A couple of weeks ago we interviewed one of the world’s top extreme sports film makers Claudiu Voicu.
Claudiu was about to head off to the freerunning Red Bull Art of Motion event in Santorini, Greece, armed with nothing more than a Nokia Lumia 1020. Well now he’s back and with a video that might just be the most amazing film ever shot on a Nokia Lumia 1020. To see for yourself, hold onto your seats and press play.
Needless to say after watching such a mind-blowing action video, we were keen to hook up with the master filmmaker himself. Here’s what he had to say about his action adventure and the Nokia Lumia 1020.
Some people here at Nokia Conversations think this is the best video ever shot on a Nokia Lumia 1020. What was it about the smartphone that enabled you to capture both the scenery and the movement so fantastically?
It’s going to have to be the ease of use and size. It’s a phone with an amazing camera bundled inside it. We had it inches away from the water, jumped around rooftops with it and held it out while quad biking – things I’d probably not do with my DSLR or RED. The wide-angle lens proved great for capturing the action from any angle we could think of, and once zoomed in you’d get some nice macro shots with smooth DoF too. Even the OIS performed better than expected when we were speeding down bumpy roads on quad bikes.
We went with the aim of proving you could make a great, fun video with just a mobile phone and I think we’ve achieved that. At the end of the trip even some die-hard Apple fans were wanting to play with it!
The film contains some truly spectacular shots. Which features and setting did you find most useful in creating them and are there any you couldn’t have shot with a traditional camera?
We didn’t actually change many settings at all! Everything was good to go out of the box. We’d just pull the phones out of our pockets when anything interesting happened and filmed away. Auto-exposure and focus works great, and it didn’t once fail when we taped it to the bottom of the camera crane (where it recorded non-stop for 45-minutes). It’d be nice if my DSLR had auto-focus that good in video mode…
You’ve filmed loads of free running before, but this was your first time in Santorini and first time using the Lumia 1020. What was the biggest challenges and the biggest buzzes of the event?
The 1020 makes shooting really fun and easy so the biggest challenge was probably waking up early enough to first recce the rooftop location and then filming there at an even earlier time the following day. None of us were getting much sleep and we still had to travel a fair bit on our quad bikes. We kinda forgot about all of that once we found our rooftop and witnessed the sun rise.
A lot of people speak about the amazing sunset there – and most of the hotels and villas face towards it – but sunrise there is just as good, if not better. Our friend and judge Tim ‘Livewire’ Shieff even did a bit of yoga there! Great location aside, seeing the guys and girls pull up some seriously incredible moves was the highlight for me. I’ve been into Parkour and Freerunning since 2001 and it continues to progress every single year without fail. It’ll be interesting to see what people are capable of next year…
The film really is a breathtaking montage of jumps, twists and flips. If there was one scene you’d love to see in slow motion over and over again what would it be and why?
It has to be Jesse La Flaire doing the 360 over the walkway, onto a narrow arch and straight into a move called a cork. He won the ‘sickest trick’ award for it and deservedly so! The fact that he managed to do something so precise and controlled on a fairly slipper surface, and in quite intense light, speaks volumes about his level of skill. Honestly, I’d quite like to see most of the movements in slow-motion – everyone was pulling off some incredible movements there!
Claudiu makes it all sound so easy, but you only have to watch the video to appreciate both his film making mastery and the amazing tech inside the Nokia Lumia 1020. We think this combination has created what might just be the coolest Lumia 1020 ever shot. Question is, do you?