iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max

With the introduction of ProRes RAW and Genlock, it seems like iPhones can finally be seriously considered for professional movie capture.

28 years later was filmed using the iPhone 15 as the sensor/capture device.

Only a few scenes were filmed with iphones.

IIRC, iPhones (and every other smartphone) records variable frame rate videos (VFR), whereas professional cameras can record constant frame rate videos (CFR).

I think that VFR videos need to be re-encoded into CFR videos in order to be able to work with all the footage shot by different devices. It sounds to me like with the Genlock feature, it could actually be possible to record CFR videos on an iPhone and also synchronize the iPhone with other devices so that both video and audio does not drift relative to other devices. But that's just my speculation as I couldn't find any details about the Genlock feature.

I would love to know how the team working on 28 years later handled synchronization of the multiple iPhones they were using to shoot some scenes of the movie and if they got a helping hand from Apple, which perhaps allowed them to use some internal APIs to access hidden features of the camera stack...

The focus was naturally scenes and "vibes" that couldn't be achieved with traditional films cameras. Boyle and Mantle weren't afraid to use whatever was best for the job, which included drones and other camera systems as well. More on their iPhone camera rigs for anyone who's interested:

https://www.ign.com/articles/28-years-later-danny-boyle-goes...

https://www.motionpictures.org/2025/06/how-28-years-later-dp...

https://www.wired.com/story/danny-boyle-says-shooting-on-iph...

Related: Driver POV footage for F1 was shot with Apple-created custom iPhone rigs as well.

> Genlock

Finally caught up to the Amiga I see

I know that's /s, but I'm seriously astounded by how many great-at-video cameras come out from Sony, Canon, Nikon, et all that still don't have rudimentary features like genlock or easy timecode integration. Much less the ability to upload video clips and still frames somewhere automatically, in full resolution.

Sometimes I use my iPhone instead of my $3000 camera rig just because I can get the clip somewhere within seconds instead of the 2-3 minute rigamarole of SD card ingestion.

One of the big use cases for Genlock these days is when you're doing virtual production with LED walls; you want to make sure the screen refresh of the wall is locked to the shutter of the camera. It's almost like 'vsync' in video game video settings, without it you risk seeing tearing in the backdrops.

You have it backwards.

Most scenes were filmed with iPhones, only a few were filmed with other cameras.