andy lee

Director is being bold ! and decided to ADR the entire movie - partly as the sets where built in a building under Manchester Airport flight path so Jumbo jets very five minuites made on set sound unusable !! that decission made it alot faster and easier for me as DOP !!

most big Hollywood films are ADR , Fincher has been doing it for years now , as it lets the actors craft a performance for the dialogue , I do prefer it as you get a much better contralled dialogue sound in the studio , also outside in a big city its impossable to get useable production sound as you have car traffic noise , airplanes, policesirens etc etc all messing up your sound , so I prefer crafing at all in ADR and post.

Director is being bold ! and decided to ADR the entire movie - partly as the sets where built in a building under Manchester Airport flight path so Jumbo jets very five minuites made on set sound unusable !! that decission made it alot faster and easier for me as DOP !!

Andy, did you record the dialogues on set with shotgun etc or will you go with ADR?
If you recorded sounds on set which setup did you use?

Ive been doing alot of tests with the G7s on my custom made shoulder rigs and Im not having issues with the rolling shutter .
with regard to Pandora movie I did alot of tests to show the Director Arri Alexa v Red Epic v Panasonic G7 internal recording v Panasonic G7 and Atomos recorded .
and he liked the look of the internal recording on the G7 with Metabones XL speedboosters and Nikon lenses , its very very sharp clean image and he decided to do the whole movie with it , the image is superb and grades very well ,  using 6 x G7s was the best option for us time wise as I wanted to shoot multicam.

Ive been doing alot of tests with the G7s on my custom made shoulder rigs and Im not having issues with the rolling shutter .
with regard to Pandora movie I did alot of tests to show the Director Arri Alexa v Red Epic v Panasonic G7 internal recording v Panasonic G7 and Atomos recorded .
and he liked the look of the internal recording on the G7 with Metabones XL speedboosters and Nikon lenses , its very very sharp clean image and he decided to do the whole movie with it , the image is superb and grades very well ,  using 6 x G7s was the best option for us time wise as I wanted to shoot multicam.

Ive been doing alot of tests with the G7s on my custom made shoulder rigs and Im not having issues with the rolling shutter .
with regard to Pandora movie I did alot of tests to show the Director Arri Alexa v Red Epic v Panasonic G7 internal recording v Panasonic G7 and Atomos recorded .
and he liked the look of the internal recording on the G7 with Metabones XL speedboosters and Nikon lenses , its very very sharp clean image and he decided to do the whole movie with it , the image is superb and grades very well ,  using 6 x G7s was the best option for us time wise as I wanted to shoot multicam.

We gained from a narative point of view as the actors perfered this way of working doing longer takes and complex moves with marks all over the set floor became the norm, we did this alot and the movie gained from that freedom , I always opperated the A camera on every take so that handled all the complex moves and focus pulls ,
yeah Panasonic bullet time here we come !!
the Director wanted David Fincher/Nicolas Winding Refn style of shooting so alot shot on legs careful framing , using symmetery where we could find it , and slow dolly moves , the camera only moves when it needs to ,no sudden movemets or randon pans,  there are only about 6 or 7 hand held shot in the whole movie , the Director is not a fan of hand held Paul Greengass wobblecam ,
I do like the hand held look alot and my next film is a Bourne /Bond syle classic British spy film and Im shooting this movie mainly all hand held as it add a dynamic realismto that style of movie.....I'm just starting pre production and tests shoots for this film now.
here are 2 test shots from last week I did for the Spy film with one of the actresses Joanna Bright, Panasonic G7 and Nikon 28-70mm with Metabones XL Speedbooster.
Arri 300s and 150s gelled and diffused.

every set up is different as you have to go by what the script requires , sometimes its complex moves and focus pulls,  some times its just needs 2 camera and is easy !!

We gained from a narative point of view as the actors perfered this way of working doing longer takes and complex moves with marks all over the set floor became the norm, we did this alot and the movie gained from that freedom , I always opperated the A camera on every take so that handled all the complex moves and focus pulls ,
yeah Panasonic bullet time here we come !!
the Director wanted David Fincher/Nicolas Winding Refn style of shooting so alot shot on legs careful framing , using symmetery where we could find it , and slow dolly moves , the camera only moves when it needs to ,no sudden movemets or randon pans,  there are only about 6 or 7 hand held shot in the whole movie , the Director is not a fan of hand held Paul Greengass wobblecam ,
I do like the hand held look alot and my next film is a Bourne /Bond syle classic British spy film and Im shooting this movie mainly all hand held as it add a dynamic realismto that style of movie.....I'm just starting pre production and tests shoots for this film now.
here are 2 test shots from last week I did for the Spy film with one of the actresses Joanna Bright, Panasonic G7 and Nikon 28-70mm with Metabones XL Speedbooster.
Arri 300s and 150s gelled and diffused.

Time ! thats why , shooting multi cam saves time and money and lets you get alot more setups done per day , I had 6 x G7's rigged up on Gini Rigs that I custom made ,
I had 2 rigs with Nikon 80-200mm lenses, 2 with Nikon 28-70mm lenses and one with a Nikon 20-35mm lens the sixth G7 was used on steady rigs and dolly tracks and sliders with various different lenses , all cameras had Metabones XL speedboosters on them to give me a Super 35mm field of view on the lenses , most set ups I would run 3 cameras , a close up, a mid and a wide , the actors loved it as we could do long takes 3 min passes at times and pick off head shots, mids and wides all in one performance .
Some set ups I did run 6 cameras at once as we had some complex special FX shots with prosthetic heads and blood and gore etc .
Multi cam is the way to go , we shot the movie in 44 days , and if we had done it traditionally with just 1 camera it would have taken maybe 60 days plus .
So multi cam saved us alot of time and money , the Panasonic G7s all performened amazing no issues at all and we shot 12 hr days every day , the rigs and camera and lenses got Battle Tested to the limit and all worked beyond my expectations , The G7 is an amazing camera its very very good in low light much better than the GH4 as it has a newer better sensor , I could not have shot this movie without the G7 it let me shoot 3 or 4 stops under for most of the movie , I like that low light Gordon Willis - "Prince of Darkness" look so the G7 let me push that to the limit with no noise and fizz at all in the blacks , its very very good!!

Multi Cam is great for dialogue scenes as you can shoot over the shoulders in both directions at the same time and sneek in a 2 shot wide side on plus ECU head shots in both directions at the same time too !
5 cameras for all that and the actors love it as they can play the whole scene in one pass and its all 'real' the performance can be cut for one actual take so it all edits together perfectly , yes you have to light for it and set up the shots but I do highly recomend it !
its so much faster then with one camera .
I started shooting multi cam on my pop videos after I stopped shooting on film as its so much more useful to get all that coverage faster, so its not something new to me and when the Director of Pandora embrased this way for filming for this movie it was great to be let free to hunt down cool shots with all the extras cameras I had to use.
here you can see a shot from the movie and below it a BTS photo of the set up and how I lit it and shot it multi cam , I used 5 cameras on this sofa scene shooting both sides at the same time. cu head shots, 2 shots and wides all at once - saved loads of time !!

We gained from a narative point of view as the actors perfered this way of working doing longer takes and complex moves with marks all over the set floor became the norm, we did this alot and the movie gained from that freedom , I always opperated the A camera on every take so that handled all the complex moves and focus pulls ,
yeah Panasonic bullet time here we come !!
the Director wanted David Fincher/Nicolas Winding Refn style of shooting so alot shot on legs careful framing , using symmetery where we could find it , and slow dolly moves , the camera only moves when it needs to ,no sudden movemets or randon pans,  there are only about 6 or 7 hand held shot in the whole movie , the Director is not a fan of hand held Paul Greengass wobblecam ,
I do like the hand held look alot and my next film is a Bourne /Bond syle classic British spy film and Im shooting this movie mainly all hand held as it add a dynamic realismto that style of movie.....I'm just starting pre production and tests shoots for this film now.
here are 2 test shots from last week I did for the Spy film with one of the actresses Joanna Bright, Panasonic G7 and Nikon 28-70mm with Metabones XL Speedbooster.
Arri 300s and 150s gelled and diffused.

We gained from a narative point of view as the actors perfered this way of working doing longer takes and complex moves with marks all over the set floor became the norm, we did this alot and the movie gained from that freedom , I always opperated the A camera on every take so that handled all the complex moves and focus pulls ,
yeah Panasonic bullet time here we come !!
the Director wanted David Fincher/Nicolas Winding Refn style of shooting so alot shot on legs careful framing , using symmetery where we could find it , and slow dolly moves , the camera only moves when it needs to ,no sudden movemets or randon pans,  there are only about 6 or 7 hand held shot in the whole movie , the Director is not a fan of hand held Paul Greengass wobblecam ,
I do like the hand held look alot and my next film is a Bourne /Bond syle classic British spy film and Im shooting this movie mainly all hand held as it add a dynamic realismto that style of movie.....I'm just starting pre production and tests shoots for this film now.
here are 2 test shots from last week I did for the Spy film with one of the actresses Joanna Bright, Panasonic G7 and Nikon 28-70mm with Metabones XL Speedbooster.
Arri 300s and 150s gelled and diffused.

Multi Cam is great for dialogue scenes as you can shoot over the shoulders in both directions at the same time and sneek in a 2 shot wide side on plus ECU head shots in both directions at the same time too !
5 cameras for all that and the actors love it as they can play the whole scene in one pass and its all 'real' the performance can be cut for one actual take so it all edits together perfectly , yes you have to light for it and set up the shots but I do highly recomend it !
its so much faster then with one camera .
I started shooting multi cam on my pop videos after I stopped shooting on film as its so much more useful to get all that coverage faster, so its not something new to me and when the Director of Pandora embrased this way for filming for this movie it was great to be let free to hunt down cool shots with all the extras cameras I had to use.
here you can see a shot from the movie and below it a BTS photo of the set up and how I lit it and shot it multi cam , I used 5 cameras on this sofa scene shooting both sides at the same time. cu head shots, 2 shots and wides all at once - saved loads of time !!

Lighting for 3 cameras something I did alot on this movie, you just have to think ahead so one angle doesn't take a 'bath' with the lighting, I would often use a Arri 150 as a shadow killer on the C camera angle , so as long as camera A and B are good with camera C I will shoe horn in to get a usable angle, 'coverage' is the word thrown around alot by Directors these days  , lots of DOPs say you can only light for 1 camera and thats the traditional way , well its not true you can light for multi cam If you think it through carefully it does work , 6 cameras is possible I did that quite a bit stacking them in pairs a close together  like  40mm and 75mm with the 75 slightly higher for a close up head shot , if you have enough light and big enough set you can do , I designed the set with the director so I could put the windows and the practical lights exactly were I wanted them , this helped alot . see pics below of some typical multi cam set ups on the movie

Multi Cam is great for dialogue scenes as you can shoot over the shoulders in both directions at the same time and sneek in a 2 shot wide side on plus ECU head shots in both directions at the same time too !
5 cameras for all that and the actors love it as they can play the whole scene in one pass and its all 'real' the performance can be cut for one actual take so it all edits together perfectly , yes you have to light for it and set up the shots but I do highly recomend it !
its so much faster then with one camera .
I started shooting multi cam on my pop videos after I stopped shooting on film as its so much more useful to get all that coverage faster, so its not something new to me and when the Director of Pandora embrased this way for filming for this movie it was great to be let free to hunt down cool shots with all the extras cameras I had to use.
here you can see a shot from the movie and below it a BTS photo of the set up and how I lit it and shot it multi cam , I used 5 cameras on this sofa scene shooting both sides at the same time. cu head shots, 2 shots and wides all at once - saved loads of time !!

Lighting for 3 cameras something I did alot on this movie, you just have to think ahead so one angle doesn't take a 'bath' with the lighting, I would often use a Arri 150 as a shadow killer on the C camera angle , so as long as camera A and B are good with camera C I will shoe horn in to get a usable angle, 'coverage' is the word thrown around alot by Directors these days  , lots of DOPs say you can only light for 1 camera and thats the traditional way , well its not true you can light for multi cam If you think it through carefully it does work , 6 cameras is possible I did that quite a bit stacking them in pairs a close together  like  40mm and 75mm with the 75 slightly higher for a close up head shot , if you have enough light and big enough set you can do , I designed the set with the director so I could put the windows and the practical lights exactly were I wanted them , this helped alot . see pics below of some typical multi cam set ups on the movie

I am a huge fan of multi-cam setups. While personally I haven't use multi-cams (yet), unfortunately, I have been part of a film where we they used like 6-7 cameras, and though I did not like the camerawork, or the setup, I thought the idea was really neat. 

For dialogues, and for many other setups, a multi-cam setup can seriously reduce the time required for the shoot. I am actually thinking about picking up (Atleast) 2 cameras, for a film I wanna shoot. I guess that should help speed up things substantially. 

Superb Idea, Lee. 

Ah I see, you used "just" 3 cameras for most shots. That makes much more sense. As I'd struggle to see how it makes sense to use six for most shots!

thats why I got hired for the movie!!
  I come from a pop video background for 20 years ,I always shoot with gels on my lights , the Director wanted a very modern bold stylised use of colour , he came to me to design the whole look and style of the movie , so I have used different colors and contrasts of colours through out each section of the movie so each scene has a look to it , It was  a very small crew I was DOP and Gaffer ,so I lit the entiremovie myself as well as shooting it .I have big lighting package I brought to the movie of 25 Arri Fresnels , (1k pups , 650s , 300s 150s etc) and kinoflo tube lights 
yes I do use Lee gels all sorts of colours plus I shoot alot at 4000k for interiors the Panny looks better at 4000k than 3200k , just that bit warmer , I shoot day exteriors at 6500k and all my night exteriors at 2500k , yes I do try and use contempory colours there is modern colour palatte in the industry I have embraced alot , this movie has no day exteriors in the whole script , all the exteriors are night time so I got to play with the colours alot which was fun gelling all the Arri HMIs at night I used alot of Peacock Blue and 1/4 blue.
Lighting is a totally subjective subject , I like to treat it as a completely creative tool to help tell the story and a contast in light and dark is also complemented by a contrast of colour in the lighting , why limit your self to what I call boring plain 'white light' , you dont have to just use your lamps as is , gel them with colour and diffusion , most of my Fresnels have F1 diffusion on them all the time , (I rarely use undiffused lamps) ...along with a gel , if you want to play around with this then just get some full CTO and Full CTB gels and start with that , the possibilities are endless!! get creative......

when you are working on a Movie you sign a contract and NDA ! and that contrat says there is an embargo on anything going out without premission from the film company - they own everything they paid for it including all my tests - now we live in a world of Facebook and twitter film companies dont want any leaks beore their marketing department decides what people can see and when .
So yes I can tell you the results of all my tests right now - just take my word the G7 kicks ass , with a Metabones XL - Nikon Glass and Atomos Ninja Assassin all rigged up on my Gini Rigs cages it s a serious film making tool
 
 
Now Colour grading is all in my eye - I shoot flat and add the colour in post - alot of my colour is on set I light always with coloured gels and get the look I want in camera - just on a flat profile so I get cleaner blacks with more detail - not crushed out

no you cant do both at once , its either or !!  I have brought this up at meetings with Panasonic as we all would like this feature , the G7 will not do this, I just shot a feature film with 6 x Panasonic G7 cameras , its a great camera !

Time ! thats why , shooting multi cam saves time and money and lets you get alot more setups done per day , I had 6 x G7's rigged up on Gini Rigs that I custom made ,
I had 2 rigs with Nikon 80-200mm lenses, 2 with Nikon 28-70mm lenses and one with a Nikon 20-35mm lens the sixth G7 was used on steady rigs and dolly tracks and sliders with various different lenses , all cameras had Metabones XL speedboosters on them to give me a Super 35mm field of view on the lenses , most set ups I would run 3 cameras , a close up, a mid and a wide , the actors loved it as we could do long takes 3 min passes at times and pick off head shots, mids and wides all in one performance .
Some set ups I did run 6 cameras at once as we had some complex special FX shots with prosthetic heads and blood and gore etc .
Multi cam is the way to go , we shot the movie in 44 days , and if we had done it traditionally with just 1 camera it would have taken maybe 60 days plus .
So multi cam saved us alot of time and money , the Panasonic G7s all performened amazing no issues at all and we shot 12 hr days every day , the rigs and camera and lenses got Battle Tested to the limit and all worked beyond my expectations , The G7 is an amazing camera its very very good in low light much better than the GH4 as it has a newer better sensor , I could not have shot this movie without the G7 it let me shoot 3 or 4 stops under for most of the movie , I like that low light Gordon Willis - "Prince of Darkness" look so the G7 let me push that to the limit with no noise and fizz at all in the blacks , its very very good!!

thats why I got hired for the movie!!
  I come from a pop video background for 20 years ,I always shoot with gels on my lights , the Director wanted a very modern bold stylised use of colour , he came to me to design the whole look and style of the movie , so I have used different colors and contrasts of colours through out each section of the movie so each scene has a look to it , It was  a very small crew I was DOP and Gaffer ,so I lit the entiremovie myself as well as shooting it .I have big lighting package I brought to the movie of 25 Arri Fresnels , (1k pups , 650s , 300s 150s etc) and kinoflo tube lights 
yes I do use Lee gels all sorts of colours plus I shoot alot at 4000k for interiors the Panny looks better at 4000k than 3200k , just that bit warmer , I shoot day exteriors at 6500k and all my night exteriors at 2500k , yes I do try and use contempory colours there is modern colour palatte in the industry I have embraced alot , this movie has no day exteriors in the whole script , all the exteriors are night time so I got to play with the colours alot which was fun gelling all the Arri HMIs at night I used alot of Peacock Blue and 1/4 blue.
Lighting is a totally subjective subject , I like to treat it as a completely creative tool to help tell the story and a contast in light and dark is also complemented by a contrast of colour in the lighting , why limit your self to what I call boring plain 'white light' , you dont have to just use your lamps as is , gel them with colour and diffusion , most of my Fresnels have F1 diffusion on them all the time , (I rarely use undiffused lamps) ...along with a gel , if you want to play around with this then just get some full CTO and Full CTB gels and start with that , the possibilities are endless!! get creative......