The fact that Apple recorded the event video with an iPhone was one of the most important revelations made during the launch of new Macs with M3 chips.
It wasn’t a new product that made a big splash when Apple unveiled the new M3 chip series for Macs at its Scary Fast event earlier this week; rather, it was a product that was released in September. “This event was shot on iPhone and edited on Mac,” This event was shot on iPhone and edited on Mac.”
All of the presenters, locations, and even the drone footage were captured using an iPhone 15 Pro Max, according to the fine print beneath the text.Since 2020, Apple has substituted professionally shot and edited prerecorded videos for live presenters at product launch events. However, this marks the first time Apple has released a keynote event video that was captured exclusively on an iPhone.
Yes, Apple CEO Tim Cook and other executives were recorded introducing updated Macs on the same phone that you use to record your kids playing around the house, concerts, or your adorable pets. However, this was not the scenario where a gleeful Apple employee was holding their brand-new iPhone 15 Pro Max in landscape mode, filming, and assisting Cook in obtaining the optimal lighting.
The $1,199 phone was used to feed video previews to numerous monitors while mounted on expensive accessories like a camera crane, drone, gimbal, and dolly. The BeastGrip cage, which ranges in price from $140 to $325 depending on the model, held the iPhone 15 Pro Max. Professional lighting and modifiers were used to make everyone, from Cook to Issa Rae, look their best. External hard drives were connected to the iPhone to store recordings, and external microphones were used to record the audio.
A small army of experts worked on the video shoot and post-production. This means that everything else still costs tens of thousands of dollars or more, excluding the iPhone.
Apple doesn’t hesitate to advertise films made with an iPhone. Films like Unsane and High Flying Bird, which are feature lengths, were shot by Steven Soderbergh using an iPhone. Music videos shot on an iPhone abound for artists such as Olivia Rodrigo and Lady Gaga. Heck, Steven Speilberg used an iPhone to record his very first music video, for Marcus Mumford’s song Cannibal.
Apple notes in a behind-the-scenes press release that ProRes video in Apple Log—which offers a great deal of flexibility for color grading videos and reducing image noise in the shadows—was recorded using an iPhone 15 Pro Max with the free Blackmagic Camera app. Much of Apple’s event video was shot in the dark, even with all the lighting, with Cook standing outside under a night sky and wishing us all a “good evening” rather than his customary “good morning.”