Apple Releases 'Glad I Met You' Chinese New Year Film Shot on iPhone 17 Pro [Video]

Apple has released "Glad I Met You," its annual short film to celebrate the Chinese New Year. Directed by Bai Xue, the film mixes live-action scenes with stop-motion animation to tell a story about a girl, a talking dog, and the search for family.

The entire production was filmed using the iPhone 17 Pro. Apple uses these yearly releases to really push the camera hardware, and this specific project had to handle two very different visual styles. The phone was tasked with capturing traditional cinematography while also dealing with the tricky lighting and close-focus work needed for stop-motion, stitching the real and animated worlds together into a single narrative.


Apple also shared a companion video titled "Backstage with Ke Ming." Hosted by the pet influencer, the footage walks through the set to show how the crew rigged the iPhone to capture the stop-motion characters. You get to see exactly how they managed the lighting and dealt with the meticulous process of animating the animals frame-by-frame.

It is another example of Apple favoring practical effects over CGI lately. Just last month, the company released A Critter Carol, which used puppets to show off the camera. This new film does something similar, physically animating the characters so they can interact directly with the human actors in the same space.

The release kicks off Apple's broader Lunar New Year campaign. To mark the Year of the Horse, the company recently introduced a limited-edition version of the AirPods Pro 3 in select Asian markets featuring a custom emoji engraving on the charging case.

Take a look at the short film and the making-of video below...