That’s a really amazing idea. You take a smartphone and have it filming five hours long without a second take while you are walking around a museum. This is really possible if the smartphone is an iPhone and the museum is the Hermitage.
The Longest Video Shot By iPhone Without Recharge
In March 2020, the Hermitage and Apple teamed up to do what looks like a mix of two things which may seem not to match each other. A museum with one of biggest collection of art in the world and a modern phone which is one of symbols of the consumption society. Though, they appeared to match very well, if a smartphone is being used for creating a masterpiece, not only for countless selfies.
Three cameramen, a director and assistance staff walked through 45 halls of the Hermitage to shoot 588 masterpieces, gorgeous interiors, ceilings and the Hermitage Theater with a live performance in it.
The camera smoothly moves through the empty museum featuring rare visitors (actors), a dancing lady and artists. Sometimes it zooms in on paintings or other masterpieces letting us spot all the details. The slowness of the movement and a music in the background gets you into a state of trans or meditation. This not an excursion, you don’t even know which halls you are getting through and which paintings you are looking at as the camera doesn’t capture their names. That’s a contraposition to the modern society which is in a constant rush seeking to put as much as possible into their schedules and their smartphones. The society where one hour is a great amount of time let alone the possibility to spend five hours on a journey around a museum. That’s also a stark contrast to the Hermitage itself which is typically overcrowded, especially during a high season.
This is the longest video in Apple’s history too.
What you will see among other things:
— the Jordan staircase where your offline journey around the Hermitage would start from;
— works by Rembrandt, Bruegel, Rafael;
— The Lute Player by Caravaggio;
— The Garden of Earthly Delights by Hieronymus Bosch (copy);
— performance by the Trio of Kirill Richter at the Hermitage Theater.
Here it is:
Apple In The Hermitage: How It Was Done
The technical parameters of the movie:
— duration: 5 hours 19 minutes 28 seconds;
— camera: iPhone 11 Pro Max;
— charge left: 19 percent;
— definition: 4K;
— total weight: 126 Gb.
A preparation period was six months. The crew was working out the route strolling with an iPhone through crowds of visitors. They had only one possibility to go along the route without visitors.
The main challenge was the necessity to shoot the film with just one take, without any fails and interruptions. Any failure would lead to start from scratch.
Another challenge was light as it varied from hall to hall. For every painting a level of ISO was calculated and learned by heart by a director’s assistant.
Any heavy technique which typically used in cinema is not allowed in the Hermitage. So the crew took a stedicam which held three iPhones: one was filming, the second used as a reserve and with the third doing a playback to director’s iPad.
The gadgets were being moved by rotating three cameramen with one man holding the stedicam for only 20 minutes.
The filming iPhone was managed not by hand, but remotely by a special mobile app Catch through an Apple watch. The app was created just two weeks before shooting specially for the project and is now available for everyone.
The shooting day was in December, on Monday, when the Hermitage is closed for visitors, but is busy with its own maintaining workers. The length of a winter day led to the necessity to shoot the end of the film in the darkness which created the magic atmosphere, but also demanded great efforts to provide adequate light.
By the way, Apple is not first to make a one-shot film about the Hermitage. The pioneer was Russian director Alexander Sokurov with his The Russian Ark movie back in 2001.
Real our post on the most 10 famous paintings at The Hermitage.