Slate

What this is about

The slate carries the metadata post will live off: production, scene, shot, take, date, frame rate, and sound roll. The second AC shows it to the lens, the assistant announces it for the recorder, and the sticks close for sync. Tail slates — shown upside down at the end of a take — cover situations where slating at the head would break the moment. Sloppy slating does not hurt on the day; it hurts three weeks later, when an editor scrubs through material nobody can identify.

A term only helps when everyone on set means the same thing by it — so what follows is how it is used, not a dictionary definition.

What runs differently here

In planning terms, that means:

• Announce clearly for sound, show legibly for camera — the slate serves two recorders at once
• Tail slates go upside down, called as end slate
• Keep numbering consistent with the script supervisor's report — one system, no exceptions

With TillyGen

Scene and shot numbers in TillyGen's shot list are the same ones the slate shows, so planning documents and dailies speak one language.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.