Selena Gomez’s Latest Music Video was Shot on iPhone 11 Pro

“Shot on iPhone” is one marketing machine that often irritates a number of photo and videographers, and the latest entry to the campaign series is a music video. Popstar Selena Gomez yesterday released a new song and video entitled “Lose You to Love Me,” and the entire video was shot in black and white using an iPhone 11 Pro. As noted by Billboard, the video was shot by well-known music video director Sophie Muller.

As part of its ongoing “Shot on iPhone” series, Apple released a one-minute clip of the video but the full video is available on Gomez’s YouTube channel.

However, it’s worth noting that this is hardly the first time a professional music video, ad or even a feature film has been shot entirely on an iPhone. Previously there was this music video done by Olivia Wilde for Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes, shot on iPhone 6S:

There was also a Bentley ad shot on iPhone 5s:

In its “Shot on iPhone” series, Apple has released various types of photos and videos including stills, sports-themed videos, and short films. And it’s just recently that Apple expanded the campaign to include musicians and bands on tour.

Considering that they’re far out of reach for the majority of iPhone users, these “Shot on iPhone” creations are usually criticized. We saw Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) explain back in 2017 that these videos are typically shot on iPhone rigs that include cinema lenses, gimbal stabilizers and other extremely expensive cinema gear that no “typical” iPhone user has at their disposal. They look too good to be true because, in a sense, they are.

Although unlike many of the previous “Shot on iPhone” ads and music videos we’ve seen, director Sophie Muller decided to keep Gomez’s shoot very simple.

As you can see behind the scenes in a video below by Hunter Simmons, the video seems to be captured on an iPhone 11 Pro with no additional lensing. Plus as much as the phone is undoubtedly sitting under some very expensive cinema lighting, definitely a fluid head and fancy stabilizer arm, the setup and the results are far from the iPhone-on-a-gimbal-with-a-cinema-lens-hanging-out-of-a-car shots as seen in the Bentley ad.

The camera moves in the video are mostly limited to moving in and out, but some post-processing has been done to layer other shots onto the original. Despite coming from a well-known music video director, the results have come out as simple and straight-forward enough that someone could recreate with their own phone at home… which may have been the whole point to it.

For a long time now, the iPhone has been hailed as the smartphone for shooting videos and the iPhone 11 Pro’s camera was one of the major upgrades to this year’s lineup. The new triple-lens camera has a new night mode that allows for better images in low light, plus it can now take 4K video with “extended dynamic range and cinematic video stabilization” at up to 60 frames per second. Apple also added advanced video editing tools to it.

As we can see the ability to shoot 4K/60 from all of the cameras, and capture footage with multiple cameras at once, seems to be why the iPhone is hailed as the smartphone for shooting videos. Though many may still disagree on whether or not this video helps to prove that.

Still, at least this Shot on iPhone video feels a bit more honest, giving users a more realistic understanding of the kind of results they could potentially get at home, given a little bit of ingenuity and artistic vision.