A key part of Apple’s marketing scheme is to invite celebrated filmmakers to shoot movies using the iPhone. Recently, the company gave an iPhone 11 Pro to Rian Johnson, the director of “Star Wars: The Last Jedi.”  The result is “Paris 9/19.”  This is not a memorable example of  the travelogue genre. At first glance, it seems like a collection of unrelated shots that don’t tell much of a story. But if you watch the video a few times, you’ll realize that Johnson was putting the camera through its paces. In essence, he was doing a gear test, something that savvy filmmakers do in order to gain mastery of a piece of equipment that they haven’t worked with before. One of the best ways to improve your cinematography is to experiment with your camera.

Rian Johnson’s iPhone 11 Pro Camera Test

We don’t know for sure, but it seems likely that Rian Johnson’s tested the iPhone 11 Pro’s three cameras. In addition, here are a few other elements of Johnson’s experiment with the iPhone:

• shooting indoors
• rotating the camera
• tilting the camera up and down
• tracking (following a subject)
• shooting during the golden hour
• shooting close-ups
• shooting slow motion
• zooming
• shooting into the sun
• testing the optical image stabilization

The editors of MobileMovieMaking have chosen “Paris 9/19” as the Mobile Movie of the Week.