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FAST 8


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We have just wrapped up principle photography on FAST 8. What a journey it has been. For the production, it's been from Los Angeles to Iceland to Cuba, Atlanta, Cleveland and New York City. For me, LA to Cuba to Atlanta since February. This has been my 5th involvement with this franchise and I've become close with many cast and crew who return for each of these. I'll miss you all. Perhaps see you all again on "9"? Till then...

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Sounds like a nice shoot.. I guess you used a few different camera,s.. ?

Primarily open gate Alexas. A bit of Red Weapon and some Black Magic micros as well.

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Hopefully ye will visit either Ireland or Spain on the 9th movie! :D

 

Get some holidays now Greg! :)

Wouldn't that be nice in Spain Miguel? No holiday yet for I start camera prep on JUMANJI on Wednesday for Columbia Pictures.

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Jumanji sounds like a small and independent studio movie haha, you should ask for the b-cam so you can rest a bit ;) :)

 

Canary Islands are very warm on Xmas! Just saying!

 

I hope you have a very good start on Jumanji! :)

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Crikey, that was a long shoot.

It was 89 shooting days. Fairly typical. I started payroll in February because of meetings I was required to attend and 8 weeks of camera prep. All good.
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Greg! I just saw Fast 8 last night.

 

It is a very entertaining movie and it just goes beyond the 7th in terms of making everything bigger.. a submarine! what's going to be next, the International Space Station?? :D

 

Great fun, stayed until the credits and saw your name, I was going to take a photo but the guys from the cinema were looking at me ha.

 

It is such a technical accomplishment and everything is sharp and focused, you have to be super proud, congrats!

 

Have a lovely day!.

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Americans won't have seen this, but there's a piece of video that plays when one is waiting in line for the potential-terrorist exam at US immigration. It shows various attractive views of the US, including one shot showing a camera crew standing around their large, fully-rigged Panasomething, gleaming, toothy smiles wider than their heads. It always strikes me that it was probably taken on one of these shoots!

P

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Americans won't have seen this, but there's a piece of video that plays when one is waiting in line for the potential-terrorist exam at US immigration. It shows various attractive views of the US, including one shot showing a camera crew standing around their large, fully-rigged Panasomething, gleaming, toothy smiles wider than their heads. It always strikes me that it was probably taken on one of these shoots!

 

P

 

 

Maybe Greg is in the photo! You should take a photo of the photo next time you go to the States! :D :D

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Greg! I just saw Fast 8 last night.

 

It is a very entertaining movie and it just goes beyond the 7th in terms of making everything bigger.. a submarine! what's going to be next, the International Space Station?? :D

 

Great fun, stayed until the credits and saw your name, I was going to take a photo but the guys from the cinema were looking at me ha.

 

It is such a technical accomplishment and everything is sharp and focused, you have to be super proud, congrats!

 

Have a lovely day!.

 

Thanks Miguel! I'm so glad you enjoyed it. A lot of work that one was!!! I've seen most of it in the DI suite without sound. I'll try and see the finished product as soon as I can. Thank you for the kind words...

 

G

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Hi Greg,

Congratulations on the movie and its record-breaking success!

 

I was wondering what lenses you used and whether you had any problems covering the Alexa Open Gate?

 

Hello Dom, Thank you so much. We had no issues with Alexa open gate. We did a 5% extraction of the 1:2.40 format in order to give our VFX peeps more room for post camera moves thus giving ourselves a chance. We primarily used Master Primes, supplemented by certain Ultra Primes along with Angenieux and Fujinon zooms.

 

Interestingly enough, my next movie will be anamorphic with either the Alexa 65 or the new Panavision DXL large format cameras. We will need to rebuild several of the Panavision anamorphic lenses in order to cover the sensor. This is going to be a lot of work during prep. Ugh!!!

 

G

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That should be interesting! Looks like larger sensors are where it's heading for these sort of movies. You could always use those old Ultra Panavision 70 anamorphics from Hateful Eight if you get into trouble.. ;)

 

I'm currently giving tech support to a feature using the new Panavision 70 shericals with Alexa open gate - lovely lenses!

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A good DP friend of mine who's shooting a big Netflix show here in Vancouver called Altered Carbon, is using the Alexa 65 but shooting it with normal lenses that cover 5K only. They did extensive tests wanting the shallowest DoF and came to the conclusion that shooting faster lenses that only cover 5K sensor size on the Alexa 65, was shallower than using the slower medium format lenses covering the full sensor. This was interesting to hear. I'm assuming Greg, that you guys are after something similar for the upcoming shoot?

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It's kind of crazy that shooting on a Master Prime at T/1.4 on a regular Alexa isn't shallow-enough focus-wise for some people. "Arrival" had a shallow-focus look and most of that was T/2 on Ultra Primes. And there are those T/1 Hawks...

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It's kind of crazy that shooting on a Master Prime at T/1.4 on a regular Alexa isn't shallow-enough focus-wise for some people. "Arrival" had a shallow-focus look and most of that was T/2 on Ultra Primes. And there are those T/1 Hawks...

 

Interesting territory we're headed into. I guess some would find T/5.6 to be deep focus these days.

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A good DP friend of mine who's shooting a big Netflix show here in Vancouver called Altered Carbon, is using the Alexa 65 but shooting it with normal lenses that cover 5K only. They did extensive tests wanting the shallowest DoF and came to the conclusion that shooting faster lenses that only cover 5K sensor size on the Alexa 65, was shallower than using the slower medium format lenses covering the full sensor. This was interesting to hear. I'm assuming Greg, that you guys are after something similar for the upcoming shoot?

Not at all Adam. The DoF will be inherently shallow but we will light to a T4 or so. We are using the large format to gain as much visual information possible for the VFX goals.

 

G

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I was scrolling through ShotOnWhat and saw the large variety of cameras and lenses used on the seventh one.

https://shotonwhat.com/furious-7-2015

 

Obviously this isn't the only franchise to ever do this, but is the reason for the variety a result of such a large budget that the perfect piece of glass/sensor can be used for every single visual? Or is it a result of multiple shooting locations and ending up with whatever was available for rental in the area?

 

I feel like I'm answering my own question with the first one but I just want to make sure.

 

Thanks and good luck on the release.

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One thing to keep in mind that once you start shooting action scenes outdoors where the lens won't be wide-open, the differences between primes, old and new, and zooms, as you stop down are not so pronounced, particularly if the shots have a lot of motion and will be fast cut. And sometimes you need to use a lens for its size and weight, like using an old but small SuperSpeed if the camera is going to be crammed on a dashboard.

 

But it's also true that some shows with multiple units over multiple locations will have to mix PV-mount packages and PL-mount packages, though I don't know if this was the case here.

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Oh so it's more an ease of physicality thing rather than the image itself. Thanks, David.

 

 

There are a lot of factors behind the choice of lenses, but if you chose them carefully then the final result should be fairly seamless for most viewers. And again, the speed of editing is a factor -- if you are doing a single-camera dialogue scene with long takes, then matching the quality of the lenses will matter more because you're going to have time to scrutinize every shot, but if you are shooting an action scene with five cameras and there will be a lot of extremely short cuts, then not only will a zoom lens be more practical (because you need to be able to quickly resize if the stunt doesn't exactly go as planned) but ultimately the quality will be close enough to the primes that in a quick shot, no one is going to have time to notice the difference.

 

It's not a matter of the "ease of physicality thing" being more important than the image itself, it's a matter of knowing how each lens behaves to know when the quality will match well-enough under the circumstances. The image still matters but you don't always have to use the best lenses in the world to get a high-quality image. Like I said, outdoors in daytime and working at T/5.6 or deeper, most lenses are pretty sharp, even older ones. Some flare more than others but not every shot looks into a bright light.

 

Ultimately you're telling a story and sometimes it's not about getting the lighting or composition perfect or using the best lens in the world, it's about getting the shot that tells the story and captures the performance -- whatever that takes.

 

An experienced person can usually spot when different types of lenses are being used but will admit that sometimes the differences are pretty small.

 

I recently was shooting a series on Leica Summilux lenses but one day our 21mm broke and the rental house only had a 21mm Zeiss Master Prime to loan us for a while until the 21mm Leica was fixed. I wasn't really thinking of the difference until we were shooting in a small office with one hot daytime window in one wall which always gave us a small, soft flare, which was fine -- but when I put on the 21mm Master Prime, suddenly that mild flare went away. But once all the angles are cut together in post, I doubt anyone but another cinematographer is going to notice that the 21mm wide-shot has a little less flare in it.

 

Now you can say "if the 21mm Master Prime is 'better', then why use the Leica Summilux lenses?" Well, for one reason, while both are T/1.4 lenses, the Leicas are smaller and lighter, which makes life a little easier when doing Steadicam and handheld work, which means that if you are doing a lot of takes, the operators won't get as fatigued and the shots might be steadier over time than if they were dealing with a heavier lens.

 

Funny thing is that the Ang. Optimo 15-40mm zoom is even lighter than the 21mm Master Prime. The 21mm Leica is 3.6 lbs., the 21mm Master Prime is 5.3 lbs... but the Optimo 15-40mm zoom is 4.2 lbs.

 

The other factor is that sometimes you want optics that have a little flare in them, for creative effects. Sometimes I've switched to the 15-40mm zoom just because it has more glass elements and I'll get a more complex flare from it when I point it into a bright light.

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I was scrolling through ShotOnWhat and saw the large variety of cameras and lenses used on the seventh one.

https://shotonwhat.com/furious-7-2015

 

Obviously this isn't the only franchise to ever do this, but is the reason for the variety a result of such a large budget that the perfect piece of glass/sensor can be used for every single visual? Or is it a result of multiple shooting locations and ending up with whatever was available for rental in the area?

 

I feel like I'm answering my own question with the first one but I just want to make sure.

 

Thanks and good luck on the release.

 

I just looked over that link you provided. Interesting to say the least. I was there and can say that shotonwhat.com is very erroneous. First of all, we were all digital with Alexas - no film. As for lenses, we only had Master Primes along with some specific Ultra Primes, Angenieux and Fujinon zooms. That's it. I believe that website combined details from FF6 and 7. 6 was film with Arricams but we haven't used any Panavision glass since Fast 5 in 2010. Just like Entertainment Tonight, I find these sites completely wrong most of the time! ;)

 

To David's point, we combined Alexas with much less quality cameras (and lenses) for our action scenes. Beginning on Fast 5, we employed numerous Go Pros for quick action cuts. No one would ever know. We continued that tradition till Fate of the Furious, where we used several Black Magic Micro Cinema cameras for those same type of cuts. Better quality but still not in the same league of an Alexa. We would place those "expendable" cameras in harms way where we pretty much knew they wouldn't survive but hoped to retrieve the image from them. This tactic worked brilliantly. No one will be able to tell what shots are BM Micro Cinema cameras from the image quality because the shots don't stay on the screen long enough.

 

 

G

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