Film Slates: Tips from a Hollywood Pro

The film slate is a famous symbol of film production. The iconic clap is heard on film sets all around the world. But what does it actually do? Why does this one have numbers on it? Why do these ones look different? Why is that one so small? With all the advancements in technology that we have, why are we still using a system that seems so archaic? That's what we're going to find out today. First things first, there are different types of film slates. There could be something as simple as a hand clap and that could work for your needs. If you're doing a run-and-gun situation, you've got the visual hands touching and you got the audio spiking with the clap. The most common are these clapper boards. This one, something like this. These are cheaper. You can probably find these on Amazon. Very affordable, within reach. This is the tool that you see more often than not on independent productions just because of the cost efficiency. Then you have something that's a little more advanced which is something like this. Still same concept as the hand clap. You got the sound as the clapper board which, you know, has the data. But now we have introduced an extra level of technicality here which is time code. That is going to be a lifesaver and time saver in post-production. This is something that you see mostly on Hollywood film sets, higher production just because these are a lot more expensive. These are going to run a couple hundred dollars if not a thousand dollars or more. There's newer ones than this even that are Bluetooth connected so you can time code sync to your phone. So yeah, these things are going to be more expensive found on Hollywood film sets. They do have extra technical steps involved in syncing not just the slate but the cameras and the audio. Everything has to have the same numbers that you see here throughout. And that is an extra step of complexity that independent films just don't have the time or the budget to deal with. But it does save a lot of time in post-production and we can get into more details about this later. This is not just time code. There's other benefits with this as well. There's a handle on the back that makes it really easy to hold so you can hold it out like this and no problem at all as you've seen in some of my videos where I, you know, do the thing. It's got a backlight. We're not going to be able to see it with the bright lights right now but I will show a clip of the functionality of the backlight which is really nice. Not only does it show the time code but notice when I clap this down another set of information showed up and it said code 24. That lets the people in post know that this is running at 24 frames per second which is the industry standard for the U.S. 25 would be overseas and you can change that very easily if you see on the side here there's different functions you can change it to and there's a little key on the back that helps tell you what you're doing. This is a really nice slate and that's why these are industry standard in Hollywood productions. Now it's worth noting for something like this though that the clap still happens even though we have time code because you never know time code might have fallen out of sync with the cameras or the audio and at that point the time code is useless and so the standard clap is always the safety measure that will never be replaced. I've also seen an iPad being used as a slate mostly independent productions at smaller projects but an iPad can serve as a slate. It's a great tool to enter in information and depending on the app that you use it can also serve as a tool for camera reports down the line as well which can be helpful. Those are not used on Hollywood productions so much but still kind of fun to know about. Now with regards to organization it's really important that you provide as much information as possible because editorial is going to receive a lot of footage depending on your production. Stranger Things, we have so many different episodes a lot of footage that's coming our way it is really important that every time that camera hits record there is some information that tells us where exactly this footage belongs. So let's go into a little bit more detail about some of this information that you would put on a film slate. Let's use scene for example let's say that we're shooting something for scene 43 on a feature that would just read as scene 43 as noted here as you can see. However, if you're working on a TV show you need to specify the episode that it belongs to so let's say that it's episode 5 you would do a 5.43 or 5-43 and that just lets people know episode 5, scene 43 because you can have a scene 43 in episode 4 or scene 43 in episode 2 so on and so forth. Other things about scene is when you have your first setup let's say you have a wide shot using a 24mm lens got your actors in place you hit record that'd be scene 43 take 1 but now that you've got a couple different takes in your master shot with your wide lens let's say you want to go for close-ups and get a longer lens let's say a 45mm lens that would be considered a new setup and a new set of organizational rules apply so now we're going to add a letter at the end of this so now we would have episode 5, scene 43 apple you would say apple or something like that just so we know audibly what it is to take things even a step further than this let's say that there was a planned visual effect shot for this let's say we needed to add a demogorgon in the shot and of course we don't have one on set so we need to add a V on the front of this to indicate this is a planned visual effect shot so now this would read victor5-43 apple take 1 as you can see these can get pretty long and cumbersome there was a show I worked on where the slate was just crazy long if I can find a photo of it I'll show it to you it's pretty wild so anyways that's a breakdown of some of the things you might see with regards to scene take is pretty obvious that's always just going to go up incrementally and reset every time you do a new setup 43 take 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, whatever then 43 apple it resets take 1, 2, 3, 4, so on and so forth notice that on this I have a B notice on this I have an A what those signify is that this slate is for A camera A is always red B is always blue oftentimes if there's a C camera that would be green this slate will always belong to A camera this slate will always belong to B camera now the only situation where that might not be true is let's say that you have an A camera and a B camera which I do right now it would be too difficult to squeeze two people into film slate I can squeeze the same slate in for both I would just call out the slate and say AB marker and that would say that this is taking the place for A and B cameras pro tip using velcro to put things like the camera letter on using tape for other indicators here that won't change throughout the course of your shoot very often if at all like the director may stay the same the cinematographer might stay the same the production name is certainly going to stay the same in this case I've used stickers that aren't going to get smudged when I rub my hand on them accidentally A camera I have a filter that I'm using which is a black pro mist this is indicated here and I can use a velcro to put that on and off without having to use a dry erase marker so pro tip highly recommend utilizing tape velcro for your slates we've looked at the clappers and some of the different information that those have this one has a frames per second thing here this is incredibly helpful for post-production if there's going to be a lot of off-speed recording 48 frames per second 60 frames per second whatever and that's indicated by this very helpful if your slate doesn't have this I do encourage to add it somewhere maybe put a piece of tape somewhere an indicator that says 48, 24, 25 whatever you're shooting additionally none of these slates have lens information and it surprises me that slates don't have that not every production that I do do they care to indicate that but adding a piece of tape or a velcro indicator that says 24 millimeter 35 millimeter whatever it is incredibly helpful especially if you're doing a lot of visual effects oftentimes when we're looking at scenes the question will be asked what kind of lens are they using for this to pop the daily go to the slate oh it says right here they're using a 35 or whatever incredibly helpful sometimes people will put their camera reports on the back so you go out you do your film slate and when you're done clapping the slate you go back and then you can write your reports on the back all right so we've covered the organizational use of the slate but now let's talk about the other more obvious use which is to sync picture with sound that is done by clapping the sticks together and in post-production what you would do is frame forward until you see the sticks touching knowing that that's the second that the sound is made then you would go to your audio file you would see a very visible peak in your audio and that would indicate that that was where the clap happened and that's how you would sync your sound with picture this is why the hand clapping method works is because you can still frame through and find the moment of impact of your hands and then go find the moment where the clap happened and of course that's where you would sync up your sound there's no information that's being translated a scene take whatever if you need just a quick run and gun documentary oh i'm rolling camera they have a lapel mic on boom you got your sync and you're ready to roll the other method is the time code option this is more cumbersome on set now granted the set crew who does this is usually pretty quick about it because they do it so often but it is an extra step that has to be done very carefully and kind of babysat throughout the day there's a way to sync time code on all your devices there's an input method here that you would bring in and it would update the second you plug that in and then you would do that on all of your devices i can do a more in-depth video and showing how to it's called jam syncing is the technical term that we use but you're syncing time code with all your devices so if you'd like to see that just leave a comment below and i'm happy to do a deep dive into how to properly jam sync your slate your camera and your audio mixing hardware whatever you're using some audio mixers don't have the ability to sync time code so be aware of that make sure that you have one that does allow for time code syncing there are devices out there like a tentacle sync or the deity of devices that you can sync time code and then plug into your camera so it is basically keeping your camera and whatever device you have it plugged into from slipping on the time code throughout the day technically sometimes the cameras fall out of sync with the time code these little devices will keep that from happening let's talk about why time code syncing is so useful we mentioned the frame through manual process that is syncing picture with sound imagine doing that for multiple cameras multiple takes multiple episodes that is a lot of manual labor having to go through and frame forward and find that moment of impact whereas using the time code method if all of the devices are using the same time code then you can select all of the clips that need to be sunk together and then you can choose to sync by time code and there's no manual process involved at all that's it just select sync by time code and boom you're done it's that fast it's such a time saver in post-production so long as the devices are all sharing the same time code they haven't fallen out of sync it works so so amazingly now the question is do you need to slate if you are not running sound? the answer is yes because of the information that we've covered is still very helpful and usable in post-production you don't need to do the clap necessarily you can just put your slate out there and show the camera what you're doing and then you can just move it out of the way but it is standard practice to slate everything even if you're not syncing to sound all right the time code that we see here is based off of usually one of two things this will indicate military time for three o'clock it would say 1500 and count up for there like a clock that has been used on a lot of productions there is however a downside to that method which is if you're doing a lot of night shoots and you cross the midnight marker this does not go to 2400 and then 2500 it does not go to that for the you know one o'clock time code that can be problematic in post-production is at 1159 which would be 2359 military time at midnight it resets back to zero and that can be problematic when syncing your footage in post-production that brings me to the other method which is call time let's say that your call time is 2 p.m and you're going to be shooting until 2 a.m it's an overnight shoot at two o'clock these would start at hour zero and then count up from there and that's what we actually did on this season of Stranger Things season five because we had so many night shoots we started the time code at call time hour zero and went up from there so a 12-hour day the highest this would get up to is 12 hour 12 you never have to worry about resetting back to zero and becoming problematic I mentioned this small one here this is a macro slate and this just allows you to put your data that you need on the slate with macro shots they're usually not syncing with sound so that's what this is for if you've noticed on Hollywood productions the slates aren't you know the standard look like you see here they look special and there's a reason for that this is a project that I filmed for Pale Amber what you could do is just attach some double-sided tape on the back of this then what you would do is attach that onto your slate like this now you've got what looks like a custom slate for your production and it makes it look a lot more legitimate and it's great for client work these aren't that expensive and if you're trying to impress a client or really want to like show pride for your production these are an awesome way to do that very inexpensive very easy you still have your data here but now it looks like you've got a custom slate having dry erase markers these dry erase markers that have a eraser on the tip is also very useful now let's talk about who it is that actually does the slate on set in the camera department we have a camera letter here so let's use A the A camera department will have its own team B camera department will have their own team the camera department starts with the camera operator and of course their job is to operate the camera next to that would be the first AC and the first AC's job is to assist the camera operator oftentimes the first AC will be responsible for pulling focus for the camera operator so that the camera operator can focus on shot composition and the focus puller can make sure that the shot is in focus next to the first AC would be the second AC their job is to assist of course the first AC and their job entails the film slate the camera reports swapping lenses cleaning lenses they're the ones that would go out and run the slate for that camera so the question is with all the advancements in technology why do we still use a film slate? first one of course is for data the data that you need to give to your editors in post-production there will always be a need for that there's not really a workaround for that other than just you know putting the data right there on screen for everyone to see doesn't seem like the slate is going anywhere anytime soon I want to do another video that's an extension of this that talks about the proper way to slate on set so that if you ever find yourself in a position whether on a Hollywood film set or an independent project where you need to do this that you know what you're doing there is rules and standardizations for how to do it so make sure to like, subscribe and follow along for more so you don't miss it thank you for being here I hope you learned something and I look forward to seeing you in the next one