The Flat Below

Lens/Camera Information
Lens series: Cooke SP3
Focus lengths: 18/25/32/50/75/100
Camera: Sony FX6 + FX3
Format: Digital

Production information
Director of Photography: Laurence Mason-Guetta
DOP Instagram: @laurence_mg
Director: Jay McNeil
Colourist: Ellen Yu

I’ve always been a huge fan of Cooke’s series of lenses, working with the Panchros prior to this project in a range of scenarios, and I’ve always appreciated the look that they give. I find them to be tasteful lenses that feel very real and yet have a lovely, nuanced character to them.

The Flat Below is a British Realism Short Film that leans into Drama and thriller tropes. So I thought Cooke lenses would be perfect for bringing a look that stays true to the subject matter and yet brings a certain mysticism too.

The SP3s were chosen by me as a bit of a mixture between wanting to try something new and the practicality of their form factor. I knew that we’d be mostly handheld for this in a very tight space, so I knew I wanted something that would work with us and not against us in this regard, but still built in a way that was reliable and could be counted on to work regardless of the situation.

It’s safe to say the SP3s punch well above their weight – they’re reliable and were flawless from a focusing perspective, were very, very light and delivered an image that gave me the same appreciation for the glass as the Panchros had on all of those shoots prior.

The lenses render colour beautifully, the bokeh is lovely and exactly what we wanted, the highlight roll off is beautiful, and the sharpness is super considered. Flaring was also really nice on these lenses. Sometimes we had a mattebox fitted, and sometimes, due to the tightness of the space, we had to go without, yet the flaring always held up nicely.

The lenses were on an FX6 (A CAM) and FX3 (B CAM), the FX6 was used more for routine dialogue sections and mostly went on the sticks whilst the FX3 was a bit closer to an action cam of sorts – sometimes used as a handheld camera when tracking more frantic movement and sometimes used to pick off general detail shots of the environment. The SP3s felt like a great match for these cameras!