iPhone Filmmaking: Koss Headphones Commercial

Professional photographer and filmmaker Martin Moore recently shot a commercial using the iPhone XS Max. And from first glance it looks like he used auto settings (you can see the exposure change as the camera moves). His only extra gear was a 3 axis gimbal to steady the footage.

He posted on reddit:

I wanted to share this for anyone interested in the full potential of the iPhone XS Max camera system or interested in hearing the thoughts on the Xs Max potential from someone who shoots video and photos professionally. I just got my Xs Max a week ago and I was totally blown away by the new camera system. The dynamic range, color saturation, af acquisition and af tracking and over all image quality had me thinking, ‘I wonder if I could actually shoot a commercial with this, and if so could anyone even tell?’ Steven Soderbergh who is a filmmaker I idolize shot an entire full length film on an iPhone and I’ve seen a ton of other examples from other filmmakers trying the same thing, so I figured why not! Ha. Anyways, I’ll post the link the comments below. You guys are the judge, but I honesty think we are at a point where you’ll start to see this sort of thing happening more and more. The freedom to move around without a giant gimbal and my giant camera allows me to be so much more creative. So anyways, hope this post finds it’s way to anyone who might find it useful. Feel free to bug me with any questions about how I shot it, the gear and gimbal I used, or editing. Cheers!

He goes on to add more insights:

I shot it at 4K 30fps so I could slow it down slightly about 95%, but edited it in FCPX at 24fps to make it a little more smooth and cinematic. Not ideal, but I like slowing footage down just a tiny bit to make it more fluid. I slowed all the cuts down to around 95% because I wanted it to feel a little more fluid and I did’t really come across any noticeable frame interpolation when viewing at 24fps. Normally I would have just shot at 24fps and used optical flow but that can be so hit or miss and I didn’t wanna risk it and get a bunch of jello while he was dancing..lol that would have ruined my day.

Auto Exposure

If you watch closely in the first scene where he comes out of the door/walks down the steps and I pan up there is a pretty big exposure adjustment as the sky was far brighter and you can watch the software change the exposure pretty drastically. That clip is the only one I really heavily touched up as I had to do a little exposure masking in the upper left sky to make it not so noticeable. We really wanted to use that spot for the initial shot because the wood deck he walks out on looked really cool when panning over it at such a low angle, but the sun wasn’t in our favor there.

You mean… no AE lock?

Other than that first shot there isn’t much as far as exposure/color adjustments for the rest of the video and I tried to keep him in the same light as much as I could to avoid exactly what you described. If I could do it all again I’d have just locked the AE but it never even occurred to me to use that built in feature. Ha I didn’t even notice the exposure shift until I was back at my computer and it was too late. Hoping the majority of people don’t even notice it as they wouldn’t even be looking for it or have any clue otherwise this was all shot on an iPhone. Ha.

FiLMiC Pro next time

It was a great learning experience and now that I’ve downloaded Filmic Pro I’m going to see how far I can take this and how good I can get at making more of these with just a gimbal and my Max. If this was my first time filming on an iPhone and it turned out this good I’d like to believe going forward it’s going to get even better. Hopefully! Ha. Also forgot to mention I used a MOZA Mini-MI 3 Axis Gimbal. $99 (I used the) …stock camera app but I’m going to experiment with some other apps going forward.

iPhone filming… raw (almost)

Sounds like Martin pretty much just grabbed his iPhone and a gimbal and started filming. Presuming he got paid for this commercial, I think that’s pretty eye-opening for many of us who obsess over equipment and apps.

Well, here’s the commercial. What do you think of the results?

The Making Of…

You can also watch Martin’s behind the scenes making of video:

Read Next: Best Smartphone Filmmaking Kit 2019.

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