Thanks a lot johnnym.

@Stonebat I do a lot of landscape photography and timelapse photography and what you are saying about framing a moving shot with the same deliberateness as a still shot is something that has been second nature, but so very important. But one other aspect that`s integral is how you react to light in your processing/exposure.

If you can do it without getting too much noise in the shadows, you`d be surprised how much richness and drama you can add to a scene framed by clouds by just stopping down the exposure while filming. It`s not just a "technical trick", it`s a shift of emphasis: suddenly you aren`t just documenting foreground and middleground elements, but instead capturing the path of the light, the drama of where it reaches and exaggerating the "distances" between the places it reaches, and those it does not.

I think that if you go out and shoot the same focal length (back when I was first practicing, that 28mm in terms of 35mm equivalent), without moving your tripod, from a place you find visually interesting, for 3 hours, 3 times in one week, you`ll start, just start to get a sense for what REALLY separates the shots that interest you from the ones that don`t.

Shooting video in addition to stills helps you find where the codec, etc. add additional considerations, but the framing is so key on it`s own. :)

I'm not crazy about the character design, and what is mainly disturbing is that it looks like a weak plagia from INNOCENCE (Ghost In The Shell 2) which is one of my favorite anime ever : Especially the HUD ideogram interface that is focusing.

@matt_gh2 12-foot room? Yikes! You might have to use a 12mm lens at f/22 and do as Orson Welles did - either cut a hole in a wall or a hole in the floor:

@matt_gh2 what cam will you use? Gh1/2/3/4 etc...? Even a stock 14mm with the cam mounted flush on the wall or on the floor will show a lot. If that's not enough the 14mm with wide angle adapter will turn it into 11mm for another $100 or so. Worse case, get the 7.5mm and defish in post. Problem is, once you go past F5.6, you need to add LOTS of light.

Also, what about renting or buying a GoPro 3+ Black? Deep DOF and with 2.7k to make defish easier or keep the fisheye as an artistic choice. Or get an external recorder for 1080p 4:2:2, though not 100% if it outputs uncompressed.

@matt_gh2

Lots of light will let you stop down as far as you need (f/22 or so) Luckily, LED lights are cheap, low-wattage and cool to work with.

BTW, even as a novice filmmaker, Orson Welles so insisted on full DOF that he once refused to accept his DOP's insistence that they had to resort to opening up the aperture on a particular shoot: he asked the DOP what frame rate they were shooting at: the reply was 24 fps.Welles then suggested they shoot at 12fps, therefore letting twice as much light enter each frame, allowing them to tighten up the aperture another stop or so and finally allow the everything-in-focus look he insisted upon. This they did, successfully, with Welles, as actor walking and performing all his movements slowly so as to appear normal upon 24fps projection.

@matt_gh2 Good luck with the Northern Hemisphere autumn temperatures. Films like Citizen Kane appear dark, but the sets were so brightly lit and hot the actors were apparently getting suntans and sweating!

@goanna I think we'll end up shooting late September. So may be a bit hot here on east coast of US. Hot is good though as sweating during this scene is perfect!

@goanna Very helpful - thanks.