Indian 'Highway Men' wrap up travel series on just iPhone, iPad

New Delhi, September 26

Imagine shooting an entire travel vlogging series on an iPhone, edit it on an iPad Pro and you are done to showcase your digital masterpiece to the world which would have otherwise cost you a bomb, involving several crew members, specialised cameras, audio and video, fancy gimbals and more.

Rocky Singh and Mayur Sharma, the acclaimed travellers and foodies whom we know as 'Highway Men,' took the daunting task to shoot a unique, digital-exclusive travel vlogging series titled #RoadTrippinWithRnM, with just an iPhone 11 Pro Max and an iPad Pro (for editing) in their kitty post-lockdown.

They got behind the wheels for the 14-day road-trip across Rajasthan (with only a cameraperson), churning out over 60 minutes of content daily at over eight locations. They drove over 200 kms daily for a 16-hour-long day in the 40 degree Celsius heat, keeping the social distancing norms in mind.

"You won't believe this but no one has ever done this before. The entire #roadtrippinwithrnm journey was shot and edited only on an iPhone 11 Pro Max and iPad Pro. We had to maintain social distancing, so we found this the best way to go out in a vehicle and shoot," Mayur told IANS.

According to Rocky, the whole digital experience was so awesome that they did not miss the hustle and bustle of being part of a TV show or long post-production hours.

"We never thought that just two Apple devices will be enough to produce such a wonderful series. It was seamless to work on these devices at your leisure and produce such a wonderful content. This is the future of creative content production for TV and cinema," Rocky said.

The triple-camera system on iPhone 11 Pro Max takes Portrait mode to a new level with the ability to choose Wide and Telephoto framing, enabling Portrait mode with a wider field of view, great for taking portraits of multiple people.

The next-generation Smart HDR uses advanced Machine Learning to recognise subjects in the frame and intelligently relight them for more natural-looking images with greater detail.

While the new "True Tone" flash is over 30 per cent brighter. Deep Fusion is a new image processing system enabled by the Neural Engine of A13 Bionic chip.

Deep Fusion uses advanced machine learning to do pixel-by-pixel processing of photos, optimizing for texture, details and noise in every part of the photo.

"We were able to control the shoot and edit on the two Apple devices and the final output was so superb that you will be left thrilled," Rocky said.

The iPad Pro packs creative apps from Adobe, Autodesk and Procreate.

For creative professionals, there is a high-performance USB-C connector that brings a whole new set of capabilities. They can connect iPad Pro to cameras, musical instruments, external monitors, even docks, and get data transfer done in a jiffy.

Improvements to Photo Import and support for native RAW image editing give photographers efficient ways to work on the device.

"For us, it was like going back to the basics. This gives up hope at a time when the TV and film industry is suffering in the pandemic times," Rocky noted.

The duo, who came to prominence with their TV show 'Highway on My Plate,' posted daily vlogs, pictures and engaged in Live Q&A sessions on social media while going through the 14-day road shooting trip.

Result: Over 5.5 crore organic impressions and 16 million views in 14 days.

The organic impressions are now nearing almost 10 crore.

"We are now looking to replicate the experience with exploring more such highways, like in Uttaranchal or Himachal Pradesh, hoping for more brands to relive the fantastic journey with us," Mayur said. IANS

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