iPhone 12 Pro - Recreating a famous movie scene

Recreating a Scene from The Wizard of Oz using iPhone 12 Pro

I used packing tape to attach about a half a foot of invisible cord to the top of the toy house and tie the other end of the cord to my knitting needle in the actual scene. The house looks like it's falling from the sky, so I went outside to film this part. I faced my camera towards the clouds, zoomed in 3.5 times, and once again filmed in slow motion at 240 frames per second as I used my very nifty knitting needle contraption to spin the house in front of the camera lens. This shot definitely gives me those at-home film vibes, but I still think it's really fun. The final shots of this scene where Dorothy's back in her bed in Kansas involve a close-up shot followed by a medium close-up shot.

For the close-up shot, we placed the iPhone back onto the tripod and zoomed in until we got the setup as close to the original as possible. For the medium close-up shot, we switched to the wide-angle lens and only zoomed in a little bit. Once I was done filming on the iPhone, it was time to try using it to edit.

Spoiler Alert: I wasn't able to edit exclusively on the iPhone but I did use the Photos and iMovie apps to help me get started. This scene consists of four base clips - the Ruby Slippers, Dorothy repeating "There's no place like home," the falling house, and Dorothy back in Kansas. iMovie was great for trimming these clips, placing them in order, and adding transitions. I also used the Photos and iMovie apps to enhance the colors in these shots and apply filters to achieve the sepia effect.

However, this scene also has some shots overlaid onto these base clips - the swirl and the Ruby Slippers. Unfortunately, iMovie doesn't have a feature that allows you to overlay semi-transparent clips onto other clips. This was one key reason I had to switch over to using Adobe Premiere. You can add music and sound effects to your project using the iMovie app, but since a lot of the background audio in this scene corresponds with those overlay shots, I found it easier to use Adobe Premiere to place these things too.

That being said, one feature I did find to be particularly useful on the iMovie app was the voiceover option. My mom and I actually lip-synced to the original version of the scene to get our timing right, so we needed to add in our speaking after the fact. The voiceover tool made this pretty easy. We plugged a lav mic into the phone to record with, and it ended up sounding pretty good.

iPhone 12 Pro Camera Capabilities

This camera did really well capturing the rich colors of this scene - like the red of Dorothy's slippers or the greenery outside. It also shoots beautifully in 4K, which definitely gives the shots that hyper-realistic look characteristic of the original scene. This is a camera that honestly for better or for worse captures every detail almost too well. You could really see everything including any fly-away hairs I had on filming day.

However, you may be wondering why I haven't shouted out one of the central upgrades of the iPhone 12 Pro video camera - the ability to shoot and edit in Dolby Vision HDR. While this feature does lead to richer video for maximum compatibility, this scene was shot and rendered in standard dynamic range.

Additional Tips and Resources

If you're interested in learning more about the new camera specs of the iPhone 12 Pro or want to compare it to other phones, I recommend checking out Patrick's iPhone 12 and 12 Pro review or Lexi's 12 Pro versus Galaxy Note 20 Ultra camera comparison. Links to these resources will be available in the description below.

Conclusion

While the iPhone 12 Pro can produce some amazing results with simple edits, I did find that it was necessary to use Adobe Premiere to edit this scene due to its limitations on overlays and more complex editing features. However, I do think it's possible to get some pretty cinematic looking shots on the iPhone 12 Pro.