The secret to getting beautiful iPhone cinematography

0:00 The iPhone 17, as you know,

0:01 it is marketed as a micro cinema camera, but there's a catch.

0:05 In order to get the shots you see in an Apple commercial,

0:08 you need Apple level budget, Hollywood rigging,

0:11 a full crew, and use Apple's proprietary ProRes RAW that they have,

0:18 which takes up so much file space.

0:20 Does the iPhone 17 hold up or is it just a gimmick?

0:23 So, that's why this weekend Jackie and I went out to shoot an entire

0:26 video shot on the iPhone 17 with no additional rigging, no big setup.

0:31 It's just the camera [music] on its own

0:33 and the most affordable lighting kit I've ever seen, which is from Amaran.

0:37 And by using this thing, the Spiro Halo from K&F Concepts.

0:41 This was $40 off of Amazon.

0:43 I just put it to the lens and it just boy,

0:47 oh, boy, this actually made it look so cool.

0:50 But, who am I to say any of this?

0:51 Watch the film, let me know what you think,

0:53 and then I'm going to talk about the whole process of shooting this short film.

0:57 Good morning, East Side Baltimore.

0:59 It is a great day to jump out of bed and enjoy that perfect cup of morning Joe.

1:03 The weather is an unusually perfect 19°.

1:06 The sky is a vibrant blue and there is not a cloud in sight.

1:10 And in case you forgot,

1:11 today is the day we announce the lucky Lotto Prime winner.

1:15 Today's winner will receive $500 million, a mortgage-free home,

1:19 and a lifetime supply of diet Coke.

1:22 And today's lucky winner is Jenny Williams.

1:30 Looks like today's your lucky day.

1:45 [music and singing] Hey, Jenny, it's me.

1:55 You were right.

1:56 I did sign up for the 3-year intensive therapy.

2:04 [music] [music] [music] __] First thing is we have the Halo 100,

2:43 the lowest wattage and the smallest light,

2:45 and I put it on the C-stand arm to kind

2:47 of create some sunlight that's blasting down on Jackie.

2:50 Um and I put it on the C-stand arm so it could be out of our frame,

2:54 but be motivated just like the window light.

2:56 We've got the nice little baby Fresnel on this.

2:58 And then over here, I've got the 300, and this is at about like 18% brightness.

3:05 It's just to create a little more wrap with the light.

3:08 I've got zero light coming in from where camera side is.

3:11 It's to create a bit more shadow.

3:13 And I think with the wrap of this light and the little

3:15 light over top of this, it's all going to work out quite nice.

3:18 All of this stuff that I'm talking about here, I'm not a pro at.

3:21 I've just heard cinematographers talk about

3:23 this and I'm really just following my intuition on.

3:25 But, something that I think gets overlooked is uh wardrobe and paint color.

3:31 So, Jackie's wearing this nice vibrant red, which pops out a lot in the scene.

3:36 I think if she was wearing like a green

3:37 shirt or a gray shirt or perhaps a blue shirt, it wouldn't look as good.

3:42 So, I think color works well.

3:44 Red and blue pop really nicely.

3:46 And also, our walls were blue,

3:48 so it helped create some separation and made her eyes pop out a lot more.

3:52 And then uh again, shooting shadow side and getting

3:55 that light to come in from one side versus another, I think did a lot of work.

3:59 So, here is our next lighting setup.

4:01 We have the Halo 300X just tucked in the corner over here,

4:06 and that's creating like this ambient back light,

4:09 but I felt like the back wall didn't look cool enough,

4:12 so then we have the Halo 100, and that's creating just some spice on the back.

4:19 And then, I'm using this little guy.

4:25 I've heard a lot of DPs talk about this.

4:27 When you go into a space, you look at the what the natural light's

4:29 doing and that should help dictate or inspire you,

4:32 but our window goes like the other way

4:35 and it kind of makes the entire bathroom lit up,

4:37 which is nice, I guess, on a regular day, but it wasn't the like depth I wanted

4:42 in my shot because it would made everything look flat.

4:44 So, instead, I actually faked the motivated source,

4:47 put it behind Jackie to create um some back light, and I used the same combo.

4:53 I used the 300X with the Octodome.

4:56 That was creating nice soft back light, almost like a window behind her.

5:00 And then to create a little bit of like slash,

5:02 like there was like a window or something, I don't know,

5:04 to create texture on that uh tile,

5:07 um I just had the 100 and with the Fresnel on it creating that shape.

5:12 That did a lot of work and it really looks good even with the overhead.

5:15 And then when Jackie does her rotation, she was a little bit out of the light,

5:19 so what I did is in Premiere, I used the magic mask tool.

5:24 I used that, highlighted her a bit,

5:26 and it made her pop out of the frame a lot nicer.

5:29 Jackie and I just finished up doing our shower scene.

5:33 Take that how you will.

5:34 Really happy to have the setup turned out.

5:36 I've been shooting all of this with the iPhone 17

5:38 on a gimbal so to kind of create that nice smooth motion.

5:42 The reason why I'm doing all of these different lighting

5:45 setups is not to show you that I'm a good cinematographer.

5:48 I actually don't think I am, but I am a director who likes to shoot,

5:53 and I always feel like in the creative world,

5:56 the director or lead creative is kind of insulated from doing

6:00 the different parts within different departments because always on a shoot,

6:04 there's no time to learn.

6:05 You're just kind of thrown into the flames.

6:07 So, what I've wanted to do is learn more about every department by doing

6:11 these little micro productions based off of what

6:14 I've learned from working with really talented cinematographers.

6:18 This video [music] is sponsored by Amaran.

6:20 If you guys don't know, I've been a huge fan of Amaran for a long

6:24 time because they are innovating

6:26 and creating technology for creators specifically.

6:30 So, where a lot [music] of companies are

6:32 sticking with the traditional route, making very big,

6:35 cumbersome setups that work with a crew,

6:37 Amaran, I think, puts the creator first.

6:40 And so, I just want to talk about the Halo

6:41 lights cuz that's what we're using in today's video,

6:44 and I've adored using these.

6:46 Now, what I like about Amaran's this full

6:48 ecosystem is it works off of their app, [music] and it's easy to connect to.

6:51 You can either do through Bluetooth or you can do the NFT tap,

6:55 which I did with all of these ones, and it worked quite nicely.

6:57 Amaran comes with the backing of like making solid products.

7:01 Like I promise you, these are very good, and the price point is ridiculous.

7:05 You can buy all four of these lights for under $2,000, which is just insanity.

7:09 So, you could have the entire lighting kit, go out, shoot,

7:12 DP, do commercials, do that sort of thing for two grand.

7:16 Just individually, you've got the 100X that is like the size of a sandwich.

7:20 Look how small this is.

7:21 Fits in the palm of your hand and works really good for those tight spaces.

7:24 What I like about it is because it's so small, you can really tuck it up and get

7:27 some really more narrow kind of overhead light.

7:30 But, if you wanted to go all the way up to, let's say,

7:32 their most powerful one, which is the 600,

7:34 this was our main money maker for this shoot.

7:37 It just looked so good on all of the scenes that we were doing,

7:40 and I just attached the Fresnel on the top.

7:42 So, you can get 600 watts of power from a light that's under $700,

7:49 and then with the Fresnel boosting that power, this is the sun.

7:53 So, if you're interested in getting lights, building out your kit,

7:56 and starting at a more affordable point,

7:58 these Halo lights I could not recommend enough.

8:01 The next setup is Jackie running down the stairs.

8:04 I just had the Fresnel on like our big Fresnel

8:08 with the 600 and just blasted it down the stairs.

8:11 and then had a one the 100 shooting a little bit in the kitchen,

8:15 and that created enough ambience.

8:23 Hey, Ollie.

8:24 I feel your weiner on me.

8:25 Why are you air humping right now?

8:27 The next bit that I was really happy about, though,

8:30 was when I started using uh the lights outside

8:33 the window and kind of created this more natural look.

8:36 So, I had the 600X with the Fresnel blasting through our window,

8:41 and then I used the 100 and just kind of hit Jackie from the top down.

8:46 And what this did is it almost made it feel like a a bit more stage-like.

8:50 [music] Um I'm not a big fan of harsh light hitting anybody.

8:53 I don't think it looks the most flattering,

8:57 but in some cases, it's the most realistic,

8:59 and when it comes to like theatrical lighting,

9:02 and that's what I wanted this to feel like, it worked quite nice.

9:04 So, I had the 100X hitting Jackie from the front.

9:07 That kind of created a bit more depth with her in the foreground.

9:10 And then I had the uh 600 blasting through the window.

9:13 And then to create a lot more dimension, I used uh I used this thing.

9:22 Okay, and then our next setup is when Jackie enters the living room.

9:26 Now, this setup was uh using the 600X uh out through one of the windows,

9:31 but we have two windows, and I realized it was going to look a little weird

9:34 with just one light coming through and then not in the other.

9:37 So, then I used the 300X and put it through the other window.

9:40 So, therefore, we had two sources of bright light coming through the windows,

9:44 and uh I thought it looked pretty good.

9:48 Um the Fresnel with the 600 definitely gave the most juice,

9:51 but I also found the light out the other window did a great job,

9:54 and it just made me want to motivate

9:56 putting the camera always shooting in that direction.

9:59 Um Um and then that with a 16 mil or I guess a 13

10:02 mil lens on the iPhone created this very Harry Styles music video vibe.

10:08 And Jackie and I just both knew how to flow in this.

10:11 And again, talking about what I brought up earlier within the space,

10:14 wardrobe works really well with pairing with lighting.

10:17 But the walls being painted dark blue was very much

10:21 in our favor cuz there wasn't a lot of bounce happening.

10:24 So therefore Jackie was more of a silhouette.

10:26 And then if I wanted to show more

10:28 of her face or a bit more character within the scene,

10:30 I would rotate the camera around to get

10:32 her a little bit more front lit by those windows.

10:35 But a lot of the time I just thought that silhouetted look just worked

10:37 so well with her body moving and kept us in that like dream-like dance state.

10:42 So obviously this was all shot with the iPhone 17 and I was blown away with it.

10:47 Uh the application that I use is the Blackmagic Camera app.

10:51 I did not shoot this in the ProRes Apple Log or whatever cuz that just

10:56 takes up way too much space and I didn't want to burn all my data.

11:00 So instead I used H.265.

11:04 Um that was the color space I used.

11:06 this in 4K, but I think I only burned I

11:10 think I only shot like two or three gigs of footage.

11:14 It wasn't a whole lot in this 45 clips that I shot.

11:17 This base LUT Apple iPhone Apple Log 2 to Rec.

11:20 709 bold from Gamut, I think is the name of the color site.

11:25 These are free LUTs that I use for my iPhone.

11:28 And then as far as like the creative LUT that's on top of everything,

11:32 I use Danny Gurbits's blue orange.

11:35 Then I threw on a Fujifilm 250D Fuji 3510 by Adobe.

11:41 Uh that's built in within Premiere and I put that at 72% uh intensity.

11:46 So that was kind of the setup.

11:47 If you guys want to learn more about the technical specs of doing this stuff,

11:51 let me know and I'll talk a little bit more about that in another video.

11:54 But thank you guys so much for watching, hopefully learning,

11:56 and go take a look at Amran's amazing selection of lights.

11:59 These halo lights are incredible.

12:01 They work really well with daylight, tungsten.

12:05 But if you are just starting out like I said,

12:06 this is an amazing kit to work with.

12:08 It lit this entire video and I'm just so happy with how it turned out.

12:11 Thank you guys so much for watching and I'll see you in another video.