Shot On iPhone 11 Pro – Daughter, a Tale of 3 Women

Apple have released a new “shot on iPhone” film, in time for Chinese New Year (January 25). While most of these films are non-narrative, non-dialogue visual extravaganzas, Daughter is a real Hollywood-style movie. Complete with sepia-toned flashbacks.

They also seem to be making a habit of including a behind the scenes movie too (like with Snowbrawl). Which I love because it gives us a glimpse into extra gear and the size of crew and so on.

The story is about a taxi driver, her young daughter and her broken relationship with her mother. It’s great to see a story about 3 women, who are all strong characters. But perhaps a shame all the creative folk behind the camera are men?

Daughter is directed by Theodore Melfi (Hidden Figures, St Vincent). The cinematography is by Lawrence Sher (Joker, Godzilla, The Hangover). Star Zhou Xun is is said to be “China’s leading actress.” So Apple have employed some big guns to shoot this short and I’m sure they spent a few $ on it.

Imagination

The daughter steals the show, mainly with the creative use of a toy telescope. In the BTS doc, Melfi says they came up with the toy telescope partly to overcome the lack of a shallow depth of field from the iPhone. By placing objects in the foreground they created depth in the image.

For this trick, they built a telescope with lights around it which was then mounted to the front of the iPhone.

In this shot, you can also see Sher operating the iPhone 11 Pro using the Beastgrip rig. Watching the BTS doc, looks like they used the Beastgrip for almost every handheld shot. Of course, it’s easy to quickly mount the iPhone on a tripod with it cased in a Beastgrip cage.

But in one scene, however, they use the iPhone 11 Pro completely stripped down, using the native super wide lens.

Extra Kit

In the opening half of the BTS doc, you can see the huge amount of extra rig and kit used in one of these productions. In this shot, you can see how the Beastgrip is so useful when mounting the iPhone or when mounting things to the phone. This looks like a wireless lavalier setup connected to the iPhone 11 Pro with an adapter.

Then there’s all these lights and crew…

Of course, FiLMiC Pro was used for manual control.

They also got very creative mounting the iPhone in places you couldn’t mount a regular camera. In glove boxes, mounted to wheels, to the rear view mirror and so on. Again, that’s great to see because it shows they’re using the phone for it’s advantages. As long as it also adds to the story, then I’m all for it.

In this shot you can see they have 4 iPhones (at least) running at the same time. One on the dashboard, one on a Beastgrip, one on a bigger 3-Axis Gimbal and one on a Movi Cinema Robot. They’re leaving nothing to chance here…

Also note, this is a moving car shot. Which means the whole rig and car are setup on a trailer being driven around, which allows the crew to get the shots they need (safely).

Shallow Depth of Field

Although Melfi says the iPhone has little shallow depth of field, to my eyes some of the shots looked like there was a bit going on there. I tried to spot conversion lenses being used but I couldn’t see anything conclusive. Is this from the inbuilt telephoto then?

If so, then I’m impressed. Although it doesn’t add that big bokeh effect, it does give you a little separation between subject and background.

Anyway, it’s a very heartwarming story for Chinese New Year. It feels little like a Christmas story, with food at the centre of the family, uniting them. What are your thoughts on it? Did you get a little dumpling in your throat at the end there?

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