Apple’s latest effort to show off the potential of the iPhone camera comes in the form of Big Man, a 20-minute fictional film directed by Academy Award-winning director Aneil Karia and starring British music legend Stormzy.
Big Man (below) focuses on Tenzman (Stormzy), a jaded musician who finds warmth and a sense of purpose through an unexpected friendship with two boisterous teens.
Karia shot the movie entirely on an iPhone 16 Pro, a first for the director who in 2022 won the Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film for The Long Goodbye. Apple released Big Man on Wednesday, along with a behind-the-scenes video (top) showing how Karia used the iPhone to capture the movie’s scenes.
“I’ve never shot an entire piece of narrative filmmaking on an iPhone before, and it’s been a really invigorating process,” Karia said. “iPhone is much smaller than the traditional cameras used for television, film, or music videos, and the lightness and flexibility that comes with that is boundless in a sense. I like trying to strive for an intimacy with characters, and sometimes a big camera is not particularly conducive for that.”
Big Man’s director of photography, Stuart Bentley, said that with the iPhone, “there’s no reason you can’t make an amazing film” — failing to mention the small matter of needing a clear creative vision, a compelling script, a talented director, a skilled camera operator, and an experienced editor, among other things. But we get what he means.
Highlighting the iPhone’s various camera features, Bentley continued: “You can use Cinematic mode for shallow depth of field, and it automatically pulls focus to follow the action. It’s got an incredible dynamic range and can handle low light, and shooting with Apple ProRes Log gives you even more options in post.”
The slow-motion scenes in Big Man were captured in 4K 120 fps, while the iPhone camera’s low-light capabilities allowed the team to shoot scenes outside at night as well as in dimly lit interiors.
It’s not the first time that Apple has partnered with filmmakers to provide its iPhone technology and support creative projects.
The collaborations often involve working with well-known directors, production companies, and even major studios, as seen in projects like a Wallace & Gromit stop-motion film made with Aardman, and Apple’s upcoming feature film F1: The Movie, which utilized a custom iPhone camera rig for authentic racing footage.
For the latest installment in Danny Boyle’s 28 trilogy, the crew designed a special rig holding 20 iPhones to create a dramatic effect for a particular scene.
“There’s an incredible shot in the second half [of 28 Years Later] where we use the [20-camera rig] … you’ll know it when you see it,” Boyle said in a recent interview.
