Edible Apple

I Am Number 4director DJ Caruso details his experience using the iPad on set as a production tool.

I got it, I don’t want to say as a toy, but then I realized about a week into prep that my storyboards were coming on it, my previs was on it, my script was on it, I don’t carry my script anymore. I started getting emails from two of my storyboard artists who work in Los Angeles and I have this application where I can mark up the boards — I’m a terrible drawer — and I can mark up the boards and send them back. It just became this amazing production tool.

So much for the iPad being merely a content consumption device.

Further, the iPad played an important role in some of the on-screen action as well. Caruso explained that when Alex Pettyfer’s character John Smith discovers that one of his supernatural powers involves the ability to control light through his hands, the flashlight-like contraption used by Pettyfer was controlled off-screen by an iPad.

“Our gaffer,” Caruso continued, “we have this lumen that’s on Number Four’s hand, he controls the lumen, he controls the lighting and everything is run from his iPad.”

Read more about the iPad’s impact and utility on the set of I am Number Four here.