Filmic Pro, Filmmaking Rush, and Filmmaking Mishaps

I’ve been involved with the smartphone filmmaking industry and community since 2009. Of course, I was on the sidelines since 2001 expecting to see it thrive thanks to my vision of a future with cameras on phones with access to the internet during 9/11.

I am an advocate for smartphone filmmaking and by now, you realize I promote independent filmmakers who make movies with smartphone cameras. But it’s not just about promoting. It’s more about giving them a voice in a niche that has grown exponentially around the world.

However, in the U.S. mobile filmmaking is still small potatoes. The community inspires me and I know they inspire each other in our community.

When a pioneer in our industry breaks, the entire community feels it. Even though Filmic Pro made mainstream news, it did not include community commentary. Obviously, it’s news. But the mainstream is not really involved with the niche industry in the way people within our community are.

We just released our new episode 168 of the SBP Podcast Mobile Filmmaking this morning. Follow and subscribe to our podcast in your favorite app now.

Because I have this podcast which is exclusive to our niche industry, it feels appropriate to discuss current events that affect us with a community perspective.

Over this summer, I launched “Fade In To Film” as a bi-weekly program for my podcast with ongoing panelists.

Our purpose is to discuss current events and topics on the minds of smartphone and indie filmmakers. Making the connection between indie and mobile filmmakers stronger.

For many years, when I publicly launched this venture in 2009, independent filmmakers were not at all interested in making movies with mobile phones.

Fade In To Film is a bi-weekly program by SBP Podcast Mobile Filmmaking, hosted by Susy Botello.

As cameras on smartphones (Android and iPhones) got better and better, a very few indie filmmakers challenged themselves and experimented with iPhones. Tangerine turned a lot of heads. It was shot with iPhone 5s and brought Filmic Pro to the mainstream, and Filmic invested on the momentum to become the first point of contact for professional filmmakers.

But it was the 2020 shut downs in California, that brought indie filmmakers in L.A., and other parts of the country, to finally give mobile filmmaking a shot. (pun intended)

Inspired by Tangerine and Filmic Pro’s camera app, many indie filmmakers from novice to pro began to make feature films with their smartphones. It’s why in 2016, we announced our separate feature film competition on the International Mobile Film Festival in San Diego.

And that brings me to **episode 168 **of our podcast released today. We devoted some time to share our perspectives into what happened with Filmic Pro. My voice shares my perspective through the perceptions of our global community, because I follow it. I stay in touch with many in our community from back when we began through today, and because I am an advocate for them.

Ryan McDonald has been using Filmic Pro for many of his films, including his feature film, “Married and Loving it!” which is on Amazon Prime. He shared his perspective based on his own experience with Filmic Pro when it became a subscription based app.

I published an article Saturday morning after I read the news from Friday about the staff layoffs by the Italian based company Bending Spoons, who bought Filmic just over a year ago.

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