Slating and the Easy Slate System

Jim Harvey has written a nice little review of the Easy Slate System over at Creative Cow. Easy Slate is “the fastest, easiest, and most convenient way to incorporate slating into your production workflow.” The kit consists of 2 dry erase slates (one formatted for interviews and one for general production), dry erase markers as well as a cleaning kit and a carry pouch to keep it all together.

The reason I point out this product is that as an editor, it seems I am seeing less and less slating as the years go by. Anything can be used for a slate: a notepad, chalkboard … your hand. As cheaper DV video has grown in quality, directors are often shooting more and more footage and slating less and less. They often blame the lack of time on the set as the reason for not using a slate. If you think about how much time is spent scanning the source footage for certain takes then that time on the set is well spent. Often when shooting interviews or dialog scenes there is very little in the way of visual cues that can be used by the editor to identify a particular question or take. That can translate to several minutes or more searching around for a single answer or a sound bite when just a few seconds on the set could have gotten a slate in front of the camera. Sure you can place markers in your edit application of choice but time has to be spent to place those markers the first time and any slating can make that faster.

Does your production need the Easy Slate System? The $59 kit is simple in its execution but does one really need to spend $60 on dry erase products when you can pick up a small dry erase board at the nearest office store? Often just the addition of a dedicated production tool can be the difference between doing something on the shoot or not, so by that it is well worth it. The only thing I see missing from the Easy Slate System is a clap board. The use of multiple cameras to shoot scenes and interviews makes “clap” a welcome addition when syncing those cameras. The only thing better? Synced timecode and a smart slate.