Vortex: A Dizzying Short Shot with an iPhone and Cinema Robot Gimbal

If you easily get motion sickness, you may want to stay away from this short film. Visual storyteller Tim Sessler recently spent 48 hours shooting in New York City with an iPhone 8 and the new Freefly Movi cinematic robotic gimbal. What resulted is Vortex, this 1.5-minute short film in which the world continually turns.

“The goal was to have a more grounded view of the city,” Sessler writes. “While the spinning camera was the perfect way to capture the feeling we were trying to evoke, the idea was to portray the buildings as the foundation – the body and bones – of all of it.

“Yet the people are the ones that really suck you into it and create the pulse and flow of the city and help to create the overstimulating element in our piece.”

Sessler says the iPhone and Movi combo was perfect for capturing this effect without a large camera rig in busy, high-security places.

Vortex was selected as a Staff Pick after being published on Vimeo. Sessler was also the guy behind the “vertigo effect” drone video and drone-lit short film that we shared recently.