In the domestic film industry, there is a rather unique category, which is called the Lunar New Year file.
In the past, it mostly referred to comedies such as "Party A and Party B" and "Do Not Disturb", which were released before the Spring Festival and had suitable content for all ages, so that the whole family could laugh in front of the cinema or TV.
When the time comes to the past few years, with the gradual shrinking of the offline film market, coupled with the change of young consumers' tastes for movies, the traditional "New Year file" has lost its glory. Instead, there are some exquisite, short, and more humane themes of "network movies", which have gradually become the hot spots of attention and discussion on the eve of the Spring Festival every year.
For example, the "Comeback" launched on Apple's official website a few days ago uses a short, simple, but can touch and laugh at more people's stories to once again play the characteristics of the "New Year file" to the fullest.
This is a "Piano of Steel" that belongs to the countryside.
This year's Apple's "New Year's Film" invited Zhang Meng as a director, and when Zhang Meng is mentioned, many friends may be more familiar with his work "The Piano of Steel" released in 2011.
Interestingly, "The Comeback" can almost be regarded as a "high-definition condensed remake" of "The Piano of Steel" to some extent. However, the area of focus has changed from a northeast steel mill to a remote village, the protagonist has changed from a laid-off worker to a stuntman who lost his job due to injury, and the plot line of "making a piano" has also been changed to "leading the villagers to shoot a Martian-themed movie".
From the background of the times, these changes are undoubtedly very grounded. At the beginning of the plot, the protagonist's injury and unemployment, the father's role in front of the villagers for the sake of good face, the act of bragging about his son as a "big director", is actually what the elders in every family have done more or less. Under the "strong onlookers" of many villagers, the father's idea of "making a movie and making the village into a popular tourist attraction" and the son's role hope to take the elders to the city to live and stay away from the countryside are also very symbolic.
After the first round of contradictory confrontations, the plot quickly enters a relatively nonsensical funny link. When the son did not agree to assist, the father decided to take the villagers to finish the filming of the film himself, followed by various chicken and dog jumping failures.
Next, when the son who can't watch it agrees to help, the movie enters the final climax. The director uses a variety of camera shifts to show how the villagers can simply shoot the sci-fi footage of the "Mars Movie" under limited conditions. Among them, especially when the astronauts went to press the "password door", the sound of a "return to zero" prompt sounded, which must have made many friends smile.
In the end, the film ended in a bland, but also emotional way. In fact, my father understood from the beginning that the film could not make the countryside become an "internet celebrity", but in the process of shooting, whether it was father and son, or villagers, they all regained the long-lost family affection and cohesion.
The image power of the iPhone 13 Pro can still be used in this way
Like the "New Year's Eve films" launched by Apple every year in the past, "Comeback" this year is also filmed by the entire shooting team using the iPhone. But compared to last year, this year's shooting has undergone some changes.
On the one hand, the equipment used by this year's shooting team is the "big cup" of the iPhone 13 Pro, not last year's "iPhone 12 Pro Max". The reason for this is that the probability is that in the iPhone 13 series of this generation of models, the CMOS and lens specifications of the iPhone 13 Pro have been upgraded to the same as the iPhone 13 Pro Max, and there is no difference in theoretical picture quality between the two.
On the other hand, many previous iPhone-based movies will use some third-party imaging apps to achieve higher frame rates or bit rates. This year's "Comeback" is not the case, which uses the camera function of the iPhone throughout. In other words, for ordinary users, the shooting effect is relatively more valuable.
Obviously, this is not surprising. After all, as Apple's official "New Year's film", of course, itself has a certain advertising intention in it. From the shooting tidbits released at the same time, we can actually see many shooting methods that are worth learning from ordinary users.
For example, the rocket launches in the play, the wheels raise sand and other shots, in fact, the iPhone at a very close distance to shoot the miniature model to get the picture. Here, on the one hand, the macro focus capability of the iPhone 13 Pro is shown, and on the other hand, it also shows its IP68 dust-proof and water-resistant body technology.
Another example is a fight scene at the beginning of the film, part of which is filmed with a mobile phone tied to the actor's arm. And this is obviously to emphasize the iPhone 13 series models, this time the whole series is equipped with CMOS stabilization effect.
In addition, it is not difficult to find in the whole film that there are many shots that switch between the front and back scenes, and this part is undoubtedly automatically realized directly using the iPhone 13 Pro. As the imaging function that may make the most full use of AI computing power in the current mobile phone industry, the "movie effect mode" that can automatically identify objects facing the lens and automatically switch focus is also used here.
An experience that only Apple can achieve can say a lot in itself
Although we have said so much in the previous article, this certainly does not mean that for the average user, everyone will be able to shoot exactly the same blockbuster with the iPhone. Regardless of the costume and shooting experience, a closer look at the explanatory text at the end of the film will find that this year's "New Year's Eve film" was filmed almost entirely in apple ProRes format.
This means that throughout the shoot, every minute of footage needs to occupy nearly 3.5GB (1080P 60fps), or even 5.6GB (4K 30fps) storage space. The proRes format's high resolution and more color advantages do need to be fully released with professional post-production software.
In other words, in the hands of the director, the iPhone 13 Pro is not a simple "VLOG device", but more like a smaller, limited focal length "professional cinema camera" to use, which of course requires a lot of auxiliary and post-technology to do support. But on another level, this undoubtedly also gives us a lot of ideas that Apple has in mind differently from many other phones when designing the iPhone and its imaging system.