why do you turn the clapper upside down when you do a tail slate???

To signify it's an end slate. It goes back to synching film on a bench, same with bringing the slate board in "open" rather than closed which helped the assistant editor know which way to wind the film to find the clap.
 
That is right. When pulling takes to sync the editor would know to use the footage AFTER an upright slate and BEFORE an upside down slate. It could get tricky if there is no head slate (At the beginning of a take). In that case, with film, most times you could pull your takes "Flash to Flash", meaning that, usually, a full take was proceeded by, and ended by, a flash frame, caused when the camera operator's eye was away from the reflex eyepiece, causing extra light to strike and overexpose the film causing a flash frame. That was not a 100% way to do it though.

There is also the issue of "Second sticks". If the clap of the slate was done when either the camera or sound did not capture it for what ever reason. It lets the editor know that there might be two sync marks.

All of this, tail slates or second sticks should be recorded in the camera log, the sound log and the script supervisors record.
 
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To boil it down, it's all about being very clear for someone who might work on the project who has no clue what went down during production. If you throw them any surprises, they are generally not happy.

BTW, a best practice concerning this is to NOT hit record until the slate is in frame and in focus (when using one of course). If you do that, then the thumbnails of all the clips in an NLE will show a clear slate with all the relevant info. Having edited projects where this was the case, it was super fast to find what I needed, and I try to do that when I'm camera operating as well.
 
In an ideal situation it would be great to hit rec once the slate is in frame and focused. In many shoots you hear the "camera" command and start to roll right away then you have a slate person stumbling into frame and that is less than ideal. From a post perspektive. In many fast paced shoots everything doesn't work by the textbook.
 
Gary Huff said:
To boil it down, it's all about being very clear for someone who might work on the project who has no clue what went down during production. If you throw them any surprises, they are generally not happy.

BTW, a best practice concerning this is to NOT hit record until the slate is in frame and in focus (when using one of course). If you do that, then the thumbnails of all the clips in an NLE will show a clear slate with all the relevant info. Having edited projects where this was the case, it was super fast to find what I needed, and I try to do that when I'm camera operating as well.
Click to expand...

Thats a fantastic tip if feasable on set, will try that out :-)
 
Gary Huff said:
To boil it down, it's all about being very clear for someone who might work on the project who has no clue what went down during production. If you throw them any surprises, they are generally not happy.
Click to expand...
Sorry that's nonsense. I'm guessing you never worked in a film cutting room. It has nothing to do with being happy. Film editors were never happy. I know, because I was one:-)
 
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