Watch: Damien Chazelle Shot This Vertical Short Film on an iPhone 11

The new iPhones have one of the most powerful cameras in them. To showcase the new specs, Apple and Damien Chazelle teamed up to shoot some of cinema history vertically. In a short called The Stunt Double, we open on a modern movie scene where our hero escapes bad guys and jumps off the top of the building. 

It's then that we realize he's actually a stuntman in an action movie, but the rig to save his life is broken...so as he plummets to his doom, he imagines himself throughout Hollywood history. 

Check it out below. 

This journey through cinema history is reimagined for the vertical screen by Damien Chazelle and shot on iPhone 11 Pro. I loved watching as classic genres were flipped on their sides, from action movies to silent films, spy flicks to westerns.

It's crazy to think how many genres and styles we've seen come and go and to see how this director reframes and modernizes the movie magic we know and love.

One of the things tying it all together was the original score by Grammy Award winner Lorne Balfe and the cinematography was done by Linus Sandgren. 

Still, with all that power in the iPhone, I would have loved to see someone turn that camera to wide and shoot it in a more cinematic style. Vertical video is a fun gimmick but that sliver of the story keeps things feeling small and never quite "whole" to me. 

Though, I did love the sequence of 80s films where we got an insert that looked very Commando to me. 

Lucky for us, the stuntman is saved and lands at the end, having completed our journey through it all. He ends with a kiss and we end with a feeling that the iPhone can really do a lot of amazing things, but I'd rather see them done wide.