The iPhone 16pro and 17Pro with the Blackmagic Camera app has changed what we need to produce cinema-grade films. There have been several major directors who have used iPhones to produce their films – Steven Soderberg and UNSANE and HIGH FLYING BALL come to mind. The fact is that the lines have been blurred between cameras.
An iphone advantage is that we can film at 4K Prores log footage and save the files to an external drive. This allows us to film at Apple Prorez 422 in apple log HDR which means a file size of 4GB for every minute. With an external SSD drive or fast flash drive one produces very high rez footage. Filming at Apple Log format means footage that is far easier to color grade with apps like Lumafusion or even the free version of DaVinci Resolve https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve.
Here are some very nice examples of short films shot by my students in Cairo on the iPhone 15Pro.