My internet can be summed up pretty much in the phrase "new day, some artist drops new song".
I'm not complaining, I've built my echo-chamber very carefully. But when I saw Selena Gomez' clip first I thought, dang that looks good and then I scanned the caption ('blabla thanks to the fans blabla') but then my eyes paused momentarily, on the hashtag.
It read #ShotOniPhone.
View this post on InstagramA post shared by Selena Gomez (@selenagomez) on
...that's shot on an iPhone?
To back up a little bit, Selena Gomez' long-awaited return to releasing songs as her last album Revival came out in 2015, four years ago. She dropped not one, but two songs within 24 hours.
Turns out they are both shot on iPhone.
Which just made me wonder, like why. Why do it in the first place, and also why draw attention to it. I think the answer has two ways of looking at it. First is that you don't need fancy gadgets to make work that people care about. And the other is, almost humble-braggy (no offence), like "yeah. I'm that good".
Like yeah, I can serve those looks with those moves and track without needing fancy tools. But also if I can, so you can you. Even if obviously everything else on the set, like the lighting and the set-up and the outfits and the dancers, is professional-pop-diva-grade, you can still use an iPhone to shoot a video that can rack up 20 million views in the first 24 hours, her most successful YouTube launch to date.
Granted, it's top of the line, the new iPhone 11 Pro which does indeed have a heck of a camera. But Selena might be saying to her fans that you don't need to worry about the equipment, and just do your thing. PetaPixel calls it a demonstration of what can be achieved with "a little bit of ingenuity and artistic vision".
not selena gomez serving visuals of the year from a fucking iphone. pic.twitter.com/AEkGtQlDFC
— jack (@fkajack) October 24, 2019
With a single hashtag, Selena is saying what I tried to put into words in my post Only the Work Remains. We all care too much about the gadgets and the tools when we should care way more about the work itself, the message, the art.
Even if it's a promo deal with Apple, which it probably is, I think the message stands. We don't need another guide telling us about what camera to buy or what editing software is the best.
We should just use what we already have. That's enough.