So it appears we were a bit off. Last week we proudly highlighted a new video titled “Cascades” by the Canadian musician, Flapjakt, that we thought was the very first music video filmed using the iPhone 4. We interviewed director Marty Martin, posted the video, and watched in awe. Turns out Flpajakt and Martin weren’t the first. Or the second for that matter (by a matter of hours). In fact, it looks like a new wave of extremely clever and ambitious young directors are seeing the potential of the iPhone as a camera- at least in a limited way- and are releasing the results. Great minds think alike and all that.
From what we can tell, this video, from director Kyle Roberts featuring the Oklahoma City-based band, Dr. Pants, was actually the second full length music video using Apple wunder-phone (the first appears to be from the band The Anix)- which takes nothing away from the incredible results of any of the videos filmed with Apple’s iPhone 4.
It began unremarkably enough, with director Roberts in line waiting for his iPhone 4 in an Apple store near Oklahoma City, with scores of others. Overall, he waited for nearly ten hours to receive his phone- and when you have ten hours to think, you come up with a few ideas. One of those ideas was to film a music video using the coveted smartphone’s 720p video camera, just to see if it could be done.
Roberts soon managed to get in contact with the band Dr. Pants, an Oklahoma City-based band that is gaining a following throughout the Midwest. After talking it out, Roberts and the band agreed to film a video for the song “Sarsaparilla Girl”, and the location of historic Route 66 was chosen.
Using a jib, a tripod, an indislider, and a universal iPhone case that required some creative design work to attach to all the equipment, the video took five hours to film, followed by seven hours of editing in Final Cut Pro- not counting the time it took to convert the video. As for budget, there was none.
“The budget was just the cost of the iPhone; I already had the equipment.” Roberts said, “Someone even loaned us the bicycle.”
With a zero budget, the key to pushing the video is through viral marketing and word of mouth. So far the video has received over 20,000 views on YouTube alone, which would officially make it a success.
“Everything I have heard has been positive. They can’t imagine it was done with a phone,” Roberts said.
Check out the video below and decide for yourself.
Check out more of Roberts videos on his homepage ra-pictures.com.
If you want to know more about the band, check out the official Dr. Pants site at doctorpants.com.
First OFFICIAL iPhone 4 Music Video for Dr. Pants “Sarsaparilla Girl” from Kyle Roberts on Vimeo.
