Apple has a long history of making amazing short videos and movies shot on the iPhone. His latest, perhaps most ambitious, is the 30-minute short film Fursat, directed by Vishal Bhardwaj. It’s about a young man who invents a magical device that allows him to see the future, which he becomes obsessed with, risking everything he loves in the present. You can watch it on YouTube embedded below.
The production values are impressive, with great lighting, sets, choreography and more. The story itself is a little exaggerated, especially for Indian movies: a magical device, a young couple, weddings, dance routines, sleep sequences… and of course, a few iPhone sequences. It seems that this is done on purpose to convince buyers in India to buy an iPhone.
As is common with these impressive “Shot on iPhone” movies, Apple notes that “additional hardware and software” was used. After all, this is not a direct output from a portable iPhone 14 Pro linked together in iMovie. This is traditional filmmaking with custom sets and lighting, professional actors, gimbals, tripods and cranes, and an excellent editor with Final Cut or Premiere who is well versed in color grading tools.
Still, it’s worth watching, if only to see how well the iPhone 14 Pro’s dynamic range in video captures some dramatic lighting effects. However, YouTube Compression doesn’t render the action and dance sequence useless – Apple would do well to host a less compressed version itself or add it to the Apple TV+ library.