Recce and floor plan · iPhone and iPad
Overhead turns a location recce into a complete breakdown: a floor plan, camera positions with photos, lighting, cast and a PDF for the crew. Scan and shoot on location with your iPhone. Finish it on your iPad.
Free with one floor plan · No account · English and Dutch
The recce, the old way
Crews solve this today with loose apps, sketches and memory. This is what you hear after a recce.
Overhead puts the scan, the photos, the shot list and the lighting in one session. From recce to breakdown in minutes, not an evening.
How it works
Overhead follows the day of a recce. You walk in, scan, take photos or clips, and walk out with a floor plan that already has everything on it.
Pick the client, project and location, and your camera and lens. A timer runs along, also in the Dynamic Island, and reminders stop a session from staying open.
Walk along the walls. LiDAR measures walls, doors, windows and furniture, and Overhead turns it into a clean floor plan. Scanning needs a Pro model with LiDAR.
Take recce photos and clips framed the way your camera and lens see it, with frame lines. Each one remembers where you stood and where you looked.
Tap the takes you like. They appear on the floor plan as cameras, with lens, direction and shot size.
AirDrop the floor plan from your iPhone to your iPad and keep working on the big screen.
Place lamps from your own light kit with colour temperature, dimmer and beam. Add grip, cast and notes.
A sharp PDF per scene or per shot, plus the stills and clips with frame lines, named by shot number.
Features
Here is what Overhead does, and the pain each part takes away.
Session
Every photo lands in the right place from the start. A timer, the Dynamic Island and reminders keep track of how long you have been inside.
No more: recce photos lost between your own pictures, and nobody knowing later which photo belongs to which location.
Scan
Walk the room and get a clean plan: corners closed, doors and windows in their wall, tables straight, chairs tucked in.
Needs an iPhone Pro or iPad Pro with LiDAR. A plan for planning shots, not a measured drawing.
No more: half an hour with a tape measure and a sketch that is never quite right, or a messy raw scan you still have to redraw.
Viewfinder
Real sensor sizes from ARRI, Sony, RED, Canon, Blackmagic and more, and lenses in millimetres. Anamorphic squeeze and very wide lenses too. The phone picks 0.5×, 1× or tele itself; you only see your cinema millimetres.
An approximation through the phone's lenses. With very wide lenses the edge is filled in.
No more: guessing whether a shot works on 24 mm while your phone shows something else.
Viewfinder
Frame lines for 16:9, 9:16, 2.39, 1.85 and more, shown as a box or as corners, at the same time.
No more: framing for the cinema and for vertical without seeing both.
Clips
Record push-ins, dolly moves, pans, tilts and steadicam walks. The move ends up on the floor plan. Pick stills from a clip on a timeline, and export clips with or without frame lines and with sound.
No more: long explanations of a move to the director or grip, or screenshots pulled from videos for the deck.
Photos
Photos are sorted per location. Select the good ones, put them on the plan or take them off, and share them.
During a LiDAR scan the position comes from the scan. With the 0.5× and tele lenses it is estimated.
No more: hundreds of loose recce photos where the good shots get lost.
Floor plan
Each chosen shot is a camera with lens, cone and shot size. Drag the shot list into order, with shot numbers like 12A and 12B and several scene numbers per location. Set camera and format per shot, or for the whole project in one tap.
No more: a shot list and a floor plan in separate files that drift apart.
Floor plan
Sketch walls, people, cameras and lamps and Overhead recognises them. A library has furniture, kitchen and bathroom, building parts, cast and grip. Pin notes to a spot with a dot and a line, or dictate them.
No more: slow desktop drawing that can't be done on location, or notes that float loose from the spot they are about.
Light
Add your lamps with brand, wattage, daylight, bi-color or RGB and the shape of the head. Place them with colour temperature, dimmer and beam: Fresnel, softbox or spotlight. Light rays and shadows are visible. Practicals, lanterns, tubes and grip like flags, frames, bounce and negative fill are there too.
A visual lighting plan, not a photometric calculation.
No more: generic icons that don't match your lamps, and explaining a lighting plan without seeing where the light falls.
Share
A sharp vector PDF: one page per scene with the floor plan, the shot list with photos, cast and lighting. Or one page per shot. Share just the shots too: photos and videos with frame lines, named by shot number.
No more: evenings building breakdowns in a slide deck, and renaming and cropping stills by hand.
iPhone to iPad
Send a floor plan from iPhone to iPad with AirDrop, or as a file through Mail and Files.
No more: doing detailed work on a small screen because that is where the recce lives.
Organise
Arranged like your home screen, with recce photos as icons. Recent shows the floor plans you opened last. No account, everything stays on your device. In English and Dutch.
No more: searching for a project between dozens of jobs, or logging in on set.
What makes it different
There are viewfinder apps, floor plan apps and scan apps. Overhead links the pieces in one session, so the photos already know where the cameras go.
Scan→Viewfinder→Photos→Floor plan→Light→PDF
Each photo knows where it was taken, so the cameras land on the floor plan by themselves.
Real sensor sizes, lenses in millimetres, frame lines for cinema and social at the same time.
Not generic icons but your lamps, with brand and wattage, and you see where the light falls.
Through AirDrop, without an account or a cloud.
A sharp PDF with floor plan, shot list with photos, cast and lighting on one page.
Built from the day-to-day work of ROKU Films in Amsterdam.
Who it is for
The director of photography and the director use Overhead on the recce. The rest of the crew gets what it makes.
On the recce
Scan, frame with your own camera and lens, plan the light. You get a lighting plan that adds up and shots that really fit, before the shoot day.
On the recce
Pick shots, put them in order, see your coverage. You get one overview of what is shot, where, and from which side.
Receives
Read the light kit and lamp plan, with the PDF on set. You get which lamp goes where, in which colour, without a long explanation.
Receives
A breakdown PDF per scene, with shot numbers. You get a complete breakdown to plan the day and the call sheets.
On the recce
Scan the room, take photos with their position. You get to hand over a location with plan and pictures in one file.
Organises
Clients, folders and projects. You get every recce back per client.
Fast turnaround
From location to deck, fast. You get stills and a floor plan for the client or agency on the same day.
Pricing
Try Overhead on a floor plan of your own, plus a sample project. Go Pro when you need more.
A yearly subscription through your Apple ID. It renews automatically unless you cancel at least 24 hours before the end of the period.
Overhead is in testing and not in the App Store yet. Prices are in euros; the App Store shows the price for your country.
FAQ
Scanning uses LiDAR, so it needs a Pro model with a LiDAR scanner: an iPhone 12 Pro or newer Pro, or an iPad Pro with LiDAR. Overhead itself runs on iPhone and iPad with iOS 16 or later. Without LiDAR you can skip the scan, still take recce photos through the viewfinder and draw the floor plan with your finger or Apple Pencil.
It comes close, but it is an approximation. Overhead uses real sensor sizes and your lens in millimetres, and picks the phone's 0.5×, 1× or tele lens for you. With very wide lenses the edge of the image is filled in so the frame still shows at its true size.
The LiDAR scan gives a clean floor plan for planning shots, lights and cast. It does not replace a measured drawing or the art department. Camera positions come from the scan during a session; with the phone's 0.5× and tele lenses they are estimated, so do not expect them to the centimetre.
No. It is a visual plan: you place your own lamps with colour temperature, dimmer and beam and see where the light falls and where walls and flags stop it. It does not calculate light levels.
No account is needed and everything stays on your device until you share something. There is no cloud sync or live collaboration. You share through AirDrop, Mail or Files: floor plans, PDFs, photos and videos.
Yes. Scan and shoot on your iPhone, then AirDrop the floor plan to your iPad and add lights, grip, cast and notes there. You can also send it as a file through Mail or Files.
A sharp vector PDF with one page per scene: the floor plan, the shot list with photos, cast and lighting. You can also make one page per shot. Next to the PDF you can share the stills and clips with frame lines, named by shot number.
Overhead is free with one floor plan of your own, plus a sample project to try the floor plan, shot list, lighting and PDF export. Overhead Pro unlocks unlimited floor plans, sessions and projects for €39.99 per year.
Real sensor sizes from ARRI, Sony, RED, Canon, Blackmagic and more, with your lens in millimetres. Anamorphic squeeze and frame lines like 16:9, 9:16, 2.39 and 1.85 are built in, as a box or as corners.
Overhead is in testing on TestFlight and is being prepared for App Store review. It is not in the App Store yet. This page will link to it as soon as it is live.
Scan, frame and pick your shots on location. Light it and share the PDF the same day. Overhead for iPhone and iPad is coming to the App Store.
Overhead