Perhaps the biggest surprise about action cameras is that they have skills way beyond what we think of them being used for. We've all seen some sickeningly talented snowboarders, skaters and surfers do amazing death-defying things with a camera strapped to them, but what about using one to tell the tale of a genetic experiment gone wrong?

That's the theme in Sony's short film "Creature" directed by Ryan Dzierzek. In this film, every live action shot was taken with a FDR-X1000VR but the camera was mounted not to people, but to this imaginary genetic experiment. The animal that looks like a more dangerous, flying Dodo escapes the lab and makes a break for freedom.

The camera's built-in stabilization mode meant that footage could look super-smooth, but as you can see from the film, this beautifully smooth footage was then made to look shaky during editing, for that sense of escaped killer-bird drama. Although the camera can produce 4K video, here it's on 1080p mode and delivering footage at higher framerates - a mix of 60 and 100fps at data rates of 100mbps.

Also crucial to making this short film work is the wide-angle lens. Here it's used brilliantly to give you an idea of what the animal can see, but also the world around it. Without a wide angle, you'd just see the bird's terrifying head and the detail of London and scared passers-by would be somewhat lost.

It's amazing what sort of a story you can tell in 1 minute 41 seconds, but it's also amazing what you can shoot on a tiny camera that's designed for use in extreme sports. In this case, it's extreme horror but as Sony's other short films show, there's a lot more that this camera can do.