all part of the process.

MMM: Could you talk about the voiceover?

Stahl: Most of the narration was recorded into my iPad using my Focusrite iTrack Dock and a studio condenser microphone to give it that really full and robust sound.

MMM: And the music?

Stahl: We used AudioJungle, which was super easy:  search, buy the tracks you want, and drop them in the edit. They’re royalty free, which is great for indie filmmakers.

MMM: With such a big project, editing has to be a big challenge?

Stahl: I used LumaFusion for the last few projects. This time I wanted to try out Videoleap. The app is quite user friendly, more so than most I’d say, so it makes editing fun. As we started the project, I quickly decided to edit each chapter as its own file to not be so overwhelmed with endless clips and pictures and pieces of audio. This way, I’d just be looking at a chapter running for about two minutes.  That’s definitely more manageable on the brain than looking at a full 23 minute edit with all the assets in the timeline. Once each piece was edited, I simply exported it. Then, for the final edit, I brought all those files into a  full timeline. After that I’d still be able to make minor tweaks like balancing overall volume and maybe shave a frame or two here and there.

MMM:  How do you intend to distribute this movie?

Stahl: Definitely YouTube. We’ll probably put in on Film Freeway to submit to some festivals. We talked to Enrica from the Poe house about a Poe festival that happens every year so we’ll try to get it shown then as well.

MMM: Any advice for people considering making an iPhone documentary?

Stahl: Just go do it. It may seem daunting before you start, but as soon as you do it all gets easier. You can make a short documentary on your phone in a day if you wanted to. Shoot, edit, add voiceover, upload to YouTube. Once you’ve done one, the next one feels easier. My short doc “Erdnase: Lost in the Shuffle” was filmed in about an hour and a half and edited over the course of a few days. It’s a little under three minutes in length and I think a very good example of how to do a short and sweet, quick turnaround documentary.

MMM: Can you give us a hint about your next project?

Stahl: We definitely want to start diving into YouTube more now that we have a few projects under our belt. We want to start getting into the tutorial/review world to really help promote iPhone content creation.

# # #

The editors of MobileMovieMaking.com chose “His Last Stop” as a Mobile Movie of the Week.