Last year, Mike Castellucci, a reporter for WFAA, the Tegna-owned ABC affiliate in Dallas, made broadcast history. “No one has ever done a half-hour TV broadcast with just an iPhone. We promoted it as a broadcast TV first.” That broadcast first was a half-hour special titled, Phoning It In. Now Castellucci has created a sequel, […]
Last year, Mike Castellucci, a reporter for WFAA, the Tegna-owned ABC affiliate in Dallas, made broadcast history.
“No one has ever done a half-hour TV broadcast with just an iPhone. We promoted it as a broadcast TV first.”
That broadcast first was a half-hour special titled, Phoning It In.
Now Castellucci has created a sequel, another half-hour special called Phoning It In: Life on an iPhone, which aired last Saturday evening on WFAA.
The first special won an Edward R. Murrow award and three Lone Star Emmys.
“The phone thing started a couple years ago when my boss said, ‘hey do you think you could do an entire package with just your iPhone?’ and I said, I’ll give it a shot, and so I did it to the extreme by doing a whole half-hour after that, and now this is the second time I’ve done it,” said Castellucci.
In addition to being the human interest feature reporter for WFAA, he’s also the co-host of a mid-morning show on WFAA, Good Morning Texas.
When I asked Castellucci if he had a special type of iPhone, he laughed and said, “No, just the one in my pocket.”
Castellucci says he has outfitted his iPhone with an external microphone, and carries a “little tri-pod, a couple wide-angle lens, but that’s about it.”
At first the memory available on his iPhone 5 was an issue, as video uses up a lot of memory.
“Now I have an iPhone 6, and it has like 64 gig. I shoot little segments and then download them onto my laptop. I can pretty much shoot an entire story, like a 3-minute story, with about 5 gigs.”
In addition to the half-hour specials, Castellucci admits he’s been phoning it in on breaking news stories as well.
“I’ve done day turns also with it, covered a tornado with it, went out at 11 in the morning and had the story on for the evening 6 o’clock news. It’s really nice to go out and do my own thing.”
Does shooting with an iPhone present any major obstacles?
“People ask, are you limited? No, not really, that’s why I like to go out and use it.”
Being a one-man band using just an iPhone, Castellucci must lock down any shots that he’s in, like a stand-up. And the iPhone does have limited zooming capabilities.
“I zoom with my feet. I walk up to something to get closer.”
In fact, Castellucci says shooting with an iPhone is mostly advantageous.
“It’s less intimidating, unobtrusive and people have a tendency to not worry as much about that, because everybody has a phone and they’re used to that.”
Castillucci cites a story he did in his second special about a little Girl Scout.
“They told me was she not very talkative. We just kind of talked and the phone’s there. A huge camera would have completely clammed her up.”
Castellucci says the video quality of the footage shot on his iPhone has never been an issue.
“Not once has anybody ever complained about footage quality, not once. In fact, it’s just the opposite, you got that on an iPhone?”
Even the station’s editors can’t tell the difference.
His advice for any reporters thinking about shooting news with an iPhone?
“Do it. Just go out and mess around with it. I don’t possess any special talents when it comes to photography. I just went out and used it a lot.”
Castellucci says he envisions the use of the iPhone in news coverage becoming more mainstream.
“In coverage of tragedies like the Paris attacks, all you see is iPhone footage. But you still need to have the journalists, someone who can fashion a story, out of what they’re shooting.”
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