Nokia N8 directors' favorite

MANILA, Philippines –  Two thumbs-up. Five stars. Today’s most popular smartphone from Nokia is a runaway hit among today’s young filmmakers Paul Soriano, Treb Monteras II and Pepe Diokno. The three were awestruck by the professional quality of the mobile phone, dubbed the world’s best entertainment smartphone. 

Soriano, who directed indie films such as Chasing Manila and the upcoming Thelma (starring Maja Salvador), and the first Pier Roxas teaser commercial, says he was initially shocked when asked to shoot the said commercial using the N8 smartphone.

“I thought to myself, ‘Are you serious?’” Soriano recalls. “But I was willing to try anything, so we shot the commercial strictly on a Nokia N8. I was blown away by the quality, workflow, how easy it is to shoot with the phone, and how handy it was because you could put it in places where you don’t normally put a movie camera in.”

Soriano says he was most impressed with the high-definition, 12-megapixel video camera that is built with a Carl Zeiss lens. “With the Nokia N8, you get a quality professional video camera that you can put in your pocket. You just flip it out anytime, shoot pictures or videos and upload them on-line anytime, anywhere,” he adds.

After it was completed, the Pier Roxas TV commercial shot by Soriano now holds the distinction of being the first television advertisement in the Philippines to be shot entirely using a mobile phone.

Music video director Treb Monteras II also raves about the N8. Monteras, who has directed music videos for Gary Valenciano, Rico Blanco, Rivermaya and Urbandub, says today’s advancements in mobile technology had made filmmaking accessible to everybody.

“I used to bring a lot of gadgets with me everywhere I go,” relates Monteras. “The Nokia N8 is so easy to use that my three-year-old son films short videos with it. And I haven’t brought my laptop, my video camera and my DSLR with me since I got this phone. With this tool, you can focus more on your story rather than having to worry about technical stuff when using conventional cameras.”

But what really awed Monteras was the N8’s HDMI and USB connectivity. Users can plug the N8 to their television sets using the HDMI cable and they can view high-definition photos and videos straight from the phone — no need to convert videos to other formats or separate peripherals like a TV box. What’s more, the Nokia N8 has a built-in Dolby Digital Plus surround sound system, thus providing a theater-like experience even when viewing from the phone.

Monteras was astounded with the N8 that he started a group in the video-sharing site Vimeo. The group, http://www.vimeo.com/groups/66769, has 12 members and 103 videos, all of which are compilations of Nokia N8 films.

Diokno, on the other hand, found the N8 perfect for capturing personal moments. The award-winning director, whose debut film Engkwentro won the Venice Film Festival’s Lion of the Future award, remarks that the phone’s shoot-edit-share feature makes it convenient for people to capture scenes on-the-go and polish them up before sharing to other people via YouTube, Facebook or any other social networking site. The smartphone’s editing features enable the user to add titles and other text that’s usually done through professional computer desktop programs.

But aside from a high-definition camera, Diokno says the N8 has helped him in doing research, taking down notes and recording interviews. Thanks to a powerful processor and a 16-gigabyte memory, the N8 is also a PDF viewer, a web browser, a music player and a notebook all rolled into one. Its multitasking capability allows the user to switch between applications with a touch of a finger.

For these filmmakers, the Nokia N8 was the device that helped them rediscover new and infinite ways of pursuing their art for imitating life. Like them, aspiring filmmakers and video hobbyists can use the highly-advanced, yet compact tool to discover new angles and point of views in capturing, transforming and sharing moments of our lives.