[00:00:00] The iPhone 15 pro is changing the game for creative freelancers, like photographers, videographers, and filmmakers. The cameras on this thing are incredible. The ability to record in pro res log 4k 60 is still blowing my mind. And the barrier to entry to earn more money as a Creative freelancer has been lowered.
Some professionals are worried that kids with phones are going to take their jobs and others are excited for the possibility of using a phone at a professional level. The reality is getting paid for content creation has been democratized and made accessible to anyone with a phone, some creative abilities, and some basic business skills.
My name is Chris Pieta and I run a production company and teach creative business here online. What does the iPhone 15 pro mean for freelancers and photographers and videographers? Well, that's what we're answering here today. Real quick here. Do you remember how you first found this podcast? Probably through a message from a friend or maybe a social media post or story.
The only way this podcast grows is through word [00:01:00] of mouth.
If you've ever gotten any value from me, please pay it forward and share this episode with another creative freelancer in your life, a message, a story post, whatever feels right for you. You never know. It may change someone else's life. All right, now let's get into the episode. Welcome to the creative biz launch podcast, where we talk about how to grow your creative business and scale to six figures, whether you're a photographer, filmmaker, or designer, you'll find something of value here.
Let's just take a step back and see how far we've actually come with phone cameras and the industry in general. Just a few decades ago, it would have been unheard of for someone like me or you to create an ad for a company, a music video for an artist, or even a film. We're living in a wild time where you can buy the latest phone, invest a few thousand bucks in learning how to get clients and run a business through some online program.
Buy a few extra pieces of gear and have what it takes to run a creative agency. Now, yes, it takes a lot of hard work outside of this, but it's still absolutely insane that we're [00:02:00] able to do this in this day and age. And this is only possible because of the internet back in the day, there were very few big companies.
You had the Coca Cola's of the world that would pay an agency hundreds of thousands to produce an ad for them. This agency would take their money and produce a TV commercial. This production would involve cameras that cost tens of thousands of dollars, huge studio spaces, hired actors, and so many moving parts.
And this still happens today. Coca Cola spends hundreds of thousands on this thing, and they do get a positive ROI. They make money, but you or I back in the day, we could never produce this kind of commercial for them. The barrier to entry was just so, so high, only a select few directors got to do this thing and they were behind a wall of agents negotiating on their behalf.
Fast forward to 2023 and the rise of the internet and e commerce. Now anyone can start their own company. Someone can start an independent soda brand, create a Shopify store and run a successful [00:03:00] business. The barrier to entry for starting a business has been lowered. And with this came the rise of smaller production studios and independent creators creation has been democratized.
The small soda brand doesn't need a hundred thousand dollars shoot for their product. They need someone like you or me to do it. We don't need an agent to represent us. We can land the client ourselves without using agents. We're just using frameworks that I teach on this podcast. And on my YouTube channel,
these are the frameworks I teach in my free workshop linked in the show notes.
And the thing is, we're not filming or photographing with super expensive cameras. We're using professional level cameras and honestly, maybe even consumer level cameras to do this. And now with the iPhone 15 pro bringing 4k 60 pro res log into the phone. Well, you can shoot a professional looking ad with just your phone.
Last week, I published a YouTube video discussing whether the iPhone 15 pro is good enough to land paying product photography clients. If you want to watch that and have the answer to that question, [00:04:00] check out that video after you're done listening to this episode over the past two decades, starting a business and becoming a freelancer has slowly started to become the norm.
At least that's how I feel among the creative community. What's happened to us has been incredible. The creation process has been democratized. The internet has democratized all of this.
When I say democratized, I mean that this career path has been made available to nearly anyone. You don't have to pay tens of thousands of dollars to go to school, to learn photography or filmmaking, or even business. You can buy an online course and it'll teach you everything. And most courses even have guarantees, which is crazy.
This is disrupting the traditional educational model, but I'm getting off topic here, this is an episode about the iPhone 15 pro what happens when everyone has the same capabilities.
When everyone can create the best content out there. What happens when gear truly doesn't matter because everyone has the best gear. Well, it's a similar thing that's been happening with the rise of AI. We've seen AI all over the place from chat, GPT to Photoshop's [00:05:00] generative AI, to even the captions you see on social media videos, short form videos on social media have drastically changed.
Over the last two or so years, two years ago, the best videos on social media had nice looking captions. And that's as far as their editing went. But with the rise of AI, everyone has access to these super fancy captions now and animations because AI apps just do it all for you. The barrier to entry has been lowered.
So you might think that everyone's content will just start to look the same. Everyone will have these pretty captions and the best people will look like the average people, but that's not what happened. Yes, everyone has these fancy captions now, but what happened was that the threshold for what makes a very good video was raised way up.
Now that everyone has access to this technology, the best people in the space still put an extra effort and they really have to go all out to make their stuff stand out. And I've been seeing some incredible editing and some people's short form video because they're being pushed to be better and better because [00:06:00] everyone has a level playing field.
When everyone has access to the best technology, the people with the highest skills win. Skills are what differentiate people nowadays. When we're talking about shooting content with an iPhone, what skills come to mind? Well, I think Casey Neistat said it best. It's all about story. Storytelling is what differentiates a good piece of content from a bad one.
When everyone's videos have the same quality because they're shot on the same cameras, then story and editing skills are what separate the good from the bad. People are going to watch something because of the story, the emotional connection they get with the characters, the struggle the characters go through, the resolution at the end.
Building up these skills is going to be so important.
I've heard of photographers and videographers being scared that kids can come in and shoot great videos on their phones. They're scared because they're going to be replaced and they should be scared if they can't keep up with the new talent, the better skills of the other people, then they will be replaced.
Why would a client go with a worse service? We live in a very competitive landscape as creatives. [00:07:00] We're always competing for clients and the best creatives will get those clients. And as creatives who run businesses. We need to constantly be on top, learning the new trends and honing our skills. The best option for the client will win, but it's not just about creative skills.
Business skills are going to play a huge role in who gets to work with the clients and who gets left behind in the age of the internet. It's never been more important to learn the business skills, to find clients, to convince them to work with you and to keep them coming back for more. If you can learn these three things, then you'll be fine, but you need to know these three core business skills.
If you need help, I have a free workshop that teaches you my exact four step blueprint to landing clients, to pricing my work, and how I scaled my business. Link for that free workshop is in the show notes. So here's your spot today, if you want to learn the business skills that will set you apart at this point, it's normal to think that the reality I've described is still a long way out, but that's not true.
Already, we've seen a music video for a big name artist being filmed on the [00:08:00] new iPhone. Olivia Rodrigo's video for get him back was filmed on an iPhone 15 pro and that video looks amazing. You can really see the log footage shine in that video. There's so much flexibility in the edit. 99 percent of people won't be able to tell what kind of camera this was filmed on.
They're going to assume that it was filmed on some sort of professional camera that costs more than their car, but it was filmed on an iPhone. They have in their pockets as well. Now you may be saying that, okay, but this was just a music video. What about a feature film? What about something Christopher Nolan would put on an iMac screen?
Well, Nolan only shoots film, so I don't expect anything from him and I don't expect him to start using an iPhone anytime soon, but recently a movie came out that was shot on a camera you and I can buy The movie The Creator was released in IMAX in 2023 and it was shot on the Sony FX three. For those that don't know, the Sony FX three is a compact camera that costs $4,000.
Not cheap, but nowhere near the [00:09:00] cost of a San a standard cinema camera that costs $50,000. Plus this film being released in theaters after being shot on a $4,000 camera is insane to me. It lowers the barriers to entry for filmmaking, and this trend is going to continue. As technology gets better, the barrier to entry gets lowered.
As freelance photographers and videographers, the important thing to develop here are skills that will differentiate you.
Business skills are timeless and everyone should learn them. Learn sales, learn marketing, learn operations, and customer experience. Skills like storytelling are so important these days. Clients are no longer going to be able to see the difference in the quality of the gear that you use. You need to differentiate yourself with the results you get through them.
You differentiate yourself through the stories you tell, and you need the business skills to win those clients to work with you. Luckily, you can have all the business skills you need in that free workshop I mentioned. It's in the show notes, 60 minutes filled with the exact skills you need, and you can get instant access for that today.
My name is Chris Pieta. [00:10:00] Thank you so much for listening, and I'll catch you in the next episode.
