January 24, 2014 marked 30 years since the original Macintosh was unveiled by Apple, and to commemorate the occasion, they decided to make a video around the world in just one day, showing all the ways people use Apple products. What better device to shoot this commercial on than the iPhone 5S -- which plenty of people have in their pockets? Check out the full ad below, as well as what it took to coordinate the crews around the world.
What the team accomplished is pretty amazing, but I think something that gets lost on people at times is what goes on behind the scenes to make these sorts of things happen. They may have shot on iPhones, but a good amount money was spent on support gear and personnel to make it happen. Again, that's not to take anything away from what they were able to do (because it's pretty wild when you look at it), but the average person probably won't be going out and producing something like this just with their phone -- there is a bit more to it than that. Likely their thinking in using the phones was, why not if we can make it work to our advantage?
And with that out of the way, here's the video:
Behind the scenes:
The video was directed by Jake Scott, son of Ridley as seen here (from the Apple website):
In order to direct 15 separate locations filming in a single day, Jake Scott transformed a sound stage in Los Angeles into a command center. He equipped it with an arsenal of Apple products including iMac, Mac Pro, and iPad, along with large projection displays positioned around the room. From there he was able to watch every scene as it was shot, and direct all the action remotely via FaceTime. Many involved in the production believe this innovative approach to a multilocation shoot will be adopted by other filmmakers.
The command center is rather impressive, and the fact that they were coordinating shoots from around the world in just one room is amazing. This control room could very well be its own movie, but I think it will be interesting if we see more of this in the future. I could imagine a production using this technique to be on set somewhere, and be directing a second unit at the same time in a completely different location.
It's clear that a lot of money goes into these sorts of things, so really the camera is almost an afterthought. It's good, however, to put into perspective what it takes behind the scenes -- even if they were shooting on iPhones (and at 30fps, which Apple should have selectable to 24fps at this point).
You can read about more of this over on the Apple website.
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