Apple Stages the Best Snowball Fight Ever in Joyous Holiday Encore

Apple has already made you cry with a poignant commercial this holiday season. Now, it’s time for something a bit more action packed. 

To show off the capabilities of the powerful iPhone 11 Pro camera, the brand worked with TBWAMedia Arts Lab, director David Leitch (John Wick, Deadpool 2) and cinematographer Robert Elswit (an Oscar winner for There Will Be Blood) to stage an epic snowball fight—and, naturally, capture all the footage with the phone. 

Leitch and Elswit make good use of the 4K video and triple-camera system, including the new Ultra Wide lens, and the phone’s cinematic video stabilization at 60 frames per second. But it’s not just an impressive technical display. It’s also a cute—and exhilarating—story of a daring teddy-bear rescue. 

If the lead actress looks familiar, that’s because it’s Makena Cook—the 10-year-old up-and-coming soccer player who also had the starring role in Nike’s electrifying Women’s World Cup spot this past summer. (She’s certainly getting the plum ad gigs this year.) 

The fun-loving product demo—capped off with the “twist” ending and the delightful exploding-snowball Apple logo—is the perfect holiday companion piece to the emotional storytelling of the earlier iPad spot. And it comes with the behind-the-scenes video below, in which Leitch talks about the ease of shooting 4K video at 60 fps with the iPhone 11 Pro.