February 15, 2022, may be a very noteworthy day for many friends. On the one hand, the arrival of the Lantern Festival means that the Spring Festival in the traditional sense has officially come to an end, and after enjoying the sweetness of tangyuan, it will bid farewell to the leisure of the festival and return to busy work and life. On the other hand, for many primary and secondary schools, the day after the Lantern Festival will also be the day when the winter vacation ends and students return to school.
Perhaps because of this, when Flypig, two "big hands" in the field of video creation, joined forces with film and television hurricanes to release a short film called "Winter Vacation Homework" on the day of the Lantern Festival, it naturally attracted a lot of attention.
A short story about homework, homework, and tangyuan
"Winter Vacation Homework" tells a simple, straightforward story, but it is also so easy for people to substitute for it.
The protagonist of the story is a child named "Fat Fat". In the early part of the film, the story leads to such a theme with a very fast rhythm, the teacher asks everyone to complete the winter vacation homework of "making tangyuan", and the slightly impatient mother and the seemingly somewhat inconspicuous father can not help for a while, in this case, fat in order to complete the homework, had to try to buy flour, teach himself to make tangyuan, and after encountering one setback after another, not only the foreign appearance, but also the audience's heart is tight.
I have to say that when the story goes to this part, it is actually a bit of a mistake to think that the creator's main purpose is to carry out the criticism of family education. Especially when other children quickly completed the production of tangyuan under the care and guidance of their parents, and the protagonist Fat Fat had to timidly go to the tangyuan shop to observe the set of contrast shots in the absence of help, it was really a bit sad.
Fortunately, the film finally chose the "reunion" ending that most people like. After tasting the successful and not delicate tangyuan of their son's first time, the parents who were touched also began to help their son complete the "winter vacation homework" that was better than expected. In the end, Fat fat also successfully produced a box of colorful tangyuan, and with the help of his parents, he began to shoot a video of "handing in homework".
The iPhone 13 Pro makes creative shooting possible
It is worth mentioning that because the theme of the film itself is set on the "winter vacation" and "Lantern", the release time of the content itself is actually quite tight. Coupled with a very limited budget, this also brings more challenges to shooting.
Tight creative time meant that the shooting team needed equipment that was flexible and compact, could be moved quickly, and shot from a variety of creative angles. The limited budget is destined to be tens of millions of professional photographic equipment, which will be difficult to be used in the shooting process.
In the end, the photography teams of both sides chose the iPhone 13 Pro series model as the main equipment for this shooting. In the process of use, the iPhone also brings some unprecedented experiences to the entire creative process.
For example, thanks to its much smaller size than the camera, creators can easily place the iPhone on the bed, floor, desktop, use the ultra-wide angle lens that comes with the phone to take an exaggerated sense of depth, and even tuck the iPhone into the cabinet to shoot a special perspective "from the inside out". In the past, these pictures may have required special sets or special equipment to achieve.
With the help of the compact iPhone, creators can shoot an average of more than 100 shots per day, which is not only more than 3 times more efficient than conventional shooting, but also because there is no need for sets, the picture is more natural, and the cost is naturally reduced significantly.
For example, during the filming of the film, the creators used the movie effect mode of the iPhone 13 Pro series in multiple scenes. This function based on computational photography can automatically detect the position of the subject in the picture, and automatically adjust the focus and the effect of bokeh when the subject switches. As Film and Television Hurricane creator Tim said when he recalled the creative process. "This function can be said to be an important milestone in computing video, and some scenes can get a very good bokeh picture when the environment is clean."
Of course, "shooting videos" with mobile phones is not complicated in itself, but it is not an easy task to achieve excellent film-quality picture quality. Fortunately, with the support of larger sensors and unique algorithms, the iPhone 13 Pro series finally delivered a picture effect that surprised the creative team.
As can be seen from the behind-the-scenes footage short film, the shooting team did not use high-power fill light equipment throughout the whole process, and even sometimes only carried out extremely limited lighting in order to deliberately reflect the darkness of the environment. However, in such a scene, the iPhone 13 Pro series models still achieve low noise quality throughout. In the words of the creators themselves, it is "I didn't expect that the current mobile phone can achieve this kind of textured picture.".
Why creators prefer the iPhone, because it is really different
If you often pay attention to the content related to our three easy lives, you may have noticed that this is not the first time we have reported that creators have used iPhones for film shooting. From "Wuhan Stall" in 2020, to "Victory Bridge" in 2021, to the New Year film "Comeback" before the Spring Festival this year, and the "Winter Vacation Homework" launched at the Lantern Festival, in less than two years, we have seen more and more film and television works based on iPhones and Apple's ecological devices.
Why do creators particularly favor iPhones and other Apple devices? Compared with heavy and large cameras, the small size and light weight of mobile phones are certainly advantages, but in addition, Apple's ecology has some advantages that are difficult for other brands to catch up.
On the one hand, in today's iPhone 13 Pro and iPhone 13 Pro Max, there is a ProRes video encoding format designed for video creators. As Apple's own encoding format, ProRes has a much higher bitrate than the common H.264 and HEVC, which means that it can retain more detail when shooting complex dynamic pictures.
Take the creation process of "Winter Vacation Homework", when shooting the picture of the flour spilled, the main creative group had worried at the beginning that the video encoding format of the mobile phone might lead to a large number of lumps in the picture, or even collapse. But I didn't expect that in the ProRes format video, the photographer "did not see any loss of image quality visible to the naked eye", and the final result was quite surprising.
On the other hand, although many brands now adopt a multi-terminal development of the product strategy, in terms of the experience unity of family products, it has to be admitted that Apple is undoubtedly the best so far.
For example, on the set of "Winter Vacation Homework", a 12.9-inch iPad Pro can monitor the live shooting from three iPhone 13 Pro Max at the same time, and the picture is displayed directly on the 1600nit iPad Pro screen in HDR format, rather than the 100nit SDR after "downgrading", which is undoubtedly unmatched by other products.
For example, Bu Ting, a senior editor from the film and television hurricane team, can directly rough cut multiple 4K ProRes HDR materials with a 16-inch MacBook Pro equipped with M1 Max on the spot. In the past, this kind of live real-time editing workflow was usually only possible for film crews equipped with large PCs and special power supply equipment.
What does this mean? In fact, it is very simple, that is, although we can use iPhones, iPads, macBooks as ordinary mobile phones, tablets and computers, it is undeniable that they have taken into account the needs of professionals from the beginning of many details of the design, taking into account the practicality of high-standard productivity scenarios when devices are used together.
As Flypig said, "Although the iPhone seems to be such a small, so unserious, so ubiquitous, so unlike a movie recorder, if it can establish a serious, serious creative form, in all the processes from front to back, with a very high standard of creation, it has far more than expected shooting capabilities, waiting for everyone to dig." ”