Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

In May, Apple released the short film "before melting Snow" on several platforms. Like other short films shot by iPhone, "before melting Snow" not only demonstrates the powerful imaging power of iPhone, but also tells a thought-provoking human story. Zhang Jiajie, director Gan Wei and photographer Lu Rongchang shared the behind-the-scenes story of the shoot at iapm Apple Store's Today at Apple in Shanghai on June 27, and CTOnews.com was also invited to attend the event.

At the beginning of the year, Zhang Jiajie and Gan sought creative inspiration for the village of Tuowa, one of the tallest villages in the world, which is located 5070 meters above sea level in Xizang, more than 300 kilometers from downtown Lhasa. Due to the relatively harsh natural environment such as scarce oxygen and low temperature, the average life expectancy of residents here is only 54 years old. Although such an environment has caused a lot of inconvenience to the villagers' life, the villagers still believe in this holy land and do not want to move out. When asked the girls who are going to school, if you want to leave the village of Tuwa to start a new life, what will you do before you leave? Their answer was surprisingly consistent: "then let me have the last dance on the sacred lake before leaving." as a result, the village girl Baimayangjin's study of Tibetan dance has become an important clue to this film. The pure and close feelings between Tibetans and the holy lake are also gradually revealed through this clue.

Zhang Jiajie revealed that due to the particularity of the environment, this shooting is very different from previous projects from the beginning of preparation. For example, this shooting plan was sorted out in the "boundless" App, which used to print out a paper copy. However, at an altitude of 5070 meters above sea level, most printers will go on strike directly. At this point, it is more useful to be able to make changes in a team and update the content synchronously. We see that the two most conspicuous words in Zhang Jiajie's shooting plan are "oxygen inhalation". This time, all team members wore Apple Watch Series 8 / Ultra to monitor their blood oxygen, heart rate and other physiological parameters in real time.

Team members also specially customized the dial suitable for shooting, and put important information or quick entrances such as blood oxygen, temperature, ultraviolet rays, altitude, wind and so on on the Apple Watch dial, to show that everyone was in a state of selflessness when they were shooting, and most of the time the blood oxygen was less than 90% without knowing it. Through the timer and blood oxygen detection function of Apple Watch, we timely remind everyone to breathe oxygen. Weaken the impact of "altitude sickness" on everyone.

Due to the harsh natural environment, the crew of "before melting Snow" streamlined the crew and equipment. The whole film was shot by iPhone 14 Pro, with only a few accessories, mainly rabbit cages, tripods, ND filters, hand-held stabilizers, outdoor power supplies, FPV drones and pole microphones. Compared with the regular small crew often a car of equipment, it is definitely lightweight.

The most frequently used "big piece" of these assistive devices is the hand-held stabilizer, almost throughout the film. Devices such as tripods and FPV drones are not used much. Even the shot of chasing the sheep in the film did not even use a stabilizer, and the team members directly held the iPhone 14 Pro to shoot with a motion model, and still got a very stable picture.

CTOnews.com learned that due to the winter when filming, the temperature in Tuwa village was below-20 °C, and the team members were worried that the range of the iPhone 14 Pro would plummet at low temperatures, while the iPhone 14 Pro still had excellent range at very low temperatures. Extra outdoor power supplies were not used a few times, and three backup cameras and a number of lenses prepared for fear of a low-temperature strike in the iPhone 14 Pro also became dispensable loads.

Because the iPhone 14 Pro is lighter than a movie machine + movie lens, it can be glued to a variety of places with a few powerful tapes, making it easier to get a different new perspective. The photographer fixed it to buckets and FPV drones, and got a lot of beautiful pictures with full story.

The low-light video performance of iPhone 14 Pro is also a pleasant surprise. On Tibetan New year's Eve, villagers will gather on the ice of Moyongcuo in San Hupu to collect "holy water". However, there is no definite time to get the water, and the team members stayed up all night until the wee hours of the morning to shoot the scene, Gan said that the iPhone 14 Pro filmed the picture not only with greater purity than he expected, but also with impressive color transition and tolerance. In the distance, the delicate gradual change of the sky from orange to dark blue and the subtle reflection of the ice make the picture even richer than the details that can be seen by the naked eye.

Due to the high altitude, "altitude sickness" greatly reduced the physical strength and energy of the crew, this time the crew also did not carry a huge monitor, but chose a lightweight iPad Pro with ProTake App as a wireless monitor. Not only was it filmed, but the later stage of "before melting Snow" also brought Apple's ecological advantages into full play. The team chose iPad Pro + Leonardo da Vinci color adjustment and MacBook Pro + Final Cut Pro editing. In terms of color adjustment, the da Vinci function of the iPad version is basically the same as that of the Mac version, and the operation is optimized exclusively for the touch screen to support the Apple Pencil pen tip hovering function. Operations such as drawing masks are also more accurate.

Gan also shared a tip for you on Apple at Today: "the movie mode video shot with iPhone can adjust the aperture and focus in Final Cut Pro, and adjusting the aperture will only blur the foreground and background of the image, but will not change the brightness of the picture. In some backlit scenes, turning on portrait mode can soften the spot and make the whole scene look more artistic."

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In addition to shooting videos, Lao Lu (Lu Rongchang) also took a lot of photos with iPhone 14 Pro. Lao Lu recalled, "I didn't take a closer look at it at that time. When I went back to preview the 48 million full-pixel photos taken by iPhone 14 Pro with iMac, I found that the details were much richer than my original iPhone 12 Pro. Even if the photos were taken by many people, the textures of my hair and clothing were still there, and more pixels were also convenient for me to cut and reconstruct."

The shooting of "before melting Snow" uses iPhone 14 Pro, iPad Pro, MacBook Pro, Apple Watch Series 8 / Ultra, which is obviously a very Pro workflow, but these devices are "Air" compared to traditional crews such as movie machines. Lighter equipment size, simpler and more efficient hardware and software collaboration allow small teams to simplify processes and set aside more time and energy to focus on creation.

At the end of the event, the director Gan Wei also gave everyone the words "to shine, not just to be illuminated." Everyone can express their ideas and share their stories, smartphones lower the threshold for creation, and stable, easy-to-use and efficient Apple eco-products raise the creative limit for ordinary people. let everyone who begins to express become the director of their own life.

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