Modern Family shoots an entire episode with Apple products

(Image credit: Twitter.com/AdAge)

published 18 February 2015

Modern Family is going online, with its Feb. 25 episode taking place entirely on Claire Dunphy's computer.

"Connection Lost" was primarily shot with iPhone 6s and iPads, with the rest of the filming done with a MacBook Pro (although Apple provided iPhones for production, there won't be any product-placement compensation, The Associated Press reports). In the episode, Claire (Julie Bowen) is about to board a flight, and can't find her daughter, Haley (Sarah Hyland), so she enlists her extended family on social media and through messaging to track her down.

The idea came to Modern Family co-creator and executive producer Steve Levitan one day when he was online. "I had emails open, some websites...then my daughter showed up [on FaceTime]," he told AP. "I could not only see her, but I could see me, and there was something go on behind me, my wife or somebody. I realized on that screen, you could tell so much about my life." Levitan could imagine this happening on the show, and the rest is Modern Family history.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

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