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from how Stuff works dot com where smart Happens. I am Marshall Brain with today's question, how does a movie clapperboard work? If you have a video camcorder, then you're used to having video and sound recorded at the same time. The sound in the video are always synchronized because they're recorded together in one place. When filming a movie, the
pictures and sounds are usually recorded separately. The picture is recorded onto film or some kind of digital device ACE and the sound gets recorded on tape or more recently, into flash memory. Because they're recorded on two different devices, you need a way to synchronize them. The clapper board, that black and white board you see all the time when people are making movies, is the traditional way to
handle the synchronization. The bottom of the clapper board is normally a slate of some sort on which you can write the scene and take number. This information helps identify the shot during editing. Once the tape recorder and the camera are rolling, the clapperboard operator places the clapperboard in front of the camera so the camera can see it, reads the scene, and take information so the tape recorder
can hear it, and then claps the clapper. During editing, it's very easy to synchronize the visual of the clapper clapping down with the clap sound it makes on the tape. The digital slate is the more modern form of the clapper board. The tape recorder, whatever it's made out of, contains a time code generator. The timecode is recorded continuously on a special track on the tape or in flash memory, and the timecode is also displayed continuously on a large
led display on the digital slate. By showing the digital slate to the camera before the action starts, the editor knows exactly what the tapes time code is and could synchronize it with the film. Sometimes a digital slate also contains a clapper, but generally it's not needed. The digital slate normally has a slate area because identifying each shot is still extremely important during editing. Do you have any
ideas or suggestions for this podcast? If so, please send me an email at podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, go to how stuff works dot com and be sure to check out the brain Stuff blog on the how stuffworks dot com home page. Jack Threads has quickly become the online shopping destination for guys. Here's why. Everything on the
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