I'm a little confused, in your example would A B C D E be the "Take" on the slate?
Say you have Scene 1 Take 1. You're still in the same setup and you take it again so do you have Scene 1 Take 2? But what about when you move to a new setup would that be Scene 1 Take 3? I thought the take was a "child category" of a setup, not a scene.

For example,

> Scene 1-A is a close up of actor A.

But this shot can be taken a 2-3 times so what would be labeled on the slate in terms of "Scene" and "Take" for each take?

For example, say you take the setup above 3 times due to an actor messing up or to get extra footage? Then, what would you label the next setup below on the slate?

> Scene 1-B is a close up of actor B.
> Scene 1-C is a cover shot of both actors A & B.

In one scene you will have a variety of setups and multiple takes for each setup...

I know you put the scene on the slate but what about takes? You might have 1 or 5 takes per setup and you might have 1 or 5 setups per scene? So what goes on the slate? If you put:

Scene 1 Take 3. How do you know which setup that Take is for?

What I'm suggesting has worked for me. It may or may not work for you in which case feel free to change it around to suit your style.

Let's see if I can simplify my explanation.
Let's say the location is a house and involves 2 actors.
Scene 1 takes place in the living room, scene 2 in the kitchen, etc.
Scene 1 is shot from a number of angles (what I call A, B &C) to give you flexibility in the edit suite.
I further broke scene 1 into setups A (master shot of both actors), B (CU of actor 1) & C (CU of actor 2).
When I'm ready to start, the slate would read Scene 1-A Take 1.
If I shoot it again, it now reads Scene 1-A Take 2.
Repeat as necessary, changing only the Take # each time.
Now it's time to shoot the CU of actor 1.
Change the slate to slate now reads Scene 1-B Take 1, etc.
When it' s time for the CU of actor 2, change the slate to Scene 1-C Take 1, etc.
When I move to the kitchen, it's a new location so I'll change the slate to Scene 2. If there will be a number of angles, I'll use my A, B, C system again.

I was at an editing workshop a number of years ago and the example shown to us was a family breakfast scene (6 actors as I recall). The scene was shot from 26 different angles in order to capture everything that was going on. However, it would still be (IMHO) classed as a single scene with A, B, C, etc. setups.
Hope this helps to clarify things.

Mike

That makes perfect sense actually, but two questions:

>The scene was shot from 26 different angles

then what happens if you have more than 26 angles, which can be very possible? As there are only 26 letters to the alphabet. E.g. How would specify setup 27?

What would you consider a single scene? Some say simply any change in location or time ...

But you would consider someone walking from the living room, to the kitchen (at the same time) 2 scenes because of a location change?

27 would be AA. Simple enough.

Omar, the slate information needs to be useful for you, especially as you seem to be cameraman and editor. Do whatever will best help you keep track of the shots.

> 27 would be AA. Simple enough.
>Do whatever will best help you keep track of the shots.

that's a little confusing for me though :) It's hard for me to think of AA as 27

Then I think I will just use a number system for the setups just like for the scenes. As long as I label it "Scene, Shot, Take" I wont get confused between the scene, shot and take numbers ...

Aside: I just dont understand how on the professional slate they dont add a setup or shot category...

Well, never having been in a professional shooting situation, i don't know how the pros do it. However, with appropriate documentation all the slate needs is something unique for each shot. You could have your slates be nothing more than 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 .... etc. up through 14,952 if your movie has that many shots. Then have a big notebook or database that lists each number along with the relavant details. Then one need merely read the number from the slate and look up the details in the notebook/database. For example:

# 397: Scene 14, Shot 6, Setup 3, Take 2. Marcia comes down the stairs to meet her mother, closeup on Marcia's face as she reaches the bottom step.

Certainly pro shoots have a continuity person who's job it is to log all this information every time the camera rolls, and much other information as well. The amount of detail and record keeping you want is up to you. If you'd prefer 14,6,3,2 for Scene, Shot, Setup, Take instead then go for it. Just pick a system that works for you and keep it consistant.

It is very unlikely that you'll have more than 26 setups for one scene. If you do, then either you're using several cameras, or you don't know what a scene is and you're really shooting more than one scene but have it labeled as one scene.

The info on the slate is:

Roll (or tape) #: 1
Scene/Setup: 15A
Take: 6
Camera: A (If there will be some multi-camera setups)

If you're doing a new take but are only shooting a portion, it's called a "pick-up" and is slated as a new take number with "p/u" after. For example: 7p/u The reason you might do this is, for example, you have a long take but someone screwed up on the last line. Instead of redoing the entire take, you can just do the portion that you're unappy with. Sometimes you can't do that though, like if the whole scene will be played in one long take.

Chienworks: Chaplin numbered his slates like you mentioned-- each new take was given a new number, and the number didn't start back at 1 for each new setup, it just kept going up. So by the end of a movie his slate might say take 14,976. The interesting thing about that is it creates sort of a self-making documentary. (Slightly OT, but I can not recommend the DVD of "Unknown Chaplin" highly enough.)

Here's a sample of a slate.

> It is very unlikely that you'll have more than 26 setups for one scene. If you do, then either you're using several cameras, or you don't know what a scene is and you're really shooting more than one scene but have it labeled as one scene.

Well imagine an intense court scene I can see 26 setups easily ... Especially without a dolly, I cut a lot throughout a scene which gives me many setups.

Then again-

A lot of the cutting is done in the editing process (Vegas) as opposed to during production. In production I may have only a few setups that appear to be so many in the final cut because of the editing style.

Say you're shooting a dialogue using one camera, in editing you may switch between them so much during a conversation, but in production it's actually only 3 setups for example. So I see why wouldn't have so many setups.

I guess I'm confusing myself because I think so much of editing while I shoot so it causes me to imagine so many setups when in fact during production there aren't as many actual setups as there appear to be in a final cut version of a scene...

Even with a court scene it's either actually more than one scene, or it's not really more than 26 setups. You're right that with editing it will seem like a lot more setups than it actually is, especially if the camera is moving in any of them (since depending which portion of a take you use you'll see different things).

Fred