I'm a non-film person as well, but I've been playing with this a bit. One key ingredient of the cinema look is the shutter speed. The iPhone standard camera app is constantly adjusting the shutter speed and the ISO depending on how much light the camera is getting.
Movie cameras work differently with a shutter speed fixed at 24 fps, except for some scenes with specific requirements (for example slow motion). The light is controlled using the ISO, the aperture, the lighting, and ND filters.
A nice trick people are using with smartphones to get the cinema look is to use an app like Blackmagic Camera, lock the shutter speed at 24 fps, and mount a variable ND filter on the smartphone to control how much light is received by the sensor, since we can't control with the aperture.
Movie cameras work differently with a shutter speed fixed at 24 fps, except for some scenes with specific requirements (for example slow motion). The light is controlled using the ISO, the aperture, the lighting, and ND filters.
A nice trick people are using with smartphones to get the cinema look is to use an app like Blackmagic Camera, lock the shutter speed at 24 fps, and mount a variable ND filter on the smartphone to control how much light is received by the sensor, since we can't control with the aperture.