When Apple launched the new M3 chip series for its Macs alongside new MacBook Pros and iMacs at its Scary Fast event earlier this week, it wasn't a new product that made a big splash, but one released in September. At the end of the presentation a title card appeared that stated: "This event was shot on iPhone and edited on Mac."

The fineprint under the text said that all the presenters, locations and even drone footage were recorded with an iPhone 15 Pro Max. Apple has used slickly shot and edited prerecorded videos in lieu of in-person live presenters for product launch events since 2020. But this is the first time Apple ever broadcast a keynote event video that was filmed entirely with an iPhone.

Yes, the same phone you use to record your kids playing around the house, or concerts or your pets being cute was used to record Apple CEO Tim Cook and other executives launching updated Macs. But this wasn't the case of an eager Apple employee holding their new iPhone 15 Pro Max in landscape orientation, recording video and helping Cook find his best light.

The $1,199 phone was mounted on pricey accessories like a camera crane, drone, gimbal and dolly, all while feeding video previews to multitudes of monitors. The iPhone 15 Pro Max was in a BeastGrip cage, which, depending on the specific model, costs anywhere from $140 to $325. There were external hard drives connected to the iPhone to save recordings, external mics used to record the audio, professional lighting and modifiers to make everyone from Cook to Issa Rae look their best.

The video shoot and post-production involved a small army of professionals. Meaning that everything else, aside from the iPhone, still costs tens of thousands of dollars if not more.

 

At Apple Park at night, CEO Tim Cook delivers his keynote address while being recorded by an iPhone 15 Pro Max.

Apple

Apple isn't shy about promoting videos shot on an iPhone. Steven Soderbergh used an iPhone to shoot full-length films like Unsane and High Flying Bird. There's no shortage of iPhone-shot music videos for singers like Lady Gaga and Olivia Rodrigo. Heck, Steven Speilberg shot his first music video (Marcus Mumford's Cannibal) on an iPhone.

In a press release that provides a behind-the-scenes look, Apple mentions that an iPhone 15 Pro Max with the free Blackmagic Camera app was used to record ProRes video in Apple Log, which allows a lot of leeway to color grade videos and minimize image noise in the shadows. Even with all the lighting, large stretches of Apple's event video were filmed in darkness, with Cook standing outdoors under a night sky and wishing us all a "good evening" instead of his usual "good morning."