Bigname movie created with tech from two small Seattle startups

SEATTLE» In hindsight, the last week of March would have been the perfect time for Marc Barros to buy a lottery ticket. But even without it, the week was a pretty fortunate one for the Seattle startup founder.

His company, Moment, launched a Kickstarter campaign that reached its goal of $50,000 in 41 minutes. The startup then went on to mark its best week in sales, five times its previous record.

And Barros found out a major Hollywood movie had been shot using his startup’s mobilephone camera lenses, which attach to smartphones to produce more detailed, higherquality images.

The newest Steven Soderbergh movie “Unsane” was shot entirely on an iphone 7 Plus using technology from Moment and another small Seattle company, FILMIC, which makes an app to bring highend video capability to smartphones. Like Barros, FILMic founder Niell Barham only learned after the movie was produced that his technology was used in the horror flick from the acclaimed director.

“We probably would have offered to give them some products for free or some thing,” Barros said, laughing.

Soderbergh’s movie, starring Claire Foy as a woman involuntarily committed to a nightmarish psychiatric facility, garnered attention for its nontraditional filming method — adding legitimacy to an industry Barros and Barham say they knew was going to boom, even when others doubted it.

“In the early days, people thought it was sort of a gimmick,” Barham said. “It was ‘Haha, professional quality on an iphone, you’ve got to be kidding me.’ ”

But as smartphones became more advanced, people began ditching separate cameras and relying on their phones. The big break, Barros said, came from the rise of Youtube stars, especially in the last five years.

Some Youtube personalities have millions of followers — internet celebrities in their own right — and many of them use iphones or a Google Pixel or Samsung Galaxy phone to shoot their songs, makeup tutorials or mechanic tips.

“Unsane” just helped to boost the visibility of what can be done with the small devices.

Of course, highend cameras have many features the iphones don’t, and that’s where FILMIC Pro comes in. The company’s app lets filmmakers choose from different highend resolutions, tweak color grade and confirm image stabilization.

One of its newest features is the option to shoot remotely by putting the smartphone on a dolly or a lighting grid, and control it from another device farther away. It allows for unusual shots that couldn’t be achieved if someone had to hold the phone, Barham said.

He had heard whispers of Soderbergh’s new movie using the technology, but it wasn’t confirmed until it was previewed at the Berlin International Film Festival in February. The app developed by FILMIC, which was founded in 2010 and has 12 fulltime employees, had already been used to shoot smallbudget film “Tangerine,” which went on to impress audiences in 2015, and one scene in Oscarnominated “The Florida Project.”

“Tangerine” was shot on the iphone partly because of budget reasons, but Soderbergh told Indiewire he used an iphone because of its impressive cinematography capabilities. “I think this is the future,” he told the filmindustry publication. “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.”