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MovieSlate and Sound Reports


Jeff Wexler

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I know many sound mixers have been using MovieSlate to generate beautiful electronic (digital) Sound Reports that can be easily and quickly deployed to all those in production and post that need a detailed sound report (as well as often residing along with the sound files on the daily deliverable media). There have been lots of discussions over the years about integration between MovieSlate and the most common recorders in use in production. Does anyone know what the current state of integration, if any, exists with MovieSlate? Can you enter metadata in MovieSlate and have it update metadata on a Sound Devices 688, Cantar, Deva for example? Most all of the recorders have implemented their own sound report routine but the quality and ease of these routines seems to be highly variable even amongst the machines that do it. The goal, of course, for many of us is to be able to consolidate metadata entered once and in one place and to be able to generate useful reports.

I would love to know if most people are relying on the recorder's ability to generate the report and therefore do not even need to involve MovieSlate, integrated or not. 

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On my recent show I used Movie Slate exclusively, and didn't use the recorder-generated report on the Deva 5.8. Before the show started I set up a nice rig to hold my iPad, which looked very impressive and high-tech on my cart. Then one day I left my iPad at home. After freaking out, I remembered that I had Movie Slate installed on my phone, and felt I had no choice but to learn how to get by with Movie Slate and  just my phone. At the end of the day I decided that the phone was all I needed, and the only advantage to using the iPad was for the cool appearance. So, for the next 8 months of the production, I used only my iPhone with Movie Slate for sound reports. The reports looked the same to those who received them, and the smaller size actually let me enter the data more quickly. I eventually got to the point that I wouldn't bother to try to advance each take every time I rolled. Even if I didn't enter any data into movie slate from the beginning of the day to the lunch time break, I could easily catch up the days work in just a few minutes before emailing the reports.

Movie Slate... iPhone. All you need.

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I've not as yet had use of Movieslate but (as a dialogue editor) sound reports generated by Cantar have always been as useful as I needed - and indeed (post SD and post waveagent) files have generally been much easier to use in a basic PT workflow when I haven't reports as such - which more than a decade back would have been a godsend anyway.

I'm interested in Movieslate though, particularly in light of early reports here by JW and GT, and look forward to more comments - and more from post if listening. Cheers for the thread Jeff.

Jez

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Yes currently "Movie Slate" only syncs with SD 6 series recorders. But you still need a third piece of hardware, that being the TC System :Wave or :Pulse. You then join the WIFI network generated from that. Maybe Cliff Joyce or Eric Goodwin could chime in and let us know if SD provided R&D money for which they were granted use of the APP. I think that Cantar now has their internally generated WIFI up and running and Zaxcom may be doing the same with the long anticipated 24. But unless both of the aforementioned are willing to pay a licensing fee I think we will see proprietary GUI versions of something similar.

Bill

 

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Hey Jeff,

 I stopped using Movie Slate after purchasing the Cantar X3. I have been very happy with the results. I started Season 1 on This Is Us with Movie Slate then transitioned to the X3 generated reports after checking with post and they were completely fine with the transition with no push back at all. And no the Cantar X3 and Movie Slate do not communicate with one another. Not yet anyway. Not saying that there is plans for Aaton to but knowing the folks at Aaton my guess is they will not have a firmware version update letting the two communicate. 

I added a page from one of my X3 generated reports.

Kriky

 

Just to add the report can be customized to your liking not unlike a spread sheet. 

Cantar X3 Report.pdf

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My issue with electronic reports is perfectly illustrated here with the PDF of the X3 report. Or have a look at this one from "Justified" generated by movie slate.  Justified #513 - SROLL 203 - .pdf     -    SO MANY PAGES!!

I still use paper reports. Why? Because every show I am on, when asked, tells me they print electronic reports. They put them in a folder. They make a copy. Send that to editorial who put them in a folder, usually after making a copy so they have two. Sound editorial, whether they look at them or not, also make a copy. Here's my paper report for one roll Counterpart Report.pdf - I can count on one hand the number of times I have generate two pages with one sound roll, even if we go a whole day. My report is scanned and emailed by either production or the dailies facilities and emailed out to anyone on the list. When it gets printed, it's one piece of paper, not three or five or more.

My paper report also lets me draw lines from one setup to another to let a dialog editor know where to find words or lines we may have recorded as off camera "wild tracks", or even on camera stuff that is better than what we got on the shot or take they may use. A paper report has so much flexibility and ease.

They are not multi-part. Just one ordinary sheet of paper. Done.

If someone would format reports so that they use smaller print and could fit as many takes as I can, then I would gladly switch. What do the 788T ones look like? 6-series? Any examples here?

Just my opinion, which is routinely mocked :-)

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