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ALL ABOUT FILM DAILIES

Not all the raw film footage ends up on the next day's dailies. To save money, only the best takes are printed since printing (or even telecining) dailies costs money. Therefore, only the dailies where the director yells, "Print" will be printed. Once the director yells, "Cut! Print!", the script supervisor, the camera assistant and the sound person circle the take number for good takes on their log sheets so that only these "Circled Takes" will be printed.

Even though the dailies are viewed in the morning by only the director, the producer and executives from the studio, many other people also need to examine the dailies to check their work throughout the day. This is why VHS (in the USA) dailies tapes are made for distribution to the heads of all the departments of a TV show. As an example, the wardrobe department needs to check to see if the costumes look OK on film so the wardrobe department receive a VHS copy of the dailies to look at each day.

The average film dailies is 20 to 40 minutes long. Each day of filming is usually only one to three pages of the script. Each page of the script represents one minute of the final film. The shooting ratio of the circled takes is typically 5 to 1 for episodic television dramas or 10 to 1 for motion pictures.

Since dailies for each day are processed in a single batch, the first unit dailies and the second unit dailies and the effects shots all end up on the same dailies reel.
  • Because of the way the dailies are processed, the first unit dailies usually have all "A" camera shots followed by all "B" camera shots, etc.

  • Second unit dailies are the pickup shots which are filmed (usually without sound) by a different film crew (usually very small). A typical pickup shot might be a shot of a hand picking up a book. The shot will be filmed on a different day than the scene it belongs to with a different person's hand used as a substitute for the real actor's hand.

  • Effects shots come from effects houses. These are very short clips (usually only a few seconds long) which are printed in the dailies batch so the director can see what it will look like on film.

  • At the end of the dailies reel is the wild sound (sound takes which might be useful but for some reason do not match up with any of the shots.)


Sound complicates the process of preparing film dailies. In most countries, film is shot with sound (rather than without sound which is known as MOS). With very few exceptions, all production sound is recorded separately from the film camera. That is why the sound must by synced to the dailies before the dailies can be viewed by the director.

Sound is synced (either manually or with an electronic slate) by using (1) a slate board, (2) a clapper, and (3) a verbal slate and/or log sheet. During the syncing process after the film has been developed, the technician will look at the numbers on the slate board and then match the numbers with the verbal slate (or the tape log). Then the technician looks for the frame where the clapper first closes and looks for the blip (or clapping sound) on the audio tape. To be properly synced, the sound of the clapper should follow immediately after the closing of the slate. This adjustment is usually done in one frame increments. With electronic slates, the current trend is to have the audio follow the video by two frames but for close up shots, a two frame delay makes the actors seem to be out of sync so often film editors must resync the audio visually before being editing a scene.

Once a movie clip and the sound are in sync, the picture and the audio are assumed to remain in sync for the entire shot. This is because the audio recorder and the film camera are controlled by crystal clocks. By the end of each shot, the sound should not have drifted out of sync with the picture by a noticeable amount. This is not always true. This is why film directors prefer to keep all shots short.

Film dailies have other uses. Inside the film studios and post production houses of Hollywood, film dailies are used to train beginning film editors. A scene from an episodic television drama or motion picture is loaded into an editing system (or personal computer containing and editing program) for the budding editor to edit.

There are two kinds of scenes in narrative productions -- scene with dialog (scripted conversations) and action scenes. Each is edited differently. Editing a conversation can the most challenging and the most fun so the scene used by the film studios to train a new film editor is usually a conversation.

Where to find Film Dailies?

Dailies are not available outside of the film studios or the post production houses. This is for two reasons:
  • First, no one at the film studios realize how interesting film dailies can be for film students and fans of the actors who live outside the Hollywood area. And since most people outside the Hollywood have ever seen actual film dailies, most of the people outside of Hollywood do not know what fun they are missing. Yet, at the same time, film dailies are so common in Hollywood that no one at the film studios sees any reason to distribute them to people who live outside the Hollywood area. That is why no one at the film studios considers film dailies to be valuable.

  • Second, the production companies do not own the rights to their own film dailies except use in the edited motion picture. It is true that the production company owns the copyright for the dailies but the copyright is almost useless. Long before filming starts, the production company has already signed away their rights to the dailies. Everyone who touches the production usually has a clause in their contract to retain their rights to some part of the film... including the dailies.


As an example, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) is the owner of most of the rights to film dailies for all union productions in the USA. The Screen Actors Guild has a clause in their contract to protect their actors' privacy which says that the producers of all union productions must give up their rights to the actor's performance for anything but the edited movie. Any reuse of the film dailies (such as on a CD-ROM which is considered to be Multimedia) requires a re-negotiation of the entire SAG contract (which has never happened.) Even for training purposes, SAG does not allow the distribution of film dailies -- the ACE Film Editing Contest is one exception.

In most other English speaking countries, the actors unions have similar contracts which limit the distribution of all film dailies. New Zealand is the only English speaking country which does not have this limitation. This is why the dailies from Xena and Hercules are on the DVD-Video disks for these shows.

Where do old Film Dailies go?

Film dailies do not live forever. Until about 20 years ago, all film dailies had a life span of about two years. This is for mechanical reasons.
  • Until about 1985, all film dailies were printed on film. These pieces of film are called the workprint. It is the workprint that the director views the next day. Later, this same workprint is used by the film editor to edit the movie. That means that the workprint is destroyed (cut up) during the editing of the movie. Then, once the workprint is edited and approved, the negative will be confirmed (cut up to match) to the edited workprint. That means the original negative is destroyed during the film editing process since one frames of the movie is destroyed at every edit in the movies. After the negative is conformed, there is no way for anyone to view the original film dailies from any motion picture filmed before 1985. They are gone forever.

  • Starting about 1985, film editing switched to computers which use a copy of the dailies on video tape or laser disk. These video dailies are not as high a quality as the workprint. Some of these tapes have survived and so can still be viewed (and edited) after the negative is conformed. Even so, many production companies when they close up operation throw all the remaining dailies tapes into the trash. Gone forever!

  • Starting about 2000 , some dailies are put on DVD-Video disks for viewing by the director and/or used for the rough editing of the movie. Often, these DVD-Video dailies are very high quality video (but without any color correction.) In this case, the dailies on the DVD disk remain usable long after the negative is conformed. (Many directors keep at least some of their dailies disks and when the director dies, these dailies appear at estate auctions in the LA area.)

  • Also, some television dramas were edited entire on tape. Therefore, the original negative was never conformed (cut up).

  • Starting about 2005 , a motion pictures use a DI (digital Intermediary) rather than conforming the negative. Therefore, the film negatives for these movies are cut up. If the original negatives are not thrown away, then the dailies for these movies are still exist at their full film resolution (about 4,000 pixels by 4,000 pixels for 35mm motion picture film.)


When the movie is distributed, all of this gets a bit confusing. In theory, the distributor receives everything for the movie (including the dailies, as well as the rights and obligations associated with the dailies.) Yet, so far, no distributor of a motion picture has attempted to release the film dailies for a movie or television drama to the public, either for publicity or for sale to fans.

Where to find Film Dailies?

Because the Screen Actors Guild is the owner of the majority of the rights to the film dailies for a motion picture or television drama and because the production company wants to abide by their union contract, all dailies are collected after viewing and destroyed. In the case of video tape dailies, the tapes are erased and reused.

However, some of the dailies tapes escape destruction and find their way onto eBay where they are sold to fans of the shows or the actors. The price for original film dailies is about $25 per tape for popular television dramas. Dailies tapes for Star Trek: The Next Generation sold for $325. Because film dailies from motion picture are usually less exciting (because they are less efficiently filmed), a dailies tape from a motion picture will sell for about $5 to $10.

Care must be taken when buying film dailies on eBay since may of the tapes which are available are only second generation copies.

Odd Note: Most original film dailies tapes are sold during the month of March. Then the bidding can be fierce if the television show is popular.

Who needs to see Film Dailies?

With the increased popularity of DV filmmaking, film dailies from Hollywood become increasingly important to the education of beginning filmmakers and film editors. Viewing film dailies is a terrific substitute for traveling to Hollywood and visiting the film studios to watch how scenes are filmed and edit by the pros. Film dailies make this so much easier.

Yet, purchasing film dailies, even for for film schools, is not easy. The one exception is the American Cinema Editors (ACE) which sells a video tape to film instructors (only instructors and never to film students) with film dailies from "Gunsmoke". These film dailies are still used by most film schools for the last 30 years. (In this scene, Jack Klugman is young!)

With the exception of television dramas filmed in New Zealand (such as Hecules and Xena) and scenes from Highlander shot in France, there are no other film dailies from actual productions sold in the USA. However, in India, the Star Movie Shop sells film dailies from old and forgotten television dramas. These files are already digitized for editing on the Macintosh with editing programs such as Final Cut Pro. These film dailies are good examples for beginning filmmakers to see how to film their own motion pictures. Also the dailies give beginning film editors scenes to practice editing narrative dialog (dramatic conversations.)

The Future of Film Dailies

As more and more people purchase DV camcorders and HDV camcorders to make their own narrative movies, someone will begin distributing film dailies to the public in the USA , Canada , and the UK . As people beginning asking how they can film and distribute their own motion pictures, they will realize that they can use their film dailies to create publicity for their motion pictures. People around the world are fascinated by the making of movies so rather than create a trailer, production companies will create virtual tours of the movie set by packaging the film dailies in a way that is both educational and entertaining.

Also computer companies such as Microsoft and Apple will want to use film dailies to promote their computer products (such as their video editing programs.)