Shooting iPhone 4G Ads Reportedly Underway

Apple has reportedly started shooting commercials for its next iPhone, one of which features a mother and daughter having a video-chat conversation thanks to the new front-facing camera. According to Engadget, American Beauty director Sam Mendes has begun working on a series of commercials to promote the new iPhone 4, which Apple may unveil to the public as soon as next month.

With (at least) two leaked prototype units in the wild, Apple is not introducing actors to anything new, at least from a design point of view. Twitter revealed yesterday that an actress was being auditioned for one of the new iPhone commercials in New York. Another actor, a male, is auditioning for a similar TV spot in California, Engadget points out. There’s no reason to believe these reports are inaccurate, especially with everyone expecting Apple to introduce iPhone 4G two weeks from now.

As noted above, Sam Mendes is reportedly putting together a series of commercials for Apple's next iPhone. Mendes is a well-known English stage and film director who’s won two Laurence Olivier Awards for his London stage productions The Glass Menagerie and Company in 1996, and Twelfth Night and Uncle Vanya in 2003. A Tony Award nomination was handed to Mendes for Best Direction of a Musical for the Broadway revival of Cabaret in 1998. American Beauty (1999), his debut film, earned Mendes an Academy Award for Best Director.

Currently, Apple’s iPhone ads mainly focus on the user’s experience thanks to the multitude of applications found in the App Store. The company picks the best of all free and paid apps that leverage on the phone’s hardware and emphasizes about three titles in each spot. For example, Apple’s “Commute” ad features a male voice actor who has just missed the train.

He uses his iPhone to find the fastest way to get to his destination. In the meanwhile, he gets a call from the office where his colleague, Mike, wants to know something about a report. The iPhone owner quickly checks with his work computer using an app that allows him to access it remotely, finds the report in question, and forwards the file over to Mike, all from the handheld device. As he’s waiting for his train, the protagonist fires up the WSJ app to catch up with the news.

The next wave of iPhone ads is likely to focus on multitasking, the Game Center, features like Application Folders, the improved Mail with a unified inbox, fast inbox switching and threaded messages, and iBooks, all of which are only available with iPhone OS 4.0, which Apple is set to launch this summer.