Talk:Clapperboard

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Contents 1 But how does it work? 2 European Slate number 3 Picture 4 Picture!

[edit] But how does it work?

Can anyone explain how a clapping board with numbers on it is supposed to synchronize sound and picture? Sometimes, wiki articles overlook the most obvious things in search of minutia. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.248.127.197 (talk) 02:52, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

On some film formats the audio is written out to the film material itself as a audio track, next to the frames - usually in the space allotted to perforations (so the film only has perforations on one side). A good example of this is most popular 16mm film before Super 16. Most modern 'cinema' film however does not have an on-film audio track; it is recorded separately. As you can read in the article, there's basically a sound reel that needs to spin up to speed (production is shifting to digital recordings, but the same issue holds), and then a film reel that needs to spin up to speed as well.. these speeds are synchronized with each other so that when the audio and video are synchronized at the beginning of the take, they will still be synchronized at the end of the take. However, you're still going to end up with two separate reels.. and the audio may have started recording on the reel at 4.89 seconds into its reel, while the video may have started at only 2.21 seconds into its reel. But how would you know those two numbers, so that you can match them together well? That's where the clapperboard (etc.) comes in. The clapperboard makes a sharp sound that shows up in the audio track as a spike, and visually can easily be distinguished from its open vs closed state as this happens across just a few frames. The first frame in which it is closed is matched up with the spike in the audio track; audio and video are now synchronized. Obviously, this isn't so much an issue when the take includes other sharp sounds that match up with visual cues quite nicely. However, these tend to be very few and between, and matching sound and video from e.g. human dialog alone is comparatively difficult. The clapperboard, providing the scene information as well as the snap sound + visual cue is really ideal for the task. 83.84.38.72 (talk) 06:20, 15 December 2007 (UTC)

If anyone could add when they first came into use, that'd be ...useful :) --- Mike 19:23, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)

a picture would be nice too

See Clapboard. -- Arwel (talk) 17:27, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I know that "clapperboard" is the usual UK term, but I suggest redirecting this to Clapboard, which is basically a better article that contains all the information that's here and more. We should also move the TV series info to Clapperboard (TV series). -- Arwel (talk) 17:34, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

I've moved the TV series information to Clapperboard (TV series) I'm not sure how the merge should be done though. -Typhin 17:16, 2 January 2006 (UTC)

[edit] European Slate number

Does anyone know how the european slate number works?

Is it incremented for each new take, or only for each new scene? How do they make sure each camera has a separate slate number?

129.215.62.144 11:03, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

It's incremented for each new setup - anytime the camera changes position or lens, basically. If you're doing multiple cameras, then the slate number should be consistent across the cameras - the take number will be appended with a letter corresponding to each camera. Other units working separate from the main unit will usually have a separate slate numbering convention, usually either starting with a very high number, like 1000, or beginning with a letter (X is very popular). Girolamo Savonarola 19:53, 12 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Picture

The current picture mentions "Wikipedia". That's not appropriate. —Ben FrantzDale 21:36, 27 January 2007 (UTC)

Done. Image:Clapperboard.svg --Indolences 03:19, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

Great. —Ben FrantzDale 03:31, 19 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Picture!

Nobody has a good picture of a timecode slate?

I also think this article might be changed to Slate, since everywhere I've ever worked and heard it said, it's called a slate!

It has a lot of names. Clapperboard affords the advantage of not requiring disambiguation. I have some photos of digi-slates I've used, but none of them is of decent enough quality to add, unfortunately. Girolamo Savonarola 02:49, 19 July 2007 (UTC)