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focal lengths and multiple cameras

Need some help guys. Got a project coming up and I have two cameras at my disposal. A scarlet and a blackmagic 2.5k and one set of ultra primes. Need to maximize coverage as we will be working with non actors who have trouble replicating things. My question is if I want to shoot two close ups at the same time is therr a way to use different focal lengths one each shot and it not look weird? Also we are mastering in 2k so will the 4k red footage look out of place cut in with bm footage?

Thanks in advance
 
if I want to shoot two close ups at the same time is therr a way to use different focal lengths one each shot and it not look weird?

Of course there is. I'm far from the best person to take advice from on this topic. I was hoping someone else would have replied by now.

I'm assuming since you only have a single set of lenses, there won't be duplicates of what you need most.

The best way is to minimize the impact, using lenses that are as close together as possible. For instance, there is less difference between day an 80 and a 100 than there is between a 20 and a 30. (Well I'm fairly sure that's right). While this approach won't work for every situation as sometimes you cannot shoot with longer lenses due to limited space in a location.

Another thought may depend if there's a crop factor on the BM2.5k camera. If there is, you may end up being able to put a shorter lens on the BM and a slightly longer lens on the Red and it may (though I may be completely misunderstanding the whole concept) match pretty much right.

You can always change the geography of the scene to soften or sharpen specific angles depending on what you need.

Someone please correct me if this is completely wrong.

Also we are mastering in 2k so will the 4k red footage look out of place cut in with bm footage?

Do you have a color grader? If so, matching is relatively trivial.
 
I was on a shoot last night (lowly pa) that used 2 cams. These guys work on a popular tv show, and though this project was no budget the dp knew how to leverage them in a very good way. It was a similar situation where the talent had issues with redoing things but in this case due to large quantities of liquor... anyway the dp would use the dual cams in one of two ways.

Close ups from different angels. He'd place the cameras at different angels at least 40 degrees apart and different distances to achieve similar frames..usaly tracking differ actors for each shot....not reverses mind you

Or

Wide and closeup at the sametime. In this scenario the camera would be right next to each other.
 
One good option would be to shoot shot & reverse simultaneously, and use a longer lens on the reverse to get a close up instead of the standard over the shoulder. Then reverse the cameras and shoot the whole segment again. That way you'd end up with closeups and over the shoulders of each actor.
 
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