Apple’s latest Raya ad may not be the best showcase of the iPhone X’s video capabilities

There are a lot of great shorts — and even feature-length films — shot entirely on smartphones like the iPhone X. In some cases, it’s truly staggering how capable these little devices are as serious video tools. Sure, they need some help, but expensive cameras do too — that’s just part of the filmmaking art.

This latest short though, I’m a little on the fence about.

Don’t get me wrong, the story is a heartfelt one, but I personally don’t think this video is a good representation of the iPhone X’s video capabilities — the image quality of the footage just doesn’t look up to snuff. Maybe it was a stylistic choice but I don’t know if this was really the best, if part of the point was to tell people how good the iPhone X’s camera is.

This entire video was shot, of course, on the iPhone X with only the help of a DJI Osmo Mobile handheld stabiliser and some tripods so things don’t get too shaky. It is definitely a far cry from something like the “Three Minutes” short Apple released which had huge drones and a variety of mounts involved so maybe my expectations are a little to high here.

However, the director — Edmund Yeo — is renown for his directing capabilities with award winning short Kingyo, feature film River of Exploding Durians and Aqerat which won him Best Director at the Tokyo International Film Festival 2017. Maybe time wasn’t on his side for this project or something happened in post-production, but this level of image quality does not look like something befitting an award-winning filmmaker.

Or maybe that’s just me. Watch it yourself on Apple Music in the embed above or, if you prefer, you can watch it on YouTube starting the 15th of June 2018.

What do you guys think of this video? Let me know in the comments below!