Is this the real reason Apple set a night-time event? And the Aussie company that featured in every shot!

Apple’s “Scary Fast” event was a delightful day-time event for us here in Australia, but a late afternoon event in Cupertino. But in US terms it was prime time on the East Coast and thats night time too. So why did Apple choose a night time event? Sure, we can argue that it worked for Halloween, but I think it was to showcase the low-light capabilities of the iPhone 15.

You see the entire – yes, entire Apple event today was shot on iPhone. Every frame was filmed with an iPhone.

That was a throwaway line in the credit at the end, but it was a critical thing for Apple to prove the outright capabilities of their flagship device.

Now, let’s be clear, as all the Behind the Scenes shots show – this wasn’t Greg Joswiak holding the iPhone while Tim Cook spoke, this was a full on production as it always is – it’s just that the “lens” was an iPhone 15.

Huge dolly’s, cranes and even drones were used in the shoot, and the iPhone sat in a secure mount on all of them.

Behind an Autocue whenever a presenter was speaking, or rigged to a drone for the flying shots.

But what’s incredible is how well it came up, despite the low light, and the use of tunnels and very specific lighting on the day.

And for us Aussies, something even more remarkable. Every single shot was filmed using the “Blackmagic Cam” app. An advanced app to unlock all the potential of your iPhone 15 and record in the right formats, with timecodes and all those fancy filmmaker things.

Sure, it was a big budget production, but at the heart of it all was iPhone 15.

Oh, and of course, it was edited entirely on Mac.

Here’s what all the key players said about the process of shooting with iPhone:

Director, Brian Oakes

“We were able to get the same complex shots with iPhone 15 Pro Max.” “It’s amazing to see that the quality from a device that is so small and so portable can rival a large $20,000 camera.”

“There’s cranes, there’s dollies, there’s all the toys that you want as a filmmaker, and everybody’s moving and has their job to do, and it’s just a very exciting and lively environment.” 

“iPhone is great new tool in the palette of filmmakers. Seeing it different is doing injustice to any of the other mediums that people bleed for as filmmakers. Everything is there to be an extension of someone’s vision or personality. The image quality of iPhone definitely democratizes the access.” 

Colorist Stefan Sonnenfeld

“When I first got the footage from iPhone 15 Pro Max, I was immediately pleasantly surprised.” “The quality of the image on iPhone 15 Pro Max is incredible, and it’s there. And I know because I’ve done it and I’ve seen it, and we’re doing this project with it.”

“I think what I love about the iPhone is it enables everybody who uses it to have access to incredible amounts of information, and with a really intuitive operating system, so that whether it’s myself or my 7-year-old, anybody can pick it up and pretty much use it right away.”

Editor Elizabeth Orson

“For our colorists and VFX artists that we work with, I think being able to have that ProRes Log footage allows them a lot more opportunity to be able to really dial things in in a way they couldn’t have before. And this is beautiful because it’s like working with an Alexa or a Sony, and it has that same gamut that you can run as you’re coloring or as you’re doing your flame work. I think that’s great that we can give those people that kind of flexibility now.”

“I think what’s beautiful about this phone is the opportunity for so many people to be able to use it to make the films that they’ve been dreaming of making. You know, it opens it up to up and coming filmmakers, people who are just getting started, but it’s also super pro enough that a professional filmmaker on a set, on a movie set or a TV show could use it and could make something beautiful. And people wouldn’t even realize that it was shot on a phone.”

Adam Watson VFX

On working with footage shot on iPhone 15 Pro Max: “Extremely seamless, familiar to how we would normally work in a professional visual effects pipeline, to the point where there’s been times when we’ve all forgotten it’s actually shot on iPhone. It looks very similar and it has been interacting in a way that we feel very comfortable with and sort of the extreme end of detail that we go to in our process.”

“ProRes Log is just a game changer, I think for all of us.”  

“The thing that impressed me the most about the iPhone 15 Pro’s footage was when we went through that comparison phase after we finished production. I was sitting with the colorist and it really was imperceivable the difference between what we would have seen from previous years using the professional level cameras like the Sony and Alexa.”