[loki74]

This has been kind of bugging me... exactly what is the purpose of a clapboard, other than that it is a symbol of movies and Hollywood? Beside the obvious making editing easier (you know what scene, take, etc) Ive heard that it helps with sound sync and color correctectness which both kind of make sense, but I recently read that it also has something to do with telecine. How does clapping this thingy before the scene help you in the telecine process?

its not overly important I guess, but I'd like to get a definitive answer on this, y'know...

[macanon]

Here is a quick explanation. (very short though...)

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a1_367.html

[barang]

That's exactly why if you see a pic of a movie production in pre-talkie Hollywood, there is no clapper, only a slate.

No need for sync-sound if there is no sound.

[direktor]

I'll give you a quick answer. I was an assistant cameraman for about 8 years...aka "the guy with the slate".

The above answers are pretty much correct, but I'll tell you a bit more. When shooting film, either 16mm or 35mm, the film does not record sound (yes, some old 16mm cams recorded optical sound on film, but nobody does that anymore).

So what you have then is a guy with a small mixer recording one or two microphones worth of sound to a DAT or a Nagra.

My experience is mostly with shooting film for broadcast, so everything I ever worked on was transferred to video for editing. In the telecine suite there is a DAT machine (or 1/4" nagra) setup to add the audio back in as the film is xferred to tape. The click on the sticks closing on the slate is what's used for the reference point.

The timecode slates you see used do the same thing, but in a little more detaield way...the TC numbers you see flying by on the slate while marking a take are also being recorded on the audio tape. All you need then is one frame of film with readable numbers, which then gets matched up with the timecode on the audio reel.

For music videos, sound is not recorded as you're shooting, rather the performer lip-syncs to a recorded version of the song played back on set (known as "playback"). The playback device (DAT usually) also plays back timecode, which is then transmitted wirelessly to the slate and displayed on the front. So when you're shooting multiple takes of the guitar solo, the slate will ALWAYS show the exact numbers at the same parts of the song. That way the editor can sync up the camera takes to the right part of the song.

Wow, talk about diarrhea of the mouth. Hope you learned something.