Tonight’s episode of ABC’s comedy series Modern Family, entitled “Connection Lost” was filmed entirely on iPhones, iPads, and Macs. Here’s a behind the scene’s peek at how it was done.
The Feb. 25 Modern Family consists entirely of a series of FaceTime chats between Claire (Julie Bowen), who is sitting in an airport in Chicago, and the rest of her family members, who are in their respective houses in Los Angeles.
Claire uses her MacBook to communicate with her family, all while she keeps tabs on Facebook, searches the Internet, shops online, and reads her email. The entire episode consists of family members popping on and off of her MacBook screen.
In an exclusive video on the Buzzfeed site, Modern Family’s co-creator and executive producer, Steve Levitan, explained how they used iPhones to film “Connection Lost.”
Levitan explains that while they originally expected the actors to hold the devices and film themselves, they hit on the idea of putting the iPhones into holsters to be held by a cameraman, while the actors held the cameraman’s arm, giving the illusion that they were holding and moving the device.
While this is the first episode of Modern Family to be shot entirely using Apple products, Levitan says that certain scenes over the six seasons of the series were shot on iPhones for a variety of reasons, which viewers likely never noticed.
“There was a scene where Manny (Rico Rodriguez) was dressed as a mascot at a basketball game, so rather than recreating a whole basketball game, I quickly shot my son’s basketball game on my iPhone,” Levitan told BuzzFeed News in an email. “Then we filmed Rico against a green screen, and inserted the shot into the episode.”
