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Pull out your iPhone and make a movie
Borrego Springs at its darkest
Zohibanoo Zolghadr (2nd left), Iranian smartphone moviemaker
For Susy Botello, it started with 9/11. “The whole idea of making movies with iPhones began for me in 2001,” she says. ‘I was here at Grossmont College, studying media communications. On that morning, I got up and went to my History of Media class. I remember seeing the headline. Something about a World Trade Center attack. And there was this really weird mood in the air. Very quiet. Very solemn. And I saw a girl in the hall crying on the phone, crying and talking. And I started to realize how important being able to talk about this was going to be for everybody.”
Suzy Botello: “It was the arrival of the iPhone-4S that really got the ball rolling.”
Botello admits to being obsessed with storytelling. “It’s more powerful, more valuable than all the money in the world. The only way people survive events like 9/11 is by sharing each other’s stories. And at this moment, I thought what if you have a cell phone where you don’t have to have a separate camera, you can use your phone not only to take pictures, but also to record and edit and send video? Of course, it didn’t happen right away. But I saw this coming.”
Botello was thinking big: entire movies shot on mobile phones. Her dream marinated for years, as technology caught up.
“It was the arrival of the iPhone-4S that really got the ball rolling,” she says. Ever since, she has become a missionary — to democratize moviemaking, to make it affordable, doable, inclusive and — did I say? — cheap.” She holds up her smartphone. “This device is the greatest moviemaking tool ever! Smartphone cameras today deliver professional-quality video. What you shoot on your iPhone is plenty good enough to show on the big screen.”
In 2009, Botello put her idea out to the world, with a website, and then an actual International Mobile Film Festival, inviting people to come to San Diego to show their phone-shot movies, from short to full-length. And to exchange ideas. Her slogan? “The Red Carpet Is In Your Pocket!” (This year’s will be held April 25-27.) It has been steadily garnering a following, as wanna-be filmmakers worldwide realize they can make quality films on a tiny budget. And brilliant ideas result.
I met one of the participants in last year’s festival, Iranian filmmaker Zohibanoo Zolghadr. She had to shoot her full-length feature movie, A Long Afternoon, without alerting the authorities in Tehran, who were already watching her. “So we decided to shoot the entire movie in one long shot,” she says. “It took a lot of planning, and couldn’t have happened without the discretion of the iPhone.”
So if the technology is here, why isn’t everybody making movies with their iPhones? If the equipment has shrunk, why is Hollywood still lumbering around with old-fashioned, heavy, bulky, expensive movie cameras? Especially since the iPhone makes it possible for the camera to follow action with a swiftness that’s impossible with the more static Hollywood models?
It’s because moviemakers have their own trades and traditions, Botello says. “And, well, Hollywood. Wannabe moviemakers are intimidated. An iPhone just doesn’t feel professional enough to make full-on movies with, even though picture and sound quality are right up with the best. I try to tell people: ‘OK, iPhone doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but it tells the story, and story is what matters. Not camera tricks. Getting people to take the iPhone seriously, that’s the problem.”
It’s the last day of the 2024 festival. The awards ceremony. Before heading for the festival feast, Botello has a warning about award obsession. “You shouldn't make a film and share a story just to win an award, because there's a bigger part of that, inside the art, that you're creating. Your story will not go away. It just won't die. It’s not like you find your passion. Your passion finds you, through all the work that you're doing. And once it finds you, it lives with you. It's like your pet, right? You don't want to kill your pet, you gotta feed it, and it'll be loyal to you, and it'll help you grow. The cool thing about making a movie, as opposed to making a grilled cheese sandwich, is you eat the grilled cheese sandwich and it disappears. But when you make a movie, it lives forever.”
Borrego Springs – very dark
It’s my fault. Got myself lost outside Borrego Springs looking for giant sloth prints in the ground. Or saber-tooth tigers’ pad marks. Or ancient camels’, or mammoths’, or mastodons’. Or how about bathtub-sized tortoises, or birds known as Aiolornis Incredibilis that used to cruise with their 17-foot wingspans over the pastures and lakes which dried out and became the Anza Borrego desert. “They were our local fauna, back in the day,” says Anne Reilly. She’s one of the State Park volunteers cooling it in the underground headquarters of the Anza Borrego State Park on the edge of Borrego Springs. “The Anza Borrego desert used to be a kind of Eden,” she says. “Lakes, pastures, streams, and all this mega-fauna, wild life. That was before things started drying out.”
Anne Reilly: "The Anza Borrego desert used to be a kind of Eden.”
So now it’s 11 pm and I’m wandering around the low-lit pathways that weave through the cabins and casitas of La Casa del Zorro resort. Nobody’s around out here, except ghosts. I know I’m not just walking where mammoths plodded, but also giants of Olde Hollywood: the swanky accommodation has sheltered Gary Cooper, Faye Wray, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, B.B. King, and a string of more recent celebs. But most of all I’m worrying about rattlers and bobcats and even mountain lions striking out in the dark from the bushes by this sandy path.
And that’s the question: Why IS everything so dark? It turns out Borrego Springs is a pioneering city in the world of Dark Skies. It was the first officially designated International Dark Sky Community in California, and is still one of its darkest towns. It’s surrounded by 1,000 square miles of desert, and mountains that block light from the coastal cities. Not only that, but by law they have no upward-shining street lights here, and no traffic lights. So when I look up, I see a sky — clear for 300 days a year — that it is magnificently electric. I can see Orion strutting up there wearing his three-star belt like he’s just 100 feet in the air.
I stand here, feeling isolated, but also exhilarated. I remember a ranger in a year I volunteered to help count Bighorn sheep in the desert (July 4th, four hellish days on a rock), Mark Jorgensen. He mentioned a startling fact: these badlands are thousands of vertical feet of soil which the Colorado River threw up as it was creating the Grand Canyon, during ancient floods. Which means that here, outside the Casa Del Zorro, I’m standing …on the Grand Canyon itself.
I get to the front of the Casa Del Zorro. Dang. Night watchman is just locking the front door and disappearing. I think Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. “Alone, alone, all all alone.” What if I can’t get back in?
As I crunch gingerly along, night cicadas stop zinging till I pass. They remind me of a little green grasshopper guy I had land on my hand the other day, completely unaware that he was grasping one of those giant dinosaurs his mama had warned him about. Right now, I’d kinda enjoy his company.
Here's something you might be interested in.
Pull out your iPhone and make a movie
Borrego Springs at its darkest
Pull out your iPhone and make a movie
Borrego Springs at its darkest
Zohibanoo Zolghadr (2nd left), Iranian smartphone moviemaker
For Susy Botello, it started with 9/11. “The whole idea of making movies with iPhones began for me in 2001,” she says. ‘I was here at Grossmont College, studying media communications. On that morning, I got up and went to my History of Media class. I remember seeing the headline. Something about a World Trade Center attack. And there was this really weird mood in the air. Very quiet. Very solemn. And I saw a girl in the hall crying on the phone, crying and talking. And I started to realize how important being able to talk about this was going to be for everybody.”
Suzy Botello: “It was the arrival of the iPhone-4S that really got the ball rolling.”
Botello admits to being obsessed with storytelling. “It’s more powerful, more valuable than all the money in the world. The only way people survive events like 9/11 is by sharing each other’s stories. And at this moment, I thought what if you have a cell phone where you don’t have to have a separate camera, you can use your phone not only to take pictures, but also to record and edit and send video? Of course, it didn’t happen right away. But I saw this coming.”
Botello was thinking big: entire movies shot on mobile phones. Her dream marinated for years, as technology caught up.
“It was the arrival of the iPhone-4S that really got the ball rolling,” she says. Ever since, she has become a missionary — to democratize moviemaking, to make it affordable, doable, inclusive and — did I say? — cheap.” She holds up her smartphone. “This device is the greatest moviemaking tool ever! Smartphone cameras today deliver professional-quality video. What you shoot on your iPhone is plenty good enough to show on the big screen.”
In 2009, Botello put her idea out to the world, with a website, and then an actual International Mobile Film Festival, inviting people to come to San Diego to show their phone-shot movies, from short to full-length. And to exchange ideas. Her slogan? “The Red Carpet Is In Your Pocket!” (This year’s will be held April 25-27.) It has been steadily garnering a following, as wanna-be filmmakers worldwide realize they can make quality films on a tiny budget. And brilliant ideas result.
I met one of the participants in last year’s festival, Iranian filmmaker Zohibanoo Zolghadr. She had to shoot her full-length feature movie, A Long Afternoon, without alerting the authorities in Tehran, who were already watching her. “So we decided to shoot the entire movie in one long shot,” she says. “It took a lot of planning, and couldn’t have happened without the discretion of the iPhone.”
So if the technology is here, why isn’t everybody making movies with their iPhones? If the equipment has shrunk, why is Hollywood still lumbering around with old-fashioned, heavy, bulky, expensive movie cameras? Especially since the iPhone makes it possible for the camera to follow action with a swiftness that’s impossible with the more static Hollywood models?
It’s because moviemakers have their own trades and traditions, Botello says. “And, well, Hollywood. Wannabe moviemakers are intimidated. An iPhone just doesn’t feel professional enough to make full-on movies with, even though picture and sound quality are right up with the best. I try to tell people: ‘OK, iPhone doesn’t have all the bells and whistles, but it tells the story, and story is what matters. Not camera tricks. Getting people to take the iPhone seriously, that’s the problem.”
It’s the last day of the 2024 festival. The awards ceremony. Before heading for the festival feast, Botello has a warning about award obsession. “You shouldn't make a film and share a story just to win an award, because there's a bigger part of that, inside the art, that you're creating. Your story will not go away. It just won't die. It’s not like you find your passion. Your passion finds you, through all the work that you're doing. And once it finds you, it lives with you. It's like your pet, right? You don't want to kill your pet, you gotta feed it, and it'll be loyal to you, and it'll help you grow. The cool thing about making a movie, as opposed to making a grilled cheese sandwich, is you eat the grilled cheese sandwich and it disappears. But when you make a movie, it lives forever.”
Borrego Springs – very dark
It’s my fault. Got myself lost outside Borrego Springs looking for giant sloth prints in the ground. Or saber-tooth tigers’ pad marks. Or ancient camels’, or mammoths’, or mastodons’. Or how about bathtub-sized tortoises, or birds known as Aiolornis Incredibilis that used to cruise with their 17-foot wingspans over the pastures and lakes which dried out and became the Anza Borrego desert. “They were our local fauna, back in the day,” says Anne Reilly. She’s one of the State Park volunteers cooling it in the underground headquarters of the Anza Borrego State Park on the edge of Borrego Springs. “The Anza Borrego desert used to be a kind of Eden,” she says. “Lakes, pastures, streams, and all this mega-fauna, wild life. That was before things started drying out.”
Anne Reilly: "The Anza Borrego desert used to be a kind of Eden.”
So now it’s 11 pm and I’m wandering around the low-lit pathways that weave through the cabins and casitas of La Casa del Zorro resort. Nobody’s around out here, except ghosts. I know I’m not just walking where mammoths plodded, but also giants of Olde Hollywood: the swanky accommodation has sheltered Gary Cooper, Faye Wray, Ronald Reagan, Richard Nixon, B.B. King, and a string of more recent celebs. But most of all I’m worrying about rattlers and bobcats and even mountain lions striking out in the dark from the bushes by this sandy path.
And that’s the question: Why IS everything so dark? It turns out Borrego Springs is a pioneering city in the world of Dark Skies. It was the first officially designated International Dark Sky Community in California, and is still one of its darkest towns. It’s surrounded by 1,000 square miles of desert, and mountains that block light from the coastal cities. Not only that, but by law they have no upward-shining street lights here, and no traffic lights. So when I look up, I see a sky — clear for 300 days a year — that it is magnificently electric. I can see Orion strutting up there wearing his three-star belt like he’s just 100 feet in the air.
I stand here, feeling isolated, but also exhilarated. I remember a ranger in a year I volunteered to help count Bighorn sheep in the desert (July 4th, four hellish days on a rock), Mark Jorgensen. He mentioned a startling fact: these badlands are thousands of vertical feet of soil which the Colorado River threw up as it was creating the Grand Canyon, during ancient floods. Which means that here, outside the Casa Del Zorro, I’m standing …on the Grand Canyon itself.
I get to the front of the Casa Del Zorro. Dang. Night watchman is just locking the front door and disappearing. I think Coleridge's Ancient Mariner. “Alone, alone, all all alone.” What if I can’t get back in?
As I crunch gingerly along, night cicadas stop zinging till I pass. They remind me of a little green grasshopper guy I had land on my hand the other day, completely unaware that he was grasping one of those giant dinosaurs his mama had warned him about. Right now, I’d kinda enjoy his company.
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