Who needs fancy, incredibly expensive cameras to shoot a professional music video that’ll be seen by millions? Not Lady Gaga! Mother Monster’s vividly colored video for her just-dropped single, “Stupid Love” -- which has already earned more than 5 million views on YouTube hours after its release Friday (Feb. 28) -- was filmed on an iPhone 11 Pro.
Gaga tipped followers off to that fact with the hashtag #ShotOniPhone, and also noted on the video’s YouTube page that it was “shot entirely on the iPhone 11 Pro.”
"Obviously shooting on iPhone is new territory, and as a filmmaker, it's kind of an unexpected thing to do because there’s a pretty standardized way to make music videos, television commercials and films, on bigger, much more expensive cameras," Daniel Askill, the video's director, said in a statement shared with Billboard. "It creates a lot of new possibilities and freedoms for us to explore."
As futuristic as it (and her new video) seems, Gaga’s not the only artist who has used a smartphone to film an entire music video. Here are five other musicians who opted to pass on the elaborate camera setups and go for the tiny phones when filming.
Selena Gomez, “Lose You to Love Me”
When the songstress teased her musical return on Oct. 23 with the Rare single “Lose You to Love Me” five years after Revival’s arrival, she, like Gaga, chose to film the music video with an iPhone 11 Pro. The stunning black-and-white visuals were shot by director Sophie Muller, who also filmed Gomez’s “Good for You.”
John Legend, “A Good Night”
The 11-time Grammy winner certainly chose an on-the-nose gadget to use for the filming of his “A Good Night” video in 2018. The song, about meeting your soulmate on your first date, was shot with Google’s Pixel 2. (Ask anyone who's single, and you'll likely find a dating app -- or five -- on their cell phone.) “We were fascinated by the idea of using a smartphone to film a big budget music video, a video that brings the smartphone dating experience to life,” Legend said in an interview with Google.
Grimes, “Butterfly”
Grimes wasn’t satisfied with filming just one music video in 2016 using a cell phone -- she filmed four. In addition to “Butterfly” (which has the most views of the bunch with 4.5 million), the singer captured all the footage for “World Princess Part 2,” “Scream” and “Belly of the Beat” with iPhones. She explained in a tweet that the videos were filmed over two weeks during her AC!D REIGN tour. “They are guerrilla style vids, a la reality, so there was no crew, makeup, cameras, lights,” she wrote at the time. “Just us and a phone, so maybe don’t expect anything too fancy. That said, we’re really proud of what we made.”
LeAnn Rimes, Rob Thomas & Jeff Beck, “Gasoline and Matches”
Who would’ve thought you could film a music video featuring delightful stop-motion animation using an iPhone?! Ian Padgham, that’s who. The animator explained to The Hollywood Reporter that he used a few iPhones to film the whole 5-minute video, and snapped more than 8,000 still photos for it. Rimes herself told THR of the adorable video for the single off her 2013 album Spitfire: "I was shocked that nobody had done a (music) video like that before, and I jumped at the chance to do it.”
Ellie Goulding, “How Long Will I Love You”
The second single from 2013’s Halcyon Days was not only selected to be the official song for the BBC’s Children in Need charity that year, it was also “shot entirely on a Nokia Lumia 1020,” as the opening title card notes. The video also includes clips from the short film Tom & Issy, directed by Roger Michell, and stars the singer and Dylan Edwards.