Ipad

[Malcolm Davies Amps CAS]

So here I am seventy years old and after fifty odd years in the business I have been dragged not quite screaming into the 21st century by the purchase of an Ipad 3.

I told the assistant editor that I was thinking of sending the sound report (Once I'd bought the software) on PDF by email.

"No bloody good to me I haven't got internet and what's the point of separating the sheets from the CF card as I need them both at the same time to sync rushes." I thought the lad had a good point especially his edit suite is less than a hundred feet from me. So I beg the question of all the people doing sound sheets on I phones, I Pads or android whatever what do YOU do with them?

The film I'm working on just want sheets with the scene, slate and take number along with the SD PNO number or the Deva segment number which is adequately covered by my 3-part NCR sheets.

Someone please help as I don't want to use this expensive bit of kit just to take photo's,play games or look up the next dental hygienist appointment.

Malcolm Davies. A.m.p.s.

[Jeff Wexler]

The Deva can make its own sound reports and put the file on the CF card along with the sound files. The problem, with the Deva (and to a certain extent with the other recorders) is that the sound report file is not always in a format that the people in post would like to see. I'm not going to get into a whole discussion about all the advantages or disadvantages of using one recorder over another (especially when we are just talking about sound reports) because I know you use your Deva and are not about to abandon it so you can turn in nice electronic sound reports! I still use handwritten 3-part NCR Sound Reports that I hand in with the daily deliverable, whether it be DVD-RAM (thankfully making an exit from our world) or CF card. I was going to use MovieSlate on my iPad on the last movie (which would have been a first for me) but I did not. Glen Trew did most all of the 2nd Unit work on the movie and using his Deva of course, he also used his iPad with MovieSlate and emailed the Sound Report to Editorial at wrap. This worked out fine because the movie was very Internet intensive with the expectation from Production that everyone had a smartphone, Internet connections, email and so forth. We even got TEXT messages in the middle of the night updating the shooting order on Call Sheets and other nonsense.

One of the obstacles of using the iPad to do your Sound Reports is that the iPad is not very flexible getting things in or out of it. There are add-on accessories to the iPad that might provide the means to move the Sound Report off the iPad and onto the CF card you are turning in. This would have other difficulties associated as well because the Deva (and probably the other recorders) do not make it easy to get anything else onto the CF card other than the master audio files. It seems it would be way too cumbersome to work out a routine where you could get the report (as a .pdf for example) out of the iPad and into your laptop on the set (though you may not even have a laptop on the set) and then get the CF card out of your Deva and mounted on your laptop, then transfer the .pdf to the CF card.

I think your best hope is that as time goes on your Editorial dept. will also be "dragged not quite screaming into the 21st century" and will be pleased to receive your report via email and include it with the folder on their computer that has the files from your "sound roll".

[RPSharman]

My 788T will also generate a sound report in some format .csv, I think. But I'd need an iPad along with CL-wifi to take proper notes and generate metadata on track IDs, etc. Then a sound report can be generated and included on delivered CF, and emailed too I think.

But frankly, I want to stop adding bits to my cart. I like being compact. So notes on a sound report is what I prefer.

On the next show, I plan to avoid triplicates and just use a single page. I can photograph it with my phone and email it to anyone who asks.

Robert

[Richard Lightstone, CAS]

As I've said in other threads I'm off of paper reports and solely on Movieslate on my iPad and this month marks one year doing it that way! I email the report to the list of those in Editorial and the Production Office. On my last show the Production Office printed a copy of the emailed report for both themselves and Editorial.

Since the iPad has built in WiFi I have yet to find a problem getting on line and emailing my report. If there is no wifi available, I have a tiny Cradlepoint wireless router and can create my own network if needed.

[Jon Gilbert]

I think they make an iPad with a massive two button keyboard, purely for use by pensioners, I think the buttons are something like this:

Collect pension Yes/No

Go to Bingo Yes/No

Get grumpy about working conditions a younger mixer would take in His/Her stride Yes/No

Stop rolling half way through a take as you're out of puff and need a breather Yes/Yes

[Whit Norris]

As I've said in other threads I'm off of paper reports and solely on Movieslate on my iPad and this month marks one year doing it that way! I email the report to the list of those in Editorial and the Production Office. On my last show the Production Office printed a copy of the emailed report for both themselves and Editorial.

Since the iPad has built in WiFi I have yet to find a problem getting on line and emailing my report. If there is no wifi available, I have a tiny Cradlepoint wireless router and can create my own network if needed.

+1

Malcom I have been almost a year also on MovieSlate... Editorial, Post, production, the office all like the emails. Tell your editorial dept to get email!

Whit

[MatthewFreedAudio]

So here I am seventy years old and after fifty odd years in the business I have been dragged not quite screaming into the 21st century by the purchase of an Ipad 3.

I told the assistant editor that I was thinking of sending the sound report (Once I'd bought the software) on PDF by email.

"No bloody good to me I haven't got internet and what's the point of separating the sheets from the CF card as I need them both at the same time to sync rushes." I thought the lad had a good point especially his edit suite is less than a hundred feet from me. So I beg the question of all the people doing sound sheets on I phones, I Pads or android whatever what do YOU do with them?

The film I'm working on just want sheets with the scene, slate and take number along with the SD PNO number or the Deva segment number which is adequately covered by my 3-part NCR sheets.

Someone please help as I don't want to use this expensive bit of kit just to take photo's,play games or look up the next dental hygienist appointment.

Malcolm Davies. A.m.p.s.

In this wonderfully advanced world of technology (for better or for worse) there is no excuse for the AE to not have email at his work station. I feel there are so many advantages to a PDF sound report that it really should be, and generally is, the standard these days.

I know the Zaxcom Deva/Fusion recorders can generate PDF sound reports and the 788t can also, and they are stored on the CF card. Wave Agent is a fantastic program for generating reports as well.

I have limited experience with MovieSlate but it has received glowing reviews from numerous people for its sound report capabilities. It easily replaces paper copies albeit at a higher cost. Then again the only things you can do with paper reports other than their intended use are paper airplanes and spitballs (toward a slow moving camera dept?).

Production Sound Mixing for Television, Films, and Commercials.

www.matthewfreed.com

[Philip Perkins]

If your AE is a young person, do they not have internet enabled gadgets of their own that could receive the reports? For me, anymore, handing anyone a paper report along with a CF to be downloaded would get me some very strange "Grandpa" looks. The data wranglers are packaging all the media into folders on multiple drives, and each copy needs a set of reports, and the reports need to have accurate TC starts. Often the audio files have to downconverted to MP3 for uploading to transcribers, they need the reports too. Production and editorial want to be able to get reports emailed to them even before the drives are delivered so they can see what's incoming. They want the reports in electronic form so they can move them around and store them within their facility--esp when working on a project simultaneously in a number of edit rooms. I get along w/o Movie Slate for now, but I see a day coming when even dinky jobs like mine will want the WiFi interconnect that it offers for sharing data on the set and reporting for post.

phil p

[Malcolm Davies Amps CAS]

+1

Malcom I have been almost a year also on MovieSlate... Editorial, Post, production, the office all like the emails. Tell your editorial dept to get email!

Whit

Whit I know it's unbelievable in this day and age but I'm working in the deepest part of West Wales in the UK in a disused electronics factory where there isn't even a landline. The only contact with the outside world is by cell phone of which there are two in the production office which have problems getting a signal.

Th editorial department only have their personal cell phones so email is not an option here.

I don't think you can dictate to a department how they should run their ship. You might think it but here in the UK it doesn't quite work like it does in the US.

Thanks for the input.

Malcolm Davies. A.m.p.s.

[Malcolm Davies Amps CAS]

Glen Trew did most all of the 2nd Unit work on the movie and using his Deva of course, he also used his iPad with MovieSlate and emailed the Sound Report to Editorial at wrap.

Thanks for the concise explanation Jeff not like the purile posting from elsewhere in the UK.

What I'm not clear about is what was the advantage (apart from not having to write out the 3 part) of Glen e-mailing the report which could possibly arrive with the assistant editor up to several hours before the CF card?

[Jeff Wexler]

The biggest advantage, at least for me when I start using MovieSlate, is that a lot more information can be entered much more easily, making for a much more complete sound report. This has become increasingly more important with multi-track recording. Before going to electronic sound reports, many of us (I didn't but I will explain later) had to go with larger format written reports, more columns, more paper, etc., just to accommodate the additional information that was needed to report.

I think there is a distinct advantage to having the sound report be in an electronic format that can be copied and distributed easily. On movies in the past I know that my hand written sound reports were often scanned by either the production office, the transfer house or the assistant editor, so that it could be easily preserved and distributed to all the people who need it.

The time factor, when the people who need it will get it, is different on every job. On the last movie, for example, I was handing off CF cards all day long and these were being copied in a DIT trailer (caravan) right off the set. At wrap and after all sound and image data was in the system, that is when they started syncing dailies --- again, this was all done in a mobile trailer just off the set (which also served as the Dailies (rushes) screening room. The person syncing dailies had my hand written sound report and the camera reports before they had to start syncing. If these reports had also been in their email in advance, no worries, they would handle it just like they do all the rest of the data they are managing.

[Jeff Babb]

No wi-fi? No problem.

http://easytether.org/

[Richard Lightstone, CAS]

Jeff, just to add credence to your experience, on my last feature, shot on Red Epics. Once the Assistant Editor received my emailed Sound Report, he used that as his cue to either travel to our location, or walk to the stage and retrieve the camera data and sound CF cards for syncing. No phone calls from the set or production needed.

With the switch to HD and the greater number of cameras and hours of "filming" the amount of data piling up needs to be attended to all day, instead of the 'old fashioned' lunchtime and camera wrap schedules.

[Marc Wielage]

Someone please help as I don't want to use this expensive bit of kit just to take photo's,play games or look up the next dental hygienist appointment.

I can't think of a way to do this without a laptop. You could create the PDF file, then use the computer to copy the PDF directly to your Compact Flash cards used for BWF delivery.

Or email it to somebody who can stick it on a card for you. Maybe the D.I.T. has some kind of 3G email or something, which will work in a lot of out-of-the-way places (albeit slowly).