When I travelled to Houston from New Jersey to shoot Baby Jay’s “Girl IF U Were Mine” music video, I made sure to get there a day early. His manager, Rolando Cuellar, picked up my DP, Khalid Mohtaseb and I at our hotel and we spent the day driving around Galena Park, Texas looking for great places to film.

When we found a location I liked, I had either Rolando or Khalid pose and I took a bunch of photos with a Nikon D300. One of the nice things about using the Nikon was that I was able to use the same lenses that we would use over the course of our shoot since we were filming with an HVX equipped with a Letus Extreme 35 Adapter.

At the end of the day, and after eating at an incredible Mexican Restaurant that only locals are privy to, I went back to my hotel room, booted up my MacBook and imported my photos into Aperture. From there I brought them into iMovie, made a quick slide show with music and simple titles and exported a small Quicktime movie.

The movie was good for two things.

First, I emailed it to my clients, friends and family to keep them posted on my progress in Texas. I actually landed a few jobs because of it. Always a good thing.

Second, I imported it onto my iPhone and used it as a storyboard aid for the next three days of shooting. Basically, we’d arrive at a location, I’d play the movie and let everyone, including Baby Jay, see what shots and looks I was interested in. It only took a minute and everyone was on the same page. I can’t stress enough how much time I saved! The three days went incredibly smooth and I really believe it was because the movie on my iPhone. It actually got everyone excited to see how cool the music video would look and I gained a great deal of trust from it.

I’ve always used shot lists but was never a big fan of drawn storyboards. I always felt that they never really matched the location, and in my experience, clients would get stuck on them, not realizing how fluid a film shoot can be.

But photos are another story. So find you’re locations, bring some friends to pose and shoot the heck out of it. Make a slide show and export it to your iPhone or Video iPod and I promise, your shoot will be smoother, you’ll get more set ups in per day and most importantly, your end product will look and feel that much better.

Please DIGG this story at: iPhone to the Rescue!

You can check out the “Girl If You Were Mine” storyboard video below.

You can listen to the whole one hour episode at:

Digital Production Buzz

It’s a great podcast and I highly recommend Video Professionals subscribe to it via iTunes.

Or you can just listen to my interview below.

The Buzz Interview