Lulu Wang reunited with her team from the nominated Golden Globe The farewell to shoot a movie on Apple’s flashy new iPhone in honor of the New Year. In short, Nian, Wang puts a new twist on an old Chinese folk tale in a short 11-minute short that manages to capture a sense of Studio Ghibli magic. Watch the full short film below.
Watch Nian, Lulu Wang’s Lunar New Year Short
As Spike Jonze’s Where the wild is good meet with Hayao Miyazaki My neighbor Totoro, it would look like Wang’s new Apple card Nian, an 11-minute short film celebrating the Lunar New Year (which falls on February 12 this year) that was entirely on the iPhone 12 Pro Max.
Apple strongly regarded the iPhone 12 Pro models as the best smartphone ever made for filmmakers, and recently approached Oscar-winning film photographer Emmanuel Lubezki to shoot a 60-second film shot in HDR video with Dolby Vision on the model. But while Wang’s short film is undeniably visually impressive, it’s the magical story she’s telling within 11 minutes. Nian feels like more than a long Apple ad.
Nian tells the story of a curious young girl determined to find the ‘Nian’, a monster from her mother’s bedtime stories who allegedly eats children wandering in the woods. But when she finds him, she discovers that Nian is not the scary animal she thought he was. The amazing scenes shot in the woods – which had to capture a mirror crew on the ground in China – while Wang and her crew worked remotely in the US due to COVID-19 travel restrictions – are absolutely stunning, as are the innovative shots and angles that Wang uses to expand the sense of wonder. A shot from the mouth of the monster is especially impressive, as well as a dizzying montage as the young girl grows up next to the Nian. According to Variety, where the iPhone 12 Pro Max’s Dolby Vision was an ultra-wide lens with little light and dim light, there were also ‘difficult shots and scenes in a cave where space and lighting were limited’. , telephoto lens, stabilization and time-lapse features came in handy.
“It’s really exciting to have the opportunity to retell this ancient story, to capture these incredible movie footage with the iPhone, this very versatile device,” Wang said in a behind-the-scenes feature accompanying the film. The Nian team “had a lot of fun just trying to figure out where we could put the phone differently so we could see a little more uniqueness and perspectives,” Wang said.
Watch the behind-the-scenes cut of Wang’s making Nian:
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