Apple hired director Lulu Wang to showcase the cinematic features of the technology company’s latest iPhone.
Wang, who wrote and directed the 2019 feature film “The Farewell”, directed a new short for Apple in celebration of the Chinese New Year, “Nian”, which adds a new twist to a well-known Chinese folktale. (Watch above or on this link.) The 11-minute film was directed by Wang and his team from “The Farewell” and shot on an iPhone 12 Pro Max.
Apple, which has just announced a dizzying quarter on the holiday of 2020, with a record $ 65.6 billion in iPhone sales, considers the iPhone 12 Pro models to be the best smartphone ever made for filmmakers. They are the first iPhones that can record HDR video in Dolby Vision, as well as providing the ability to edit 4K video at up to 60 frames per second directly on the phone. During the launch event last fall, Apple showed a 60-second film shot in HDR video with Dolby Vision on an iPhone 12 Pro by Oscar-winning filmmaker Emmanuel “Chivo” Lubezki (watch this link).
With the launch of the iPhone 12, Apple’s sales in Greater China skyrocketed to a record high of $ 21.3 billion in the December 2020 quarter – and with the promotional short “Nian”, New York’s fourth annual Chinese film Apple, the tech giant wants to keep momentum.
Wang and his team worked on “Nian” remotely in the United States with a mirror team on the ground in China because of COVID’s travel restrictions. The team used the Dolby Vision of the iPhone 12 Pro Max, ultra-wide-angle lens, telephoto lens, stabilization and time lapse of the iPhone 12 Pro Max. The production featured difficult-to-shoot night scenes and scenes set inside a cave, where the space and lighting were limited.
“Nian” tells the story of a courageous young woman’s determination to find – and confront – the much feared beast Nian. When she comes face to face with him, she discovers that Nian is not at all scary and the two start a beautiful friendship based on acceptance.
“It is really exciting to have the opportunity to retell this old story, to capture these incredibly cinematic images with the iPhone, this versatile device,” said Wang in a behind-the-scenes feature that accompanies the film. She said that the “Nian” team had a lot of fun trying to figure out where else to put the phone to get angles and perspectives that are a little bit more exclusive. “
“We thought, ‘Oh, why don’t we just put the phone in Nian’s mouth?’ I think its size allows us to get all kinds of interesting and special photos that would be much more difficult to get with the traditional camera, ”said Wang.
Wang, whose parents emigrated from China to the United States when she was 6, added: “As a child, my parents wanted me to go further than they ever did. And there is still this fear that I was going into the unknown, so I wanted to bring that theme to this film ”.
“Nian” was produced by Iconoclast in association with the Apple advertising agency TBWA Media Arts Lab (Shanghai). The film features an original soundtrack by Alex Weston.
Previous Apple films marking the Chinese New Year are “Daughter” (2020), “The Bucket” (2019) and “Three Minutes” (2018).
Watch the behind the scenes clip of Wang’s “Nian” production: