Easy way to Slate?

[matt5791]

Is anyone familiar with any equipment or an easy way of shooting, slating and recording as a one person operation? OR even as a two person operation, but without the use of a traditional slate as there are many circumstances where this is not at all practical - ie any time when footage is being shot as the action occours and off the hip.

Many thanks for any help,

Matt
Birmingham UK.

[zetetick]

I've seen professional documentary filmmakers with a DAT/MiniDisc recorder in thier pocket and a mic on the camera, simply hold thier hand up and snap thier fingers on screen.

If you're the one who is going to be editing you don't need to have fancy gadgets -- just a good memory.

[Actor]

Is anyone familiar with any equipment or an easy way of shooting, slating and recording as a one person operation?

You can mount a battery, LED, piezo buzzer(sometimes called a son-a-lert) and momentary push button switch on a small board. Hold the board in front of the lens with one hand and push the button. You can write a number on the board to identify the take.

You can carry the above idea one step further and make a "bloop slate." A bloop slate is the same thing except you substitute a tone generating circuit for the piezo buzzer and feed its signal to you audio recorder. That way the "bloop" is inaudible but still on the sound track.

If you don't want to build anything you can have your assistant clap his hands and indicate the take number with hand signals. If the camera is on a tripod and you have both hands free you can do this yourself.

If you have only one hand free you can build a "wrist slate," a small slate attached to your wrist with a watch band. You can write an ID number on it but there is no sync mark.

Another one handed operation is to hold a balloon in front of the lens and break it with your fingernail for a sync mark. You can even write a take number on the balloon. If you don't have sharp fingernails you can attach a needle to the lens and break the balloon on that. Take a generous supply of balloons to your shoot.

any time when footage is being shot as the action occours and off the hip..

Common practice here is to "tail slate", i.e., slate at the end of the shot. With traditional slates tail-slating is usually indicated by holding the slate upside down.

[Andreas Wideroe]

Perhaps the easiest way to slate is to have your actor or the person you're filming clap one time before the scene starts. Easy, cheap and it works!

[discs of tron]

http://users.aol.com/fmgp/sync7.htm

i'm thinking of picking up one of these. it would probably be fairly easy to build, but i have neither the skill nor the time to make one this convenient and nice. i think something like this makes sense, especially because if your camera is non-sync and you want to record dialogue, you need to slate head and tail.

[aj]

You can mount a battery, LED, piezo buzzer(sometimes called a son-a-lert) and momentary push button switch on a small board. Hold the board in front of the lens with one hand and push the button. You can write a number on the board to identify the take.

Or the NIZO Professional has something like this built in. A lamp to expose from the inside the frame in the gate. And to send a beep on its sync connectors. Have not used it yet, though

[Dave Hardy]

I've got a couple of the Super 8 Sound blooper boxes about the same size as the Film Group units. I like the XLR connectors on the Film Group unit. The S8S unit had mini connectors although I think they did a better job on the area where the light flashes. Although as Andreas suggested a handclap can worrk just as well & is cost effective. You could also have the sound recordist tap the mike with a finger once you had it in shot.

Dave

[camera_wizard]

Here's an idea:
Slate before you do the filming,and stop camera and recorder in the same place.Use an AC adaptor and switched surge protector for starting and stopping in sync.This is just an idea, and you may get a few "flash frames" but maybe not. I have never tried this.

[discs of tron]

why would you slate before filming? also, it takes a second of rolling before cameras hit their more consistent speed. same with analog recorders. and md's and other devices don't start the second they get power. in fact, md's usually take quite a while after you start them up because they need to read the table of contents. plus, you'd need a pretty long extension cord unless you wanted to be limited to your living room.

[paulcotto]

Thw old joke of the "digital slate" you use your finger to tap the microphone while it can be seen by the camera. Your finger is the digit

[jumar]

Another one handed operation is to hold a balloon in front of the lens and break it with your fingernail for a sync mark. You can even write a take number on the balloon. If you don't have sharp fingernails you can attach a needle to the lens and break the balloon on that. Take a generous supply of balloons to your shoot.

hehe... that's awesome. I'm sure it would go over very well with the actors / subjects.

Another related idea would be to bring along a handgun. To slate, just shoot the actor, then match up the blood spurting with the shot noise. Hmm... maybe not.

I like the idea of the gadget where you press a button and it beeps and turns on an lcd light at the same time. I'm going to try to find something like that. Snapping looks like it would work too.

[studiocarter]

There is a little spring loaded device about the size of a half dollar or a 2 pound coin that works a cable release that I found in a camera show; it starts my Bolex H16/H8/REX for me after a while, you can hear the thing buzzing, then the camera; a remote starts my video camera for sound and then I clap or tap the microphone. A tap again or a clap before the end of the camera run and I run to the camera to shut it off. It takes some practice to make shots the right length.

I also figured out how to shoot at 9fps in low light while speaking out a script then dubbing in 18 fps to sync it up.

[Pedro]

Why don´t you use pulse sync for recording dialouge scenes? This avoids any trouble with sync and any slating and is even good for documentary shooting without disturbing the persons you shoot or making them clap.

It requires a cable connection between flash socket and audio recorder and a interface, that transforms the movement of the flash contact of the camera into recordable signals of the correct level. (f.e. my R1008MD or other similar devices).

As a result, you will have a stereo recording with the audio at one track (the right track when using R1008MD) and one beep for each film frame at the other track (the left track). The first frame of each sound scene of the film roll corresponds exactly with the first beep recorded, without clapping anything. Very easy to mount together at the comuter and also very easy to record directly to magnetic sound stripe in perfect sync, because the beep track is able to control the speed of the recording projector in the very same way like the camera has been running during shooting.

THis is possible with the Elmo GS1200MO and a cheap pulse converter (f.e. my P1008GS) or with Braun Visacustic or some hi-end Bauer machines and my synchronizer P1008 or P1008Q.
Using the "Q" models of each synchronizer (P1008GSQ for Elmo or P1008Q for Bauer/Braun), you can also interface the projector very easyly with the computer and record a computer edited sound track in perfect sync to magnetic sound stripe.

Pedro

[danpuddick]

I'm with you Pedro,

slating wastes valuble seconds of film (which poor students like me can't afford) . If you use the pulse sync with minidisc, you can keep recording sound for 80 mins and you don't have to worry about starting or stopping the recorder. If you are recording documentary, you will be able to use the sound recorded before and after. Once you have have the sound in an audio editor like Soundforge - it's at your mercy!

Soon (sorry if anyones actually waiting to see it), I'll have the instructions for the sync unit I built up on my little website. I'm pretty busy with school just now but you can see how I built a remote for my cam if you are interested.

http://uk.geocities.com/danpuddick/

Snappy name huh!

[studiocarter]

Why don´t you use pulse sync for recording dialouge scenes?

I am waiting for you to wire me up one Anyway, the camera is away in Bristol getting the parallax problem solved.

Hey Dan, nice article on your site but could you tone down the sproket holes a bit? The white text falls out in them. I tried a cable in my 814 in Jessops but it didn't make the camera go.