📱 A Golden Age for Creators

Let’s start with this: we live in an extraordinary time for visual creators. The arrival of consumer video cameras made filmmaking more accessible, but even then, hobbyist filmmaking used to cost hundreds of thousands of yen. It became cheaper—tens of thousands—but still required gear, training, and time. It wasn’t exactly “easy for anyone.”

Now? Nearly everyone owns a video camera, an editing suite, and even a screening room.
That’s right—your smartphone.

I remember an old Doraemon episode where a camera could instantly project the footage it shot. Back then, it felt like pure fantasy. But today, reality has far surpassed that idea.

Here’s what’s truly revolutionary:

• In the film era, shooting a scenario cost hundreds of thousands of yen
• In the video tape era, tens of thousands
• In the smartphone era, you can shoot for free

And that zero-cost environment brings a huge advantage: you can fail safely.

Failure is the most effective teacher. But when film costs tens of thousands per day, you can’t afford to mess up. You end up spending more time planning than shooting—and that slows down your growth.

In fact, one of the biggest enemies of creativity is spending too much time. That’s why smartphones are ideal: they let you shoot freely, without fear of wasting resources.

If you’re unsure whether to shoot from one angle or another—just shoot both. That’s how you build experience and instinct.

📷 Smartphone Lenses Are Unique

Because of their convenience, I recommend starting your filmmaking journey with a smartphone. But you should understand how its lens behaves.

Lenses generally fall into three categories:

• Wide-angle lens
• Standard lens
• Telephoto lens

The standard lens is closest to how we see the world with our eyes.

Smartphones, however, use wide-angle lenses. That’s why you can take a selfie with a friend just by stretching your arm. A standard lens wouldn’t capture more than your faces—it has a narrower field of view.

With a smartphone, you can take a group photo from just two meters away. A standard lens would require five meters to fit everyone in frame.

Sounds convenient, right? But there’s a catch.

Wide-angle lenses distort the image. In group photos, people in the center look fine, but those near the edges appear stretched or warped. That’s because wide-angle lenses squeeze in more than they naturally should—by bending the image.

The extreme version of this is the fisheye lens.

Buildings, for example, will show curved pillars the farther they are from the center of the frame. You need to accept this distortion as part of the lens’s nature.

That said, many directors intentionally use wide-angle lenses to create dynamic, visually rich compositions. They’re especially effective in art-heavy films.

In my own work, I use wide-angle attachments on video cameras and shoot certain scenes directly with smartphones when the look suits the moment.

🖼️ Adapting Storyboards to Smartphone Shots

I tend to storyboard in detail before shooting. Naturally, I try to match the composition exactly. But with smartphones, that’s often difficult.

For example, if you want to frame a character’s face over the shoulder of another, you might find the face appears much smaller than expected.

In such cases, it’s better to adjust the composition rather than force it. Accept how the smartphone captures the scene and adapt accordingly.

🚫 Avoid Digital Zoom

One important tip: don’t use digital zoom.

Video cameras use optical zoom, which bends light to magnify the image without losing quality. Smartphones use digital zoom, which simply enlarges the image artificially—resulting in lower resolution.

If you zoom in 5x, the image quality drops to one-fifth. And zooming during shooting often leads to shaky, hard-to-watch footage.

If you absolutely need a zoomed-in shot, it’s better to shoot normally and crop during editing. You’ll get the same result with fewer issues.

🎥 Don’t Wait for the “Perfect” Camera

As your knowledge grows, you might start thinking, “I should use a better camera to make a great film.” But knowledge without experience won’t get you far.

People who say “I’ll do it properly someday” often never start.

The best move is to begin now—with the smartphone you already have.

Hope this helps spark your filmmaking journey.

Would you like help turning this into a bilingual guide or visual tutorial for aspiring creators? I’d love to collaborate.