Commonly used terms and acronyms in film?

Ted Spencer said:
ADR is also sometimes called "automatic" dialog replacement, but as Ryan pointed out, there's nothing automatic about it. It's when you bring actors into a recording studio or (much less often) location, show them the original footage with the (presumably unusable) original dialog and have them re-record it in sync with the picture so it matches. Why it was ever called "automatic" or "automated" is beyond me...

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The term was originally 'automated/automatic' because a loop with auto record points was set-up and the actor would repeat the line while listening to the original until they got it right...so in a way, it was automated/automatic.
 
SPC or stage pin is called Bates in film.

When an apple box is laying down showing it's widest flattest side up it is called "Texas", when it's showing it's long skinny side up it's called "L.A." or "California" or "Hollywood" and when it's standing tall it's called "New York".
 
Yep, "automated". A lot of inaccurate stuff is being taught in some film schools these days.
Ferchrissake, I keep coming across newbie directors wanting me to "pan up"!

And if you just think about it, how does "additional dialogue replacement" make any sense? Additional to what? Simply saying "dialogue replacement" would suffice.
 
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Even "additional" dialog replacement would seem a misnomer. It's not additional dialog, it's the *original* dialog that's getting replaced.

What it it with the mysterious audio acronyms in film? No one seems to know for certain what "MOS" stands for either. I've heard about 10 different versions of that one...
 
Seems like "motor only sound" is the most current accepted meaning.

The story behind "Mit out sound" regarding the German director was very colorful but didn't make much sense. German speaker here, it would be more common for a native German speaker to say " vit out " than "mit out" . "W"s are pronounced as "V"s. The German word for "without" is "ohne".
 
For those of you that don't know. The term C-47 comes from, in a work-around way, accountants. See, when the filmmakers would send their budget to the financing dept., the accountants objected to spending hundreds of dollars on clothes-pins. So to keep them quiet, rather than reporting the clothes-pins as such, the filmmakers labeled them as their model/item number; C-47. Accounting didn't complain and the name stuck.

If you want to, go grab a bag of wooden clothes-pins and check the numbers on the back.

I've also worked on an indy feature where no one else had heard the term C-47, and thought I was just making it up. So, for the rest of the film, the metal clothes-pins became C-48s, the larger ones became, C-49s and so on.
 
Davdo said:
"hollywood" as a verb. to hand-hold something that might normally be fixed to a stand - showcard, a flag, etc.

i actually haven't heard anyone other than me use this in a while. do people still use this term?

~~Dave

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Yeah, that is a term I use on regular basis. I got it from Detroit based gaffers/grips and took it to be almost a derogatory term for the working style of big budget films that came to the "D" to shot. For bloated budget films, they would as soon have a union grip hand hold a flag or reflector then just set up a C-stand.
 
As far as ADR, I learned it as, "Automated" Dialogue Replacement, which referred to the looping set-up to sweeten or correct original dialogue. From what I understand, the original dialogue, was set up as an "Automated" loop and was played back multiple times for the actor to rerecord the dialogue again and again as needed.
 
jimpatro said:
Seems like "motor only sound" is the most current accepted meaning.
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That makes sense. I think that 'mit out sound' came about in a similar fashion as the character of "Uncle Sam". Boxes marked 'U.S.' were said to be for/from Uncle Sam.

The explanation came after the acronym was already in use. Everyone knew what M.O.S. means, but didn't actually know what it stood for. So they made up a story to explain it.
 
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