Movie Making Manual/Slate
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This Module is part of the Movie Making Manual
The clapper board (AKA Clap slate) is a well-recognized icon of filming, but serves many purposes beyond its appearance. A clapper board is made up of two parts: the slate and the clapper.
The slate's most obvious purpose is the documentation it provides on what scene is being filmed, when it was filmed, what take it was, which film reel it was, etc. The "clapper" provides an easily identified audio marker, which is useful when filming with multiple cameras and you must synchronize them during post-production, and is more commonly used to synchronize the sound and picture since they are usually recorded on separate devices. The black-and-white stripes on the clapper provide a reference for setting the white balance on the camera. [Edit -- I have never heard of anyone using the white stripes on the sticks for white balance. The alternating white & black stripes are to make it easier to see the sticks against a range of backgrounds and the occasional unusual lighting situation. For color balance, cameramen will often tack a grayscale strip to the bottom of the slate, or shoot a full size gray card.]
Increasingly in the modern digital age, the clapper becomes less useful as footage can be digitally marked by the camera and audio synchronization is no longer a problem due to the digital nature of the footage. However, for the sake of your editor, you may wish to continue using a clapper to make any possible problem easier to fix.
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[edit] How To Use a Clapper Board
While a clapper board seems simple, its use is more complex than it looks. When motion picture film is developed, the lab technician who is developing the film, printing the film, and syncing the audio to the film, must have all the necessary information to sync the audio to the picture. If you want to see your dailies the first thing in the morning and you want everything to work properly, you must never confuse the lab technician.
[edit] Verbal Slate
While the clapper board provides information for the picture, there must also be a verbal slate for the audio. This verbal slate must provide the scene and take number for the lab technician. The verbal slate must also make it clear if multiple cameras are used. The verbal slate must also make it clear if multiple tracks of audio are used. "Stereo Split" means one track of a stereo track has the audio from one microphone and the other track has audio from the other microphone.
[edit] A and B Cameras
If there are two or more cameras, sometimes a common slate is used. Both the slate and the verbal slate must make this clear.
Using a common slate is not good because it can be confusing. With a common slate, there is no camera number ("Camera A" vs. "Camera B') and no film reel number. Therefore, each camera should have its own slate. The slate information for one camera must never be seen by the other camera. The same rule applies for showing the clapper closing. Therefore, when one camera is slated, someone puts their hand over the lens of the other camera to block the view of the other camera's slate.
[edit] Tail Slates
Sometimes, when it is impossible to use a clapper board at the beginning of a shot, someone will yell "Tail Slate" at the beginning of the shot and at the end of the shot, the slate will be clapped upside down so that the film laboratory will know that this is the slate at the end of a shot rather than the slate for the beginning of the next shot. The verbal slate is always done at the same time as the clapper board.
[edit] Any Pulse Will Do
On shots where a clapper board is not practical, the actors will use their arms as a huge clapper. The film lab can easily see when the actor's hands come together. This noise is loud enough and concentrated enough to be accurate for syncing the audio to the picture.
[edit] Wildtrack
If there is no clapper for a shot, then the sound is wild. The lab technician might try to do a rough sync. Or the technician will create a separate section of the dailies for the audio from wildtracks. When you hear a wild track on the dailies, you see only a card saying Wildtrack as you hear the audio.
[edit] Re-syncing Sound
For motion picture film, the closing of the clapper (as seen on the film) must be aligned with the audio pulse (which shows up on the audio tape as a blip). Since audio travels at about 40 feet per frame of motion picture film (1/24th of a second), the audio pulse should be less than one frame after the closing of the slate unless the microphone is far from the camera (and the audience.) Yet, when you watch dailies made using digital slates in Hollywood, you will find that most film labs sync the audio so it is late by one or two frames because the electronics in the slate are slow. Therefore, before you begin editing your movie, you must resync each take based on the actual clapper closing and the pulse on the audio track.
[edit] DV Camcorders
DV Camcorders often are supplemented with a separate audio recording device in order to record better sound quality. In this case it is nessasary to use a clapper in the beginning (or at the end if you are tailslating) in order to sync the sound up with the video.
[edit] Watch Dailies
If you want to see how the clapper board is used, simply look at film dailies from motion pictures and television dramas. You can buy motion picture and television drama dailies on tape at almost any second-hand video store in Hollywood.
