Steven Soderbergh ditches big-budget cameras for iPhone

One of the biggest directors in Hollywood is ready to totally embrace filming on the iPhone.

Steven Soderbergh — whose titles include everything from Ocean’s Eleven to Magic Mike — filmed his latest movie entirely an iPhone. Only instead of using it as a gimmick, Soderbergh says he’s likely going to start using iPhone on most of his future films.

Soderbergh certainly isn’t the first director to shoot a movie entirely on iPhone. Tangerine was highly praised by critics and shot all on iPhone, but that was due to budget reasons. Soderberg’s new film Unsane was shot entirely on iPhone too

During an appearance at the Sundance Film Festival, Soderbergh said he was so impressed by the quality of the iPhone’s cinematography that it’s now a legitimate tool.

“I think this is the future,” Soderbergh said in an interview. “Anybody going to see this movie who has no idea of the backstory to the production will have no idea this was shot on the phone. That’s not part of the conceit.”

Soderbergh has been known to experiment with a wide range of cameras in his movies. He used to be a huge advocate of the expensive RED 4K cameras. Now he says the iPhone is a “gamechanger”. Asked whether he’s going to commit to shooting films exclusively on iPhone, Soderbergh said he’s leaning that way.

“I’d have to have a pretty good reason not to be thinking about that first… There’s a philosophical obstacle a lot of people have about the size of the capture device. I don’t have that problem,” explained Soderbergh. “I look at this as potentially one of the most liberating experiences that I’ve ever had as a filmmaker, and that I continue having. The gets that I felt moment to moment were so significant that this is, to me, a new chapter.”