Huawei invites us all to rethink the possibilities of cinema with its brand new model – the Mate 30 Pro. While the model itself has only launched in limited concept stores, Huawei has stated that they hope that the phone will find itself in the hands of most Filipinos due to our love for movies, vlogging, and social media.
Last Feb. 11, Huawei extended invites to the media for an intimate gathering in the SM Aura Cinema in BGC, Taguig. to showcase the capabilities of the Mate 30 Pro. Rather than just being a sales pitch where they explain the many impressive features the phone has directly, they decided to invite some of the most promising and innovative directors in the local scene to demonstrate said features instead.
First to showcase the Mate 30 Pro’s film potential was award-winning motion picture director Pepe Diokno with Things.
The short film is composed of a montage of close-up shots of a man going through his life – from infancy all the way to the end. Direk Pepe explains that the aim was to show that people tend to commit to memory, to take pictures and videos of the things we treasure in life – which were the technical focal points of his short. His shots were always upclose and focused on hands, feet, and the activities they do instead of the people themselves. While the narrative itself is a common thing in Diokno’s work, the use of Mate 30 Pro innovates how intimate moments can be captured on film. With a lightweight handheld, the filmmaker was able to capture angles that were once awkward or difficult to capture with a bulky professional camera – such as in corners of a small room, in between tight spaces, and through interlocked bodies.
The next feature was TV Commercial Director Sid Maderazo’s short documentary Film Is Not Dead
The five-minute feature was shot night time and focused on the noble task of film restoration. While the content itself was very enlightening and sure to pique the interest of vintage art and film connoisseurs, Maderazo skillfully showcases the Mate 30 Pro’s capabilities of filming with low light and the ability to capture digital screens as the naked eye sees them – something that was difficult achieve for most cameras without setup or postprocessing. Afterwards, Direk Sid gave a brief comprehensive tutorial on how to use the Mate 30 Pro to skillfully capture scenes in slow-mo and in low-light.
To demonstrate the flexibility and range of the phone’s capabilities, local indie darling Reese Lansangan’s music video for her single Wildwood was shown.
Lansangan’s MV shows that even with a casual device such as a phone, one can create a dreamy, intimate videos worthy to be in any artist’s reel. The Wildwood video uses decadent techniques to intentionally achieve grainy and off-focus shots without sacrificing quality to attain that “Insta-ready” feel.
The last feature of the night was visual journalist Lyka Gonzalez’ documentary on Save Philippine Seas’ efforts to protect our local marine ecosystem and fishing communities titled Warden of the Seas.
The documentary was a heartfelt up-close look on how our local fisherfolk communities and fish nests are under attack by illegal activity, and how SPS and Huawei have partnered in trying to provide solutions for this problem. Besides Huawei’s noble environmentalist and humanitarian efforts, the video – which was shot completely with the Mate 30 Pro – showcased the phone’s ability to withstand harsh conditions as well as having an outstanding battery life – lasting prolonged filming on sea.
While the Mate 30 Pro won’t be replacing professional movie cameras for general filming purposes any time soon, Huawei and the guest directors hope that this introduction of a lightweight equipment inspires the general public to film and make movies now that quality output is now made more accessible to the people. While, sure, dedicated professional equipment and technical editing still make state-of-the-art movies the visual feats that they are, it’s more important to be storytellers. They wish to drive this movement further by organizing the first ever Huawei Film Awards – an Asia-Pacific wide contest for short films shot using the Mate 30 Pro – with a gallant prize of 20,000 usd (which is essentially a film grant for future projects).
You can join in the Huawei Film Awards which is open for entries up until February 25, 2020. For more information regarding the Huawei Film Awards, you can visit their website.