Shooting a creative campaign with an iPhone isn’t new (see Burberry filming a fashion show with an iPhone 5S, or Apple’s Mac 30 video), but would you use one to create a highly polished promotional film to attract customers who demand the best – with no expenses spared? For Bentley, it had no issues with using Apple’s smartphone to film a new documentary video, “Intelligent Details,” for its grand carriage, the Mulsanne.
Bentley isn’t exactly the type of company that would skimp on things, and could have easily used high-end DSLRs or cinema-quality equipment to film the campaign – which have been used to shoot previous Bentley videos. But according to AppleInsider, the decision to use an iPhone (three, in fact, plus an iPad Air) actually came from brainstorming meetings on how the company could showcase the Mulsanne’s technology package – which includes a Wi-Fi hotspot, high-end audio, and holders designed for the iPad – so it seemed fitting to use the gear Bentley imagined its customers would be using. The 4.5-minute video features the Mulsanne’s designers talking about the car, with beauty shots of the $300,000 vehicle, naturally.
To create the film, Bentley tapped Los Angeles-based creative agency Reza & Co., which had created previous videos for Bentley. The shoot employed additional filmmaking equipment that includes BeastGrip lens adapter rigs and lenses (like the Neewer 0.3X Baby Death 37mm Fisheye Lens), and Freefly MoVI M5 stabilized handheld camera. All the footage – shot at 24 frames per second with 50 Mbps encoding – was edited on the iPhone and an iPad Air, using Apple’s iMovie and a $5 app from FiLMiC Pro.
It seems ironic that, for a car that costs the same as an average American home, the companies involved would use equipment that cost way less than $10K. But it goes to show that the iPhone – with some third-party gear and filmmaking creativity – is highly capable of shooting video for mass viewing. We doubt the iPhone will revolutionize pro filmmaking anytime soon, but it’s definitely a useful addition to the arsenal.
(Update: In our original report, we mentioned ad agency Solve was involved in the project. Bentley informed us that Solve had no involvement, and that the video was created entirely by Reza & Co.)
(Via AppleInsider)
