Spellbinding Mirror Dance Shot with an iPhone 7 and Smartphone Gimbal

Karen X Cheng—the viral video maven behind this fun gravity illusion and the donut selfie—put her hard-earned dance skills to use in a new video shot with an iPhone 7 attached to a stabilizing gimbal. The trippy results are quite captivating.

Cheng was actually inspired to create this video by photographer and PetaPixel friend Benjamin Von Wong. He posted a video last December showing off a new stabilizer by shooting it into a mirror. This technique—not exactly original to Von Wong, mind you—inspired Cheng to choreograph a short dance using something a bit more amateur level: the new iPhone 7 Plus and a ‘high tech selfie stick,’ AKA a smartphone gimbal.

“I thought it was a cool effect and would make for an interesting dance video,” she tells PetaPixel. “So I found a lighter weight gimbal, one for an iPhone.” Paired with the iPhone 7 Plus’ built-in optical stabilization, the final video comes off buttery smooth, no matter how Karen moves the phone, her body, or both.

The video might seem super simple, but it was a lot more difficult to create than it looks. Even for a talented dancer like Cheng, choreographing something that would look good in this particular style was a challenge.

“A lot of my regular dance moves didn’t look good when the camera was shooting itself at a fixed point,” she tells us, “so I did quite a bit of experimenting to figure out a dance style that would show off the stabilizer.”

In the end, we’d say she nailed it.

The gimbal she used was the Feiyu G4, which’ll cost you about $300. And if you want to learn more about this or any other video Karen has shot, head over to her website by clicking here.

Image credits: Video and GIFs by Karen X Cheng, and used with permission.