Indie Film Tech Tip: Slating

scottspears

scottspears

Hey Folks,

I was shooting a film project two weekends back and had to educate one of our crew members on the slate, so that's where this tip was born. When you break it down, there are lots of little procedures which are all shown in this video clip. This tip can apply to shooting video too, especially if you shoot using a sperate audio recorder and it's good for general record keeping to help your poor editor find shots.

See it here: http://www.scottspears.net/filmmakpg3.html

Hope you find it helpful.

Scott
 
Sort by date Sort by votes
Super! Thanks...it's one of those things that many starting indies (digital world) don't think about, but makes a huge difference as you move on to larger projects (boy do I wish I had slated my feature ;) ).
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Scott, maybe you know the answer to this question. I tried posting it in another thread.
I have a "dumb" question about clapper sync. I shot S16mm with DAT and slated.
My lab synced the DATs in telecine and gave me miniDV dailies. In the dailies, The clap sound often overlaps two frames. (ie. the sound will start in the middle of one frame and then extend to the next)
If the audio "clap" starts to happen at the tail of the first frame, when the clapper sticks do not appear to be together yet, is that necessarily a lab mistake? Most of the clap sound is heard on the second frame where the sticks are visibly together.
I'm thinking this is by design. Because, although the sticks aren't together in the frame, there is 1/48th of a second where the camera is loading the next frame and the clap could have happened then. I know that in FCP I can subframe shift the audio sample but this may not be a mistake at all.

Maybe the diagram below explains.
"A" is the frame number.
"B" is whether the camera shutter is open or closed
"C" is the audio clap.
In frame 1 the sticks are not together
In frame 2 they are.
Frame 1 appears with sticks open but "clap" can still happen while shutter is closed and the camera is loading the next frame.

Code: 
A        1             2            3            4 
B        -Open--Closed-Open--Closed-Open--Closed- 
C        -----------XXXXXX-----------------------

I'm guessing that the sync is accurate and it actually happened while the camera was loading the next frame.
 
Last edited:
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top