Apple

The new Kino app recording ProRes Log with a custom preview LUT.

Kino: My New Favorite iPhone Video App

May 29, 2024

Yes we’re still talking about shooting video on iPhones. But I also want to talk about digital cinema shooting in general, in a world where top camera makers are battling to give filmmakers everything we want in a small, affordable package.

How does the DV Rebel spirit — born of camcorders and skateboard dollies — live on in a time of purpose-built digital cinema cameras that fit in your hand? For me, it’s meant keeping my rigs small and manageable. I love gimbals and drones and lidar focus rigs, but I’m happiest when my whole rig — tripod and all — can be picked up and moved with one hand.

We suffered through so many years of too little camera, but now it’s quite easy to have way too much camera. I want to live in that sweet spot where image quality is not compromised, but I can still move fast.

Turns out I feel the same way about iPhone camera apps.

The Goldilocks of iPhone ProRes Log

The built-in iPhone camera app is too little camera for shooting ProRes Log. There’s no preview LUTs, no manual adjustments, and the viewfinder is obscured by the controls.

The Blackmagic Camera app is a truly wonderful gift to the Apple Log shooter, addressing all these issues. The only feature it lacks is the ability to pick it up in a rush and quickly make great-looking video. So, confession time: I almost never use it for anything other than the most controlled studio shooting. My Peru and Taiwan travel clips? Almost entirely shot with the native camera app.

There’s a massive gulf between the too-little Apple app and the too-much Blackmagic offering. And my friends at Lux, makers of the wonderful Halide still photo app for iPhone, have created a new video app that lives squarely in this sweet spot.

Kino

Choose from built-in LUTs, or load your own. Bake them in, or just preview through them as you record uncorrected log.

Kino is an app you can pop open and start shooting with right away, with just enough control to maximize the final quality of your iPhone video. It’s fast, fun, and a joy to use thanks to its thoughtful and beautiful design.

Out of the (skeuomorphic) box, Kino is basically an app that shoots better-looking video on your recent iPhone. You can choose from professionally-designed LUTs to dial in the look you want.

On iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max, Kino becomes a log-shooting powerhouse. You can choose whether to bake the LUT into your footage or not, and you can add your own LUTs.

Maybe my favorite feature is AutoMotion. While Apple’s camera app prefers fast shutter speeds, Kino tries to keep you as close to a cinematic 180º shutter angle as possible.

Kino runs the spectrum from consumer app that just makes iPhone video look better to professional control and options. It’s the perfect DV Rebel video app.

Prolost Brand LUTs

Kino features LUTs created by filmmakers you’ll recognize, but the honor of supplying the most boring LUT fell to me. The Neutral LUT is none other than my Prolost “TECH” LUT that I explained here.

Point and Shoot Experience, Pro Results

Accessibility has always been core to the DV Rebel ethos, and along with that came a focus on tuning not-quite-professional gear to achieve cinematic results. Years ago, this was essential for the indie filmmaker, as professional gear was truly unattainable.

But even when professional tools are abundant and affordable (seriously, what a time to be a filmmaker!), sometimes the right camera for the job is the one that feels great to shoot with. And the same is true for camera apps.

SHOTWITHKINO.COM

Apple’s “Let Loose” iPad Event was Shot on iPhone — With Panavision Lenses

May 09, 2024

Apple unveiled their new line of iPads yesterday in a pre-recorded video titled “Let Loose.” As with the previous “Scary Fast” MacBook Pro launch video, “Let Loose” ends with a tag proclaiming “Shot on iPhone” — this time adding “Edited on Mac and iPad,” and the fine print: “All presenters, locations, and aerial footage shot on iPhone.”

During the live stream I actively wondered if the iPhone acquisition of “Scary Fast” had been a one-time thing. “Let Loose” looks great, as all Apple videos do, but some shots featured a shallower depth-of-field than is possible with an iPhone-sized lens and sensor combo. At the end of the event, I wondered publicly on Threads about this. Replies speculated about additional lens rigs, some improved version of Cinematic Mode, or maybe blurring the background in post.

Panavision Lens Relay System

After Apple released a behind-the-scenes video about the production of “Scary Fast,” the Internet did its internet thing and questioned the “Shot on iPhone” claim, as if “Shot on iPhone” inherently means “shot with zero other gear besides an iPhone.” These takes were dumb and bad and some even included assertions that Apple added additional lensing to the phones, which they did not.

But for “Let Loose,” they did.

“Let Loose” was shot on iPhone 15 Pro Max, and Apple says that for several shots where a shallow depth-of-field was desired, Panavision lenses were attached to the iPhones using a Panavision-developed mount called the “Lens Relay System.” This rig is publicly available for rent from Panavision today, although not currently listed on their website.

There’s just enough shallow focus in these shots to make me wonder how they could be shot on iPhone

What’s a “lens relay system?” Think of a telescope. Instead of focusing an image on a plane of film or a sensor, it creates what’s known as an “aerial image” that you capture with another lens system — your eye. If you’ve ever smashed your phone up to a pair of binoculars successfully, you’ve made a lens relay system.

I used a Frasier lens relay system from Panavision to get small lenses into tight spaces for a Ruby Tuesday commercial I directed. The Frasier is a pericope lens, one physical unit that contains both the taking lens and the capture lens.

I don't know for sure that Panavision's system uses an aerial image rather than a ground glass like this rig from Beastgrip, but the image quality and name make me think it does.

Either way, with Panavision’s system, the iPhone’s own lens rephotographs the image created by any Panavision lens you like. The iPhone provides the image capture, in ProRes Apple Log, of course.

Panavision showed off this “director’s viewfinder” iPhone rig in April. Not exactly what Apple used, but similar idea. Image from Y. M. Cinema, click through for more.

There are, of course, many systems for mounting lenses to iPhone (Beastgrip is working on a new one), but it’s certainly notable that Panavision made one, as they exclusively serve a market of high-end professional filmmakers.

Why Lenses?

If “Scary Fast” could be shot without add-on lenses, what does Panavision’s rig bring to the table? Apple Log allows the iPhone to capture highly-malleable, 10-bit ProRes footage that fits into a professional pipeline alongside footage from high-end cinema cameras, but the one thing it can’t do is capture the shallow depth-of-field that we associate with high-end productions. The look of “Let Loose” is a collaboration between the iPhone’s clean capture, the focus control of the Panavision lenses, and top-tier color grading — masterfully overseen by an uncredited cinematographer.

Don’t You Start Internet

So is it fair to say “Let Loose” was “Shot on iPhone” if it was done with the help of gear the average iPhone owner could never afford? Of course it is. Feel free to re-read this: What Does and Doesn't Matter about Apple Shooting their October Event on iPhone 15 Pro Max — but in short, the fact that Apple can drop an iPhone into an otherwise-unaltered professional film production and match the look of their previous videos without anyone even noticing is meaningful.

In fact, “Let Loose” is the first Apple Event finished and streamed in HDR, pushing the iPhone’s capture abilities even further than “Scary Fast.”

You don’t need to add cinema lenses to the iPhone to make great-looking images, but the fact that you can is cool.

You also don’t need to twist yourself into knots wondering why you might choose an iPhone over a professional cinema camera when you have a Panavision lens budget. Personally, I’m more excited about the run-and-gun possibilities, but a vote of confidence from the most elite cinema rental house only bolsters the story of iPhone as professional video camera.

Or just make note that Apple confidently intercut footage shot with the most respected cinema lenses available with shots lensed with unadorned iPhones.

The Real Story Here is Apple Log

None of this would be possible without Apple having adding Log ProRes recording to the iPhone 15 Pro. Log is to video what raw is to still photography, and the story of how Apple Log transforms the definition of “Shot on iPhone” from a dalliance to a responsible, even desirable strategy for filmmaking is still ongoing.

Truly “pro” features like color-accurate OLED screens on iPads and ProRes Log on phones don’t just sell a few devices to a few filmmakers. They preserve and elevate Apple’s reputation as the choice of creative professionals in all fields. Apple hardware is vastly overpowered for most of its customer’s uses, so as Apple looks around for folks in need of their very best, they find the Zbrush artist, the Redshift renderer, and now, improbably-but-deservedly, the professional cinematographer.

iPhone ProRes Log in Peru and Taiwan

January 30, 2024

This is a blog post about a video, which is about new color-conversion LUTs for Apple Log footage from the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max (updated from my first set). The video is also a mini-travelogue of my recent trips to Taiwan and Peru. After my explainer video on Apple Log, this one dives a bit deeper into practical LUT workflows, and my state of mind about shooting digital-cinema-grade footage with a device I always have with me.

There’s a lot going on here.

Or Just Skip to the LUTs

Conflicted in Peru

Stu Maschwitz shooting video of a parade in Lima, Peru, using an iPhone 15 Pro Max with an external drive. Awkwardly, a real camera is also strapped around his neck. — Me relaxing on vacation. Photo by Forest Key.

I always have a moment when packing for a trip: Which camera to bring? Which lenses? I know I’m always happier when I pack less, like just a single prime lens. But sometimes FOMO gets me and I pack three zooms.

For my trip to Lima, I brought my Sony a7RIV with the uninspiring-but-compact Sony 35mm F2.8 prime. I lugged it around for a few days, but wasn’t really feeling it.

Meanwhile, my iPhone 15 Pro Max was calling to me with its ProRes Log video mode. “I’m 10-bit!” It would say. “Think of the fun you’ll have color grading me!”

I told my phone to shut up, and proceeded to shoot very little with it — or my Sony. Like a squirrel in the middle of the street, drawn in two different directions at once, I creatively froze.

Photography, for me, is made up of a lot of habits, and shooting iPhone video with aesthetic intent is just not yet baked into my travel muscle memory.

Made in Taiwan

A month later, I took a family trip to Taiwan, one of my favorite places in the world. I’d had some time to process my Peru deadlock, and decided to stop judging my own creative impulses, and let inspiration guide me in which camera I pulled out.

I wound up shooting a lot of video.

Me relaxing on vacation. Photo by Josh Locker.

I loved shooting ProRes Log in Taiwan with the iPhone 15 Pro Max. I’d occasionally reach for Blackmagic Camera, but I often just used the default camera app. I stuck my phone (with its crumbling case) out of taxi sunroofs and skyscraper windows, held it above teeming crowds and shoved it between chain-link fences. Seeing the broad dynamic range I was capturing in scenarios from noontime sun to neon-lit nights got me excited about grading the footage later.

It’s exactly the way I feel about shooting raw stills with my Sony, knowing that I’ll be able to go crazy on them in Lightroom. The photographing act is just half of the process.

Step through the frames below to see how color transforms a single shot from the video above:

Uncorrected Apple Log

Straight out of the camera. I mean, phone.

Look & LUT

An overall correction applied under PL-HERO LUT.

Local Corrections

Various windowed corrections under the Look help guide the viewer’s focus and give the natural-light capture a cinematic feel.

LUTs, Looks, and Magic Bullets

There’s been a bit of a gold rush of people hawking creative LUTs that apply a particular “look” to iPhone Log footage. My day job is, in part, helping make color tools like Magic Bullet Looks, which can do so much more than any LUT. Creative LUTs are great, and by all means support the folks making them — but that’s not what my iPhone LUTs were or are.

The Prolost iPhone LUTs convert Apple Log to various other color spaces, and support three kinds of workflow:

Grade Under a Display Transform LUT

Apple Log is a totally decent color space to work in, so color correcting Apple Log can be as simple as applying Magic Bullet Colorista and choosing one of my Monitor & Grade LUTs. That’s what you see me doing in the video above. Colorista (set to Log mode) does its work on the native Apple Log pixels, and the LUT converts the result to look nice on video.

Many other systems work like this, including LumaFusion, which ships with Prolost Apple Log LUTs.

The key is color correcting under the LUT.

Bring Apple Log into an Existing Workflow

Color work is often done in an intermediate color space. This is usually some kind of wide-gamut, log format, such as Davinci Wide Gamut/Intermediate, or one of the ACES log spaces.

The Prolost ACES LUTs convert Apple Log to either ACEScc or ACEScct log, allowing you to grade your iPhone footage alongside any other professional camera, and output them all through the same pipeline.

Shooting Through a LUT

The Blackmagic Camera app allows you to load any LUTs you want and preview through them without baking them into your footage. With my LUTs, you can shoot with the same LUTs you grade under later, for a truly professional (no joke!) workflow.

The real stars of this update though are the FC LUTs. They add an informative False Color overlay to the Shoot/Grade LUTs, making sure you always nail your exposure. Watch the video to see them in action. I already can’t imagine shooting without them.

These LUTs work well in Blackmagic Camera or even on an external HDMI monitor.

Adjusting exposure with a variable ND filter until the 18% gray card lights up yellow, for perfect exposure. PL-HERO-FC LUT in Blackmagic Camera.

Gathering Resolve

I’ve never edited a whole actual thing in Resolve before.

As if this video wasn’t enough work already (I shot the A-roll in mid-December), I decided to use it as a personal test-case for creative editorial in DaVinci Resolve. It’s the ACES LUTs that allowed me to incorporate Magic Bullet Looks into my Resolve color workflow.

Maxon just shipped a really nice update to Magic Bullet Looks, with simplified color management made possible by more and more apps we support doing darn fine color management at the timeline level.

So in Resolve, I can use my LUT to convert Apple Log to ACEScc, and then apply Magic Bullet Looks, which can now be set to work in ACEScc with a single click.

The new streamlined color options in Magic Bullet Looks. Choose Custom to get the full manual control.

I can sneak additional Resolve corrector nodes between those two for local corrections. Resolve is great at this, and Looks is great at creative look development, so this is a match made in heaven.

Then, at the end, I use an ACES Transform node to convert to Rec. 709 video.

An expert Resolve user could replace my LUTs with Resolve’s built-in Color Space Transform nodes, but the LUTs make this process easier and more reliable.

Gear Inspires

Every photographer knows the feeling of lusting after new gear. We know it so well that we remind ourselves constantly that “next camera syndrome” is debilitating, and that “most cameras are better than most photographers.” Gear is not the answer. Go shoot.

There is, however, a counterpoint to these truths: As shooters, we take inspiration where we can get it. And sometimes a new technique, a new locale, or even, yes, a new bit of kit is what provides it.

The key is to listen for that inspiration, and don’t judge it.

Even if it’s coming from your phone.

Jiufen village, Taiwan. Two a7RIV shots stitched in Lightroom.

Get the Free LUTs

Still frame from Hello! by Goro Fujita, created in VR using Quill

What I Want to Do in Apple Vision Pro

January 19, 2024

Today’s the day to pre-order Apple Vision Pro, Apple’s first “spatial computing” device. It’s an expensive VR headset that either represents an opportunity to beta-test the future, or double down on past failings of VR promises.

I’m a VR skeptic in many ways. I don’t want anything to do with “the metaverse,” and I’m beyond annoyed by fake demos of people pretending to do creative work by waving their hands around like a wannabe Tony Stark. But I’ve owned several Oculus/Meta headsets, and I’ve had some experiences in VR that keep me coming back.

Will Apple Vision Pro become an indispensable productivity tool? I have no idea. But I do have a short list of experiences that I’d like to have with it.

Tranquil Games that Reward Acrophilia

My favorite game on Meta Quest is Daedalus from Vertical Robot. In it, you loft your spherical self through massive brutalist architectural spaces, with lightweight puzzles standing between you and the end of each level.

There’s just enough problem-solving to keep you occupied, and a wonderful sense of flying through beautiful spaces. I’ve played through it twice and look forward to playing it again.

Land’s End was an early VR game from UsTwo Games, famously the creators of Monument Valley, maybe my all-time favorite iOS/iPadOS game. Land’s End was designed to require no controllers, offering a unique gaze-based interaction model that would be a good fit for the controller-free Vision Pro.

These games are not photo-realistic, or action-packed. They don’t have any people in them, or any elaborate effects. In fact, both were designed for early VR systems with limited graphics, controllers, and range of motion. But they create a profound sense of place with their elegant graphics and sound. And they both play with the fun sensation of vertigo — maybe VR’s best party trick.

Do I want these exact games on Apple Vision Pro? Not necessarily — but I hope developers take their cue to create moody, ambient experiences with just enough structure to provide a sense of purpose.

I think of them as places I enjoyed visiting, and to which I’d like to return.

Just Toot Around Blade Runner a Bit

I’ve never “played” Aircar, but just look at it. There was a Blade Runner 2049 promotional app for the Oculus Go that was never ported to the Quest line, and I still miss it in all its clunky glory. Who doesn’t want to fly around aimlessly through a stormy cyberpunk cityscape?

Be In Star Wars

Lucasfilm’s Industrial Light & Magic has done some great work in VR out of their ILM Immersive group (formerly ILMxLAB). Vader Immortal is a three-part series that promises a virtual lightsaber duel with the Sith himself, but delivers far more than that, especially in its quieter moments.

VR is very good at imparting scale, and Star Wars is full of big, cool stuff. Seeing a full-sized Star Destroyer fly over your head brings the scope of the Star Wars universe to life in a simple but powerful way.

As a lifelong Star Wars fan, of all the rides and experiences at Disneyland Park in California, my favorite thing to do is just hang out in “Galaxy's Edge” — the official name for what I always just think of as “Star Wars Land.” There’s a full-sized Millennium Falcon there (usually), and just being near it is better than any ride. I’ll grab a snack and sit where I can see it, and just be in Star Wars for a bit. It’s lovely.

In ILM Immersive’s follow-up Star Wars title Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge, there’s a moment where you’re in that exact fictional spaceport, but seeing it from a vantage not afforded at Disneyland. It’s a neat bit of world-building, and also a nice semi-direct comparison of experiences. I can only go to Disneyland so often — but with a VR headset, I can just be in Star Wars, standing near the Millennium Falcon, any time I want.

That’s me eating my Ronto Wrap in the background.

But honestly, one of my favorite moments is a simple and stupid one that comes early in the game. You’re walking down a hallway of a rusty space freighter, looking out the window at the massive planet below. A sound brings your gaze down to see that a “Gonk Droid” has brushed past you. I went from marveling at the scope of the world to giggling with delight at seeing this dear old friend from my childhood, who has about 20 seconds of screen time in A New Hope, and probably an original series soon on Disney Plus.

For all the effort ILM Immersive has put into Vader Immortal and Tales from the Galaxy’s Edge, I would actually just love a “Star Wars Studio Tour” app. Let me walk through virtual editions of the sets from the original trilogy — and then wave my hand and have them seamlessly become the fully-fleshed-out fictional settings.

John Knoll’s Death Star walkthrough, from “Star Wars Archaeology Panel | Star Wars Celebration Europe 2016” — I want to go to here.

Be Real (High) Places

BRINK Traveler. Teleport to beautiful natural scenery. It’s great.

Honestly this app has more features than I want. They had me at being there.

Save Money on Contractors with Sketchup

We recently remodeled a bathroom in my house, and of course I built the whole thing in Sketchup, then imported it into Cinema 4D and rendered it in Redshift. What I kept wanting to do, however was walk through the space in VR.

Pretty much the day we finished construction, Sketchup released a VR viewer app. It’s not even that great, but it’s great.

In fact, I used it to create an interactive maze “game” for my family. Nothing moves or happens in it, but it’s a cool little experience that was easy to create.

Movies, Sure, But Not 3D Movies

3D movies will be amazing on Vision Pro, they say. Finally we can watch 3D movies without any of the technical limitations of uncomfortable glasses or dim projection.

Except we have to watch them alone, with heavy goggles.

3D doesn’t make movies more immersive. It’s usually distracting and dumb, and most filmmakers do it wrong. Eliminating the technical presentation issues won’t change that.

But I’ll definitely watch some regular old movies on this thing. $4,000 is cheap for a home theater — even one you have to use alone.

Appreciate (and Maybe Make?) Immersive Art

I’m not interested in VR as a filmmaker. I love movies the way they are, and every experience I’ve had with narrative VR video has reinforced that opinion.

Artist Goro Fujita (left), working in Quill (right). Note how the desktop-like animation timeline floats in 3D space alongside his creation.

But when 360º storytelling is taken seriously as its own art form, more akin to interactive theater than to movies or games, it can be quite compelling. An artist I admire in this arena is Goro Fujita. He’s done some beautiful pieces using the Quill app, which is was briefly owned by Meta. In the early days of the Meta Quest, Quill Theater was a neat was to see fresh, fun creative expression in your headset on a regular basis.

As with the games I mentioned above, many of the Quill pieces I’ve experienced stick with me to a surprising degree. My memory treats them like places I’ve visited, and occasionally calls me to return.

Rusty Ships

by Goro Fujita

Rusty Ships

by Goro Fujita

Rusty Ships

by Goro Fujita

While you can experience Quill creations on Quest, to create them requires tethering to a Windows PC. This limitation has kept me from spending much time with the app, but I am impressed by it. It starts as simple and fun as Google’s Tilt Brush, but gradually builds to sophisticated animation and sound controls. Now that Quill is once again in the hands of its original developer, I hope it, or something like it, can thrive on Apple Vision Pro. I’d like to create with it, but I’m also excited to see what others make.

If there’s a fresh, compelling immersive experience created by an artist, not a mega-brand, awaiting me every time I put on the Vision Pro, I’ll reach for it every day.

Curious to learn more? Fujita gave a long and excellent talk (seemingly conducted in VR) on interactive storytelling.

The Biggest Smallest Product Release in Apple History

The Vision Pro is too expensive to be popular, and too important not to command our attention. Major companies are opting out — for now. Indie developers are jumping in. It could wind up feeling like the early days of the iPad, where we all figure out how we want to use this new thing together.

I’m excited to have some memorable experiences in Apple Vision Pro. But the creative tools have to be there to make these experiences personal.

A still from Apple’s “Behind the scenes: An Apple Event shot on iPhone” video

What Does and Doesn’t Matter about Apple Shooting their October Event on iPhone 15 Pro Max

November 07, 2023

Apple Shot Their “Scary Fast” October Event Video on iPhones And We Had Feelings

You’re somewhere on the spectrum of occasionally shooting video on your iPhone to a professional-ish video maker with some gear, and you see at the end of Apple’s October “Scary Fast” event announcing new Macs with M3 silicon that the entire event was “Shot on iPhone.”

This makes you feel a certain way.

Actual footage of me watching the event.

Then Apple posts a behind-the-scenes video showing how this was done, revealing a rare and imposing glimpse into the scale and scope of their industry-leading launch videos. At the center of it all, instead of their customary Arri Alexa (a digital cinema camera costing $35–150K before you even add a lens, used to shoot everything from Avengers: Endgame to Barbie), was an off-the-shelf iPhone 15 Pro Max, gripped into truckloads of professional support gear.

At this point, some folks felt differently about what was implied by “Shot on iPhone.” There have been bad takes on this, and good takes on those bad takes.

Anyone who knows the tiniest bit about video production knows that the camera is a small, but important, but small, part of the overall production picture. “Shot on iPhone” doesn’t promise “and you can do it too” any more than Stanley Kubrick lighting Barry Lyndon with candlelight means anyone with candles can make Barry Lyndon.

But when the camera is the least expensive piece of gear on the set after clothespins and coffee, it does feel strange. I’ve been on a lot of productions like this, having played an active role in the DV filmmaking revolution of the late ’90s-to-early-2000s. It was an odd feeling to scrounge for the adapter plates required to mount a $3,000 DV camcorder purchased at Circuit City to a Fisher dolly that literally has no purchase price.

Apple, of course, has no burden of best-practices logic for their decision to shoot their “Scary Fast” event on iPhone — it’s a marketing ploy, a cool stunt, and a massive flex. A thing to do for its own sake. In the filmmaking community, it was the mic drop of the year. We greedily soaked up all the details in the behind-the-scenes video, and made a hundred tiny calculations about which aspects of this lavish production actually mattered to the question of the iPhone 15’s validity as a professional camera, and which did not.

With all that gear and production support, which aspects of the event really matter to you, the iPhone-curious filmmaker? What can you learn, and which aspects can you safely ignore?

Let’s take it one at a time:

That They Did It: Does Matter

As camera features have played a larger and larger role in Apple’s marketing for new iPhones over the years, you might have begun to feel a bit of cognitive dissonance. Apple tells you about how great, and even “pro,” these new iPhone cameras are — but would never have dreamt of using them to shoot their own videos or product stills. Apple was effectively saying “pro enough for you, but not for us.” Valid, but a bit dissatisfying.

A still frame from Apple’s October 30 “Scary Fast” event video, shot on iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Apple has set the aesthetic bar impossibly high with these pre-recorded events. They’re not just executives teleprompting in front of Keynote slides — they feature “slice of life” moments shot on huge sets and real locations. Elaborate visual effects transition between locations and settings that might be partially virtual. These videos have looked great ever since Covid pushed Apple to find an alternative to executives-on-stage-in-front-of-slides, and even as Apple is now once again able to welcome guests to in-person product launches, these lavishly-produced videos are the new gold standard in pitching the world on a new iThing.

With “Scary Fast,” Apple repeated their now well-established high-production-value playbook, but yoinked out the professional cameras and lenses, and dropped in a commodity consumer telephone in their place.

And crucially, none of us noticed.

It’s a big deal.

They Shot ProRes Log: Matters So Much It Would Be Impossible Without It

There is one single feature of the iPhone 15 Pro that made this stunt possible: Log. As I detailed here in words and video, the “iPhone video look” is designed to win consumer popularity contests, not mimic Apple’s own marketing videos, nor plug into professional workflows.

It may be hard to imagine that a slightly different bit of signal processing when recording a video file from a tiny sensor can make the difference between consumer birthday-cam and professional viability, but that is exactly the power of log. Apple Log has catapulted the iPhone into filmmaking legitimacy.

They Used Big Lights: Does Matter, With An Asterisk

Apple’s event was set at night, with a dark, Halloween-inspired look. It takes a lot of professional lighting gear to illuminate a wide shot of Apple’s campus, and professional skill to balance this lighting with the practical sources on the building itself.

You can do this for cheaper than it looks.

Lighting matters more than any camera, more than any lens. As I wrote in 2009:

Photos are nothing but light — it’s literally all they are made of. Timmy’s birthday and Sally’s wedding are reduced to nothing but photons before they become photographs. So getting the light right is more meaningful to a photo than anything else.

Should you look at the giant lights in Apple’s video and feel dejected that your own productions will never afford this level of illumination? I say no, because a) you’re probably not lighting up the whole side of an architectural marvel, and b) you’re probably not designing your production around one of the world’s highest-paid CEOs.

For Tim Cook’s appearance, Apple’s production had their giant LED light panels on camera dollies, which is not typical. The two reasons I can image they did this are to be low-impact on the campus itself (rubber wheels instead of metal stands), and to be able to adjust the lighting quickly out of respect for Cook’s valuable time. It makes the lighting rigs seem more complex than they really are.

What they really are is big, bright, and soft. And rather minimalistic — mostly key, a bit of fill.

Big, soft LED lighting is actually quite affordable these days. I have two medium-power bi-color lights from Aputure, and together they cost less than my iPhone 15 Pro Max. I couldn’t cover Cook’s opening wide shot with them, but I could get close.

That big softbox overhead? Now *that’s* expensive.

I might also be willing to compromise on my ISO settings to work with a smaller lighting package, where Apple seemingly was not. More on this below.

So the lighting is important, but the quantity of it and the support gear it’s on is specific to this rarified type of time-is-money, night-exterior production. Don’t be distracted by the extra equipment, focus on the fact that the lighting itself is actually rather spare.

They Attached the iPhone to Cranes and Gimbals and Drones and Dollies: Does Not Matter, Except for One Little Thing

The behind-the-scenes video is almost comical in its portrayal of the iPhone gripped into all manner of high-end support gear.

You do not need any of this stuff.

I mean, every filmmaker needs a crane shot — but this is why small cameras are so empowering: everything is a crane when your camera weighs less than a Panavision lens cap!

Check out this video from filmmaker Brandon Li. He uses a gimbal on a hand-held pole to create a perfect crane shot for the opening of his action short. Toward the end, he achieves a nifty top-down shot by... standing on a railing. All with a camera substantially more cumbersome than a phone.

Apple used cranes and remote heads designed for big cameras because that’s how they know how to shoot these videos. Apple’s marketing department is large, and knows exactly what they need on these productions. One thing they need is for a dozen people to watch the camera feed, making sure everything is committee-approved perfect.

This is just the DIT cart, not even the client monitor.

This kind of client-driven support gear compounds on its own requirements. As Tyler Stalman points out in his excellent breakdown video, some of what’s bolted to the iPhones is simply a metal counterweight so that a gimbal head, designed for a much larger camera, can be properly balanced.

You can plug an external drive into the USB-C slot on the iPhone 15 Pro Max, or you can plug in an HDMI adapter for a clean client feed. If you want to do both, you need a USB-C hub, which at that point requires power. So now you’ve got an Anton-Bauer battery pack mounted to this tangle of gear.

When you don’t have clients, you can skip all that and just shoot. This means you can replace most of the gear you see here with a cheap consumer gimbal — or a tripod.

And here’s the key takeaway for this point: Apple achieved optimal image quality from the iPhone in a number of ways, and one, I’m betting, was by turning off image stabilization — which is only advisable when this tiny camera is physically stabilized.

So you don’t need all the stuff Apple used, but if you want comparable results, you need a way to mount your iPhone to something solid. Maybe not a whole powered cage, but certainly a simple tripod mount. Then you can eek out that last bit of extra image quality by turning off image stabilization — which brings us to our next point:

They Used the Blackmagic Camera App: Matters as Much as Log

I don’t think this exact rig was used to capture what we saw in the video, but I believe the settings are representative.

The Blackmagic Camera app has the option to turn off image stabilization, yes, and also like a million other features. Manual, locking exposure control is the top of the list, but there’s a ton more. The app includes a false-color mode to help match exposure from shot to shot. It can load a preview LUT, so you can shoot log but view something closer to what the audience will see.

It’s silly to be grumpy with Apple for not offering this power in their own camera app when they clearly worked with Blackmagic Design to have this app available day-and-date with the iPhone 15.

Oh, and it’s free.

They Used a 180º Shutter: Matters More Than You Think

One slick feature of the Blackmagic Camera App is that you can choose to express the shutter speed in degrees, like a cinema camera, rather than fractions of a second, which is more typical in stills. A 180º shutter — where the shutter is open for half the duration of a single frame, e.g. 1/60th of a second at 30 fps — is important for a pro look. Anything slower and you get smeary blur and a camcorder look. Anything faster and your footage looks like you shot it on a phone, because 99% of the time our iPhones are using insanely fast shutter speeds to handle typical daylight. Look at any of your own daytime iPhone video — I’d be surprised if you see any motion blur at all.

Compare Apple’s motion blur to mine. 180º shutter vs. probably something more like 1º.

Relatedly:

They Shot at ISO 55: Matters to Apple’s Goal of Maximum Image Quality

Here’s where the level of professional control over the lighting starts to really matter: If Apple decided that they must shoot at ISO 55 (the lowest, although possibly not the native ISO of the 1x camera) for the highest image quality, and with a 180º shutter for the most pro-camera look, that means they have no other control over exposure. The iPhone 15 Pro 1x lens does not have a variable aperture, so shutter speed and ISO are your only exposure controls.

When shooting in uncontrolled environments, the typical method of limiting the amount of light entering the lens is via ND filters, sometimes variable ND filters. I don’t see any evidence that Apple used filters on this shoot, which would fit with their overall prioritization of image quality over all else. So this goes back to lighting — Apple’s team controlled that lighting perfectly, because they opted out of any exposure control they might have had in-camera.

I'm curious to learn more about this setting though. YouTubers Gerald Undone and Patrick Tomasso did some tests and found that the best dynamic range from the iPhone 15 Pro came from ISO 1100–1450, with 1250 being their recommended sweet spot. Did Apple prioritize low noise over dynamic range?

They shot 30p: Doesn’t Matter

Apple has used 30 frames-per-second for these pre-recorded keynotes since they started in September of 2020. They’re not trying to be “cinematic,” they’re trying to make a nice, clean video that can take the place of a live event. 30p is a choice, and a fine one for an on-stage presentation. You might choose 24 or 25 fps for a more narrative look, and that’s great too.

Note that Apple’s native Camera app offers 30.0 and 24.0 fps, but the Blackmagic Camera app adds support for 29.97 and 23.976 fps, which are the actual broadcast frame rates Apple uses for their productions.

They Focused Manually: Doesn’t Matter

The Blackmagic Camera app truly has a dizzying set of features, some seemingly part of an attempt to win some kind of bizarre bet. Like support for wireless external follow-focus controls? I mean, wow, but also, really?

Sure makes for a cool behind-the-scenes shot, but I bet you can live without this.

They Used a Matte Box: Does Matter

While Apple did not attach any additional lenses to their production iPhones, they did put stuff in front of the built-in lenses — notably teleprompters, of course, and comically-large matte boxes.

Matte boxes might feel like affectations in this context, but shielding that tiny lens from glare is actually a significant way to improve overall image quality. Luckily, you don’t really need a full-on matte box to do this. A French flag will do it, as will your hand.

If a bright light is dinging your little lens, you’re leaving a ton of image quality on the floor.

They Exclusively Used the 1x Camera: Does Matter — to Apple

The 1x camera, with image stabilization turned off, gives the highest-quality image available from the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Are you detecting a theme here? Apple imposed a number of limitations on how they used the iPhone camera, seemingly always in the name of maximizing image quality.

As we’ll discuss below, you may or may not share this priority.

They Edited in Premiere Pro? Doesn’t Matter

Eagle-eyed viewers noticed that an Adobe Premiere Pro timeline appears behind the editor of “Scary Fast,” not Apple’s own Final Cut Pro. But we’re not in a real edit suite here — we’re actually on one of the sets from the production. Did Apple really edit in Premiere?

I have a feeling that this and Stefan Sonnenfeld’s interview were staged on Apple’s standing sets rather than in real studio environements to keep the production close to home — for cost, control, and secrecy reasons. So let’s assume Apple really did cut in Premiere. This means next to nothing. All editing software does the same job, and it’s unlikely Apple would impose a workflow on the production company they hired to both shoot and post-produce the video.

Other than of course to ensure that it be cut on a Mac. It’s interesting to note that Apple’s Pro Workflows Group, representatives from which are interviewed in the behind-the-scenes video, are a part of the hardware division at Apple. Their charter is to promote and support professional use of Apple devices, regardless of which software they’re running.

Should Final Cut Pro users be nervous that Apple might send it to live on a farm with Shake and Aperture? It’s hard to regain our trust here, but Apple did just release a very nice version for iPad a few months ago, and substantial updates to that and the Mac version just yesterday.

So there’s really nothing to see here. Move along.

They Colored in Resolve: Doesn’t Matter

Apple hired Company 3 to produce this video. Company 3 is best-known as a color house. In my visual effects and commercial directing career. I’ve worked with several amazing colorists there, from Dave Hussey to Siggy Ferstl to their CEO, Stefan Sonnenfeld, who is prominently featured in the behind-the-scenes. Stefan is one of the most prolific, talented, and well-known colorists working today. I modeled half the presets in Magic Bullet Looks after his famous grades on films like Transformers, 300, John Wick, Man on Fire, and hundreds more.

If you can get Stefan to color your video, that’s what matters — not the tool he uses. Resolve is “free” (with many asterisks), but a session at Company 3 is four-figures per hour.

Whether you use Resolve, Magic Bullet, or whatever else, what matters here is that shooting log means color grading is not just possible, but essential, and great care was taken with this part of the process.

This All Makes Sense. Why Do I Still Feel Weird About it?

As much as I might disagree with an accusation that Apple was disingenuous to say “Shot on iPhone” about a massive production with seemingly unlimited resources, I understand where this feeling comes from. “Shot on iPhone” carries with it the implication of accessibility. We are meant to be inspired by this phrase to use a tool that we already carry with us every day to capture videos that might transcend mere records of our life’s moments, and become part of our artistic pursuits.

And we should absolutely feel that way about the iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max.

The reason we feel slightly disconnected from Apple’s impressive exercise is not that they were dishonest — it's that their priorities were different from ours. Apple wants to sell iPhones, and to accomplish this, they spared no expense to put the very highest image quality on the screen.

As a filmmaker, you care about image quality, but you care about other things too — probably more.

Sticking to the 1x lens gives the best image quality, sure, but choosing the right lens for the story you’re telling might matter more to a filmmaker. You’ll probably gleefully use all the focal lengths Apple supplied.

As much as you might value the clean image that comes from shooting at ISO 55, you might get more production value for your budget by using smaller lights (or available light!) and accepting some noise at higher ISOs.

You might truly appreciate the value of a 180º shutter, and simply not always have a camera case/cage that allows you to mount a variable ND filter to your telephone. I ordered one from PolarPro the day the iPhone 15 was released and it still hasn’t shipped, so I’ve shot next to no 180º shutter footage so far.

You might well understand that turning off image stabilization will improve your image — unless your shot is now wobbly, because you’re shooting handheld out the window of a moving car. So maybe you’ll leave stabilization on, and be a human crane, or gimbal, or dolly, or all of the above.

Never use the 5x lens. Never use image stabilization. Never shoot through a dirty windshield. And never get this dope-ass shot.

Let’s be honest: If image quality is your top priority, there are much better options for your next production than a consumer telephone. You’d probably choose the iPhone more for its accessibility, nimbleness, ubiquity, and low cost. Those are great reasons, and when you pair them with image quality that can be mistaken for high-end cinema camera footage by a veteran colorist, you’ve got something magic.

Give It To Me In Bullets You Long-winded Monster

So we may well ignore much of Apple’s implied advice, but we would do well to follow some of it if we can:

Use camera support. Not crazy camera support, but some.
Use lights. Not crazy lights, but some.
Use a camera app that allows manual control, like Blackmagic Camera
Use 180° shutter, if you can (ND filters will help)
Keep light off of the lens using a $8,000 matte box or a bit of black tape
Hire literally the world’s most famous colorist. Or just do some color correction.
And most importantly, shoot in log, with a good preview LUT

The incredible production apparatus of my helicopter tunnel shot from my last post.

Shot on iPhone Means What it Means to You

All of this is academic if you don’t go put it into practice. If you got this far and feel empowered to wring the most out of your iPhone 15 Pro with just the right amount of gear, that’s great. If you actively forget all of this and occasionally flip on the Log switch so you can play with the color of your iPhone videos in post, that’s great too.

Because here’s the thing: movies have already been shot on phones. No production’s decisions validate any camera for all other production needs. You decide what “Shot on iPhone” means to you, if anything. And the way you decide is by getting out there and shooting something.