Director Viet recorded 360-degree videos with 8 iPhone 17 Pro

On the evening of April 3, rapper MCK attracted attention when the newly released HVL trailer album was uploaded to YouTube in 360-degree format. Viewers can directly change the camera angle on the screen, as if standing in the middle of the scene to watch singers and dancers perform around them. If using an iPhone, users can rotate the device to different angles to view footage in the corresponding position, while with a computer, they can use the mouse and touchpad to control the viewing angle.

Unlike the bullet time shooting technique, which uses a series of images taken from dozens of cameras around the object, MCK’s new music product is a complete 360-degree video assembled from videos shot by 8 iPhone 17 Pro placed in a circle and located in the middle of the scene. Viewers can barely see the cut points or connections between frames, showing that the crew did a good job right from the pre-production stage, processing and calculating the shooting angle for each iPhone.

Album trailer HVL by rapper MCK is in the campaign Shot on iPhone Apple’s third collaboration with young artists in Vietnam. In 2024, the company collaborated with rapper tlinh to make a MV Don’t make it complicated with iPhone 15 Pro, by 2025 with Wren Evans, using iPhone 16 Pro to film MV Save the music.

Unlike the previous two times announced in early January, this project was released later and for the first time was made by a Vietnamese director Phuong Vu and his Antiantiart team. Phuong Vu is the name behind many recent popular Vietnamese MVs such as Raise a cup of sorrow pepper by Bich Phuong, Haru Haru by MCK, Wonder by Hong Nhung, The Real Aura – MV theme in the show I’m Pretty Say Hi. Recently, he is also famous internationally as a MV director Your Love by Jisoo (Blackpink). When coming to Vietnam in 2024, CEO Tim Cook also took the time to visit Phuong Vu and Antiantiart colleagues at the headquarters in Hanoi.

“I am like a warrior stripped of all armor and weapons when implementing this project,” Phuong Vu happily compared when talking about the process of implementing her latest project with VnExpress. As a director famous for his fast-paced scenes, lots of action and creative camera angles, Phuong forced himself to change to adapt to the fixed 360-degree format this time. He said the decision to make a 360-degree video came from the general idea of ​​MCK’s new album, which is about reincarnation (a circle) and three different personalities of the singer.

In addition to ideas and artistic creativity, Phuong believes that this is a particularly technically difficult project. The total time from ideation to completion was nearly 6 months, but most of it was pre-production, solving technical problems of camera angles, calculating distances to create a suitable script. The video was filmed for three consecutive days at an ancient church in Ninh Binh last January.

The decision to use exactly 8 iPhones for filming was made after many experiments by the Antiantiart team because this was the most suitable number when calculating the distance from the camera to the actors as well as post-production time. Of these, 7 machines are placed around, one machine is placed above. The phone mounting bracket was specifically designed and 3D printed, requiring high accuracy in viewing angles and matching touch points from videos of different iPhones. He said the Genlock feature on iPhone 17 Pro is a “lifesaver” for the most complicated step of synchronizing the entire camera system between devices. In addition, ProRes RAW and Apple Log 2 also provide cinematic quality close to professional cameras and greater creative flexibility.

To avoid the actors being blurred or losing their image when passing through the intersection between the iPhone cameras, Phuong said he had considered using giant objects, up to 10 meters high, such as swords, to naturally hide the joining points. According to him, another difficulty is that Apple does not like to use CG (computer graphics) in products Shot on iPhone So the scenes and props are all real to ensure authenticity.

iPhone 17 Pro devices all use a main camera with a standard 24 mm wide angle, recording directly to external memory, consistent with the system using all Apple devices. In addition to the iPad and MacBook to view footage directly, the difference this time the crew uses an additional Vision Pro glasses to be able to experience 360-degree video to make timely changes. The video is about two and a half minutes long, there are only three cuts per shot and it took the entire crew about a day to complete.

The first Vietnamese director to cooperate with the project Shot on iPhone of Apple globally, but Phuong Vu said he was not under pressure. On the contrary, he felt confident in his own vision and affirmed that the level of creative people in Vietnam is currently at a very good level. The young director born in 1995 is also proud that this project was carried out with the Antiantiart team that has followed him since the early days, when he was still filming yearbook with a salary of 500,000 VND a day or videos with a total budget of only 10 million VND.

According to Phuong, the strengths of the iPhone 17 Pro are its anti-shake feature and image quality that is increasingly similar to a professional camera with each generation. He also shared his regret that this project completely uses a 1x lens (24 mm focal length) while he especially loves the 8x zoom lens on the new model thanks to bringing better emotions, capturing the character’s charisma and details.