Thanks Guys for the replies!

Let me try and answer a couple of points.

I'll start with my horrible camera move. Admittedly, unless you understand the context with why I'm doing it at all, why I'm focusing on the particular area(s) of interest in that confined space and landing on the second boiler, it won't make sense at all and unfortunately, it's a massive part of the project I'm working on for the next year, so I can't be very specific as to what's going on right now.

I will hint though to offer a bit more info since you asked Dom...No, it doesn't do that in the movie. It's a completely held shot. The experience/point I'm trying to convey here with this camera move is not to show off the environment. The original shot is one of the classic and most widely recognized from the film. But that's it. Held. So the first opening held frames are simply the homage, before the camera moves thought the space (with a purposeful destination being the boiler), so we see a few glimpses of those areas never seen before.

The entire scene in the film revolves around the fact that Robert makes his first appearance in that small space. Hence I'm keeping that as the main focal point of the dolly in and crane over. Staying in "his"space.

The end settle and slight drift back on the boiler...All I can say is that something (a few things) will be materializing free floating above the boiler's surface as the camera pulls back off of it .

This is only one cam move of two that will eventually navigate two key areas of the entire boiler room, adjoining two key locations from the film that were never meant to be connected. Once I have the other areas of the environment built and attached (the area is 150 feet by 90 feet), I'll do other camera moves (fly through dolly's) then through that larger space from this boiler, showing off some familiar aspects/areas of the conjoined sets along the way which were never linked A to B in the film, ending, again with the result segueing into a second very familiar area of the boiler room.

But not until the items materialize above the boiler. That action will help to establish why we're going to be moving into the second camera move.

I know. Cryptic. But it's between the lines.

So really, the first dolly and crane over here (in my Youtube link) is a test of a simple move to simply sweep through a familiar movie set, through a few previously un-seen angles behind to get to that second boiler surface.

I was just really proud of the timing and slow in's/out's of the camera movement having never used the camera function until this project. Not that it was like a magnificent swooping arcing camera that shows off my stage. That's not the purpose (though at some point I think that would be fun.) this entire endeavor is project based. hope that clarifies things a bit.

As to the lens work, YES, made all the difference in the world. THANK YOU! I'm at my day job so don't have the exact stats, but basically I left it at very close to the default settings under the stock 35 mm film back setting and it seemed to work great.

NOW...

Bear in mind alllll that and now the following. I eyeballed that template geography for this scene/stage. I mentioned in my last post that obviously between the ref image and my build, things were a bit off and needed some fine tuning. Well, I discovered the magical amazing fact last night that i could import the reference image and attach it directly to my hero cam as an underlay for final tweaking.

Now I can line everything up properly and it gave me the last bit of help with the correct scale and proportions...if not another three evenings of work on top of the modelling I have under way on my props stage.

See you guys then and thanks again for all the comments and support!

TC