The Stunt Double

It's kind of interesting watching great filmmakers, though I'm not sure any have risen above to make something that feels more like a great short film than a piece of advertising (the closest I can think of is Martin Scorsese doing a Hitchcock homage in an amusingly meta way for The Key to Reserva).

The Stunt Double sees Damien Chazelle making a short film about a stuntman for Apple, and doing it all with a noticeably vertical aspect ratio, apparently also shooting the entire thing on a phone. It's got some creative and fun moments, but it does feel a little thrown together by Chazelle's standards; leagues behind his other work, besides his earliest feature film, which I'm not a huge fan of.

It's kind of worth a watch for those curious to see a film try its best to pull off using a unique aspect ratio, even if the end product is probably just decent at best.

Remember, this short film is really just an ad for the iPhone 11 Pro, and for that, I thought it was an impressive demonstration of the phone's capabilities as a video camera - good dynamic range in low light and pretty good image stabilization. On top of that, the content was engaging and thoughtful for a short, corporate-made clip. I personally would like to see more ads like this.

Damien Chazelle is an amazing director. I think the Stunt Double lacks a bit of a story, but to its credit, it does a lot in 9 minutes. There aren't really any characters or story arcs, but the cinematography and filmmaking is on full display.

Chazelle forces the viewer to look horizontally instead of vertically; he conditions the audience to up and down movement. It's quite amazing how he is able to create fluid and interesting images with horizontal film making. Also he used an IPhone 11.

It's amazing what you can do with technology these days. Good short. Awesome promotion.

It's not supposed to be amazing or anything near his feature films. It was fun and parts were a nice omage to Hollywood and great films. I reccomend it and it is not bad for a vertically shot film.