How four filmmakers explored new cinematic terrain with iPhone 16 Pro Max and MacBook Pro

Apple iPhone 16 Pro Max

Four emerging filmmakers used Apple devices—specifically the iPhone 16 Pro Max and MacBook Pro with M4 Max chip—to produce short films for this year’s MAMI Select: Filmed on iPhone initiative. Mentored by industry veterans including Konkona Sen Sharma, Vikramaditya Motwane, Vetri Maaran, and Lijo Jose Pellissery, the directors are part of a program aimed at pushing the boundaries of low-footprint, high-quality filmmaking.

The filmmakers—Amrita Bagchi, Rohin Raveendran Nair, Chanakya Vyas, and Shalini Vijayakumar— leveraged iPhone’s camera system, cinematic features, and ProRes recording to experiment with visual storytelling across genres and regions.

Bagchi’s Tinctoria, a psychological thriller, uses Cinematic mode to create a claustrophobic atmosphere. She cites the phone’s mobility and depth-of-field control as essential for her production. Editing on the M4 Max MacBook Pro allowed her to handle high-frame-rate footage and color grading without lags.

Nair’s film Kovarty is a romance with elements of magical realism, shot in Kerala’s backwaters. He used the iPhone’s small size to capture POV shots from inside a typewriter and relied on ProRes Log for dynamic lighting conditions. His workflow includes using different aspect ratios to reflect mood and space.

For Mangya, Vyas used Action mode to film a 300-metre tracking shot without a gimbal, highlighting the iPhone’s stabilisation capabilities. He also praised the MacBook Pro’s nano-texture display for outdoor visibility during continuity checks.

Vijayakumar’s Seeing Red, a horror-comedy rooted in Tamil family life, uses the 5x telephoto lens to stage scenes with layered visual storytelling. She shot slow-motion scenes at 4K120fps to reinterpret classic “mass entry” shots, shifting their context to female characters.

Each film was developed and edited within Apple’s hardware ecosystem, enabling end-to-end production on consumer-grade tools. While the narratives vary widely, the common thread is the use of iPhone and MacBook not just as accessible devices, but as active parts of the creative process.

The films premiere in Mumbai today as part of the Mumbai Academy of the Moving Image’s ongoing partnership with Apple.