16 mm sound report
 

Well, I'll be shooting my first 16mm short film in January and I've been asked to complete Sound reports. I have never seen one, I don't have a clue of what info I'm supposed to deliver, or if there is a standard format to follow.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!


Bests Regards,


Andres.

The essentials are the details such as filenames, reel/disk/roll numbers (depending on what you're recording on), bit depth and sample rates, frame rate and timecode formats, scene and take number, starting and ending timecodes of each take, and comments such as whether the shot was good or a false start, spoiled by someone knocking over a lightstand, etc. Essentially it's the paperwork that accompanies the tape (for analog) or disk/DAT/CD (for digital) to the telecine house, sound editing team and other post production units so they can match sound source files to all the scenes on film. This can be a signfigant issue because sound is often edited separately and then they go back to the original source to "conform" the originals to the edited picture and sound. A Google on "film" or "filmmaking" and "sound report" will turn up numerous references and you can download PDF examples of the commonly used forms from professional sound suppliers like Gotham Sound, Trew Audio, etc.

An excellent reference to the dialogue editing workflow and where sound reports fit into the picture is "Dialogue Editing for Motion Pictures" by John Purcell (Focal Press).

Andres,

What are you recording on? Most of the new recorders have some sound reporting capabilities built-in. However, to use those, you need to fill-in metadata on the tracks as you go along. I find it's easier to write stuff down AND put the metadata in on the Deva. That way, I have something to reference in case I messed something up. If you use BWF Widget, you can edit the metadata before printing out the sound report (however, this requires you to have a printer on-site, be able to create PDF documents, and have a laptop on-location with you. This can be a lot to ask in certain situations.

Wayne

Andres, here is a sample sound report sheet:

http://comm.unc.edu/mmlabs/helpfold/soundreport

Thanks to Steve, Wayne and Chris.

I think that the sample sheet that Chris posted will work perfectly for my needs.
And Wayne, very interesting what you mentioned about recorders that let you create the reports; I'll definitely research more about that. Right now I'm recording on an Edirol R-44 and it doesn't have that function, so I'll keep that in mind when the moment comes to upgrade my recorder.

Best regards,


Andres.