Behind the Scenes at ‘Scary Fast’ – Shot With iPhone 15 Pro Max

Apple Newsroom:

On Monday, October 30, at Apple’s Scary Fast special event unveiling the all-new MacBook Pro with the M3 family of chips and 24-inch iMac with M3, there was an unseen star of the show working behind the scenes. All of the presenters, locations, and drone footage in the event were filmed using iPhone 15 Pro Max, the preferred smartphone for creative pros and filmmakers. Led by documentary film director Brian Oakes, known for the award-winning Jim: The James Foley Story and Living with Lincoln, Scary Fast put iPhone 15 Pro Max right in the middle of the action.

I noticed the credit at the end of the video last night: “This event was shot on iPhone and edited on Mac”, but until I saw that, I never would have guessed that the video was shot on iPhones. It looked every bit as good as Apple’s previous pre-recorded keynotes, which presumably were shot on dedicated professional digital film cameras. To my eyes Apple didn’t sacrifice an iota of image quality.

Even better, the behind-the-scenes documentary is fascinating. Given their cinematic quality, I’ve always assumed these videos were major productions behind the scenes, but now we can see it — everything from lighting, directing, cinematography, sound, set design, talent, crew, editing, color grading — every single aspect of these keynotes aspires to the highest levels of production quality. Not merely “this looks and sounds good for a marketing video”, but “this looks and sounds good for a movie”.

It’s impressive what the iPhone 15 Pro camera is capable of. And it’s really fun that Apple finally took us behind the scenes of one of these keynotes.

★ Tuesday, 31 October 2023