AppleInsider Staff
Apple on Monday released its latest iPhone ad, a touching 30-second short highlighting the dual-camera system introduced with iPhone 7 Plus.
The spot, titled "Romeo and Juliet," plays on Act II Scene II of Shakespeare's masterwork. Known colloquially as the balcony scene, Capulet's Orchard is unquestionably one of the most famous scenes in all of theater. In Apple's take, all roles are played by children.
The ad leads with a cinematic shot: exterior, nighttime, Capulet's estate. Inside, Juliet is alerted to Romeo's presence. She rushes to the balcony, "O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?"
Apple's version skips a few lines, moving straight into Romeo's response, "Call me but love." Interestingly, Romeo glosses over the "and I'll be new baptized" line.
Cut to a contrasting shot of a teary-eyed man holding an iPhone 7 Plus. Instead of a movie version of "Romeo and Juliet" starring a cast of kids, we realize the reenactment is merely a school play as seen through the eyes of Juliet's father, who is in the audience filming.
With proper cinematography giving way to an amateur recording, Apple implies iPhone 7 Plus offers users unrivaled camera quality to capture the most special of moments. Indeed, the ad ends with the tagline "Your movies look like movies on iPhone 7."
"Romeo and Juliet" is the latest in Apple's "practically magic" commercial series which started with the ad "Balloons" in September. Like most consumer companies, Apple is getting into the Christmas spirit. Like holiday themed TV spots of yore, today's ad tugs on the heartstrings, much like last month's ad "Frankie's Holiday."
Malcolm Owen
Oliver Haslam
Andrew O'Hara
Wesley Hilliard
William Gallagher
Christine McKee
14 Comments
False advertisement! Completely false! Neither iPhone 7 nor iPhone 7 Plus can provide bokeh effect in video mode. Apple is still struggling to come out of the portrait beta mode in still photo!
It does work in video and does so reasonably well, foreground or background.
The man zoomed into his daughter's face. It's not portrait mode video. May be it's the optical zoom from the telephoto lens ?
The 7+ camera also supports P3 color profile, like digital theaters.
Portrait mode shot is just another feature not directly called out in this commercial.
The camera has more than one salient feature.
EDIT:
Oh, the 7 series phones also sport a P3 wide gamut screen. So viewing P3 media on them should be more like the real world.
It's not just the camera. It's the camera and the screen.