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Moment made a retro video app for iPhones

Moment made a retro video app for iPhones

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Filter your videos with looks made by creators

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Moment Rtro app
Photo: Moment

Moment is launching a new iPhone app today that lets you record video, cover it in a retro filter, and send it off to your stories on Instagram, Snapchat, or wherever else, giving it a look that’ll theoretically stand out a little bit from the crowd.

The app is called Rtro, and it’s really easy to dive into. It launches straight to a camera screen. From there, you swipe left and right to move between filters, drag up and down to adjust the filter’s intensity, and tap the record button to capture up to a minute of footage across multiple clips. You can think of it a little bit like VSCO but for video.

Rtro is meant to be a fun way to quickly put together a good-looking story, not some serious filmmaking tool. “We just wanted to make something super simple,” Moment CEO Marc Barros told The Verge. “It was really an app for the filmmakers on the team to have fun on the weekend.”

Image: Moment

There’s a lot that’s clever about Rtro’s design. It’s built entirely on the idea that you’ll export your footage to stories on other apps, which means you can just pick this up and start using it; there’s no Rtro social network you need to worry about.

Another neat thing: all of the filters are being designed by individual creators who Moment is partnering with. So far, it’s a mix of filmmakers, photographers, and Moment employees. There are no major names right now, but I can imagine people downloading it to get their favorite creator’s signature look if someone with a following signed up. Creators will get a cut of their filter’s sales.

The downside to the app is that its costs add up. It’s free to download, and a few filters are available for free. But after that, you have to pay $15 per year (or $2 per month) to unlock the rest of the app. That subscription fee gives you all of Rtro’s filters (with new ones promised monthly), control over frame rates, subject tracking autofocus, and the ability to disable a watermark that, by default, shows up on everything you film. Alternatively, you can purchase filters individually for $2 each, but you’re still stuck with the watermark on top of them, even though you paid.

Moment might add some basic editing features like trimming, but it intends to keep Rtro as quick to use as possible, Barros said. The team is even considering limiting how many filters that app includes so that users don’t get overloaded. “It just gets too serious when you start editing,” Barros said. The goal is to make something you won’t overthink. “It’s just to have fun, get into video a little bit, and keep it simple.”