Cut! Print it; check the gate.

The phrase is almost a cliche if you’re making a movie about making a movie but I wonder two things:

Is it accurate? Do typical directors say this, or something similar, when they’re satisfied with a take?

What does “print it” mean? “Cut” is pretty universally understood, and “check the gate” I know* but they’re obviously not going to print the undeveloped film that’s still in a magazine.

Does it mean to mark in a log somewhere that Magazine this, from Footage this to Footage that is what the director feels (for the moment) is the best?

What about multiple shots? If you’re not working on a micro-budget or time constraint (the light’s going!) you’re going to have a master shot then any number of close-ups, reaction shots, inserts, etc. Is there a “print it” for each shot?

*Remove the magazine and check that the final aperture before the film does not have a stray hair or piece of fluff in the way, ruining the shot.

If you’re making a film ‘by the book’, you’re keeping a shot log. The idea is this: You have many takes, most of which will not be what the director wants. The film is processed. Rather than print a positive work copy for every take, which costs money, only the takes noted ‘print’ on the shot log will be made. The printed shots make up the work copy, which is then edited, and the negative is conformed to the work copy by the negative cutter.

I’ve only worked on micro-budget films. Since the number of takes is limited by the budget, the whole magazine is ‘printed’. I put ‘printed’ in quotes because it’s actually transferred to video (¾" U-matic tapes earlier, and digital storage now). It’s cheaper and easier to just print everything and then edit on video than making a positive copy and editing on a flatbed. Plus, the films I’ve worked on have all been released on video, so there’s no conforming the negative.

I was an assistant cameraman on a student project that was using an Arri SR2. Part of my job was checking the gate. As you say, this entailed ensuring the gate was clear of debris and/or emulsion buildup when the magazines were changed. The lens was also removed to ensure nothing was on the front of the gate.

Well said my cinematic pal. Allow me to expand a bit?

Cut. Well, turn the fucking camera off, pal. That part of the triad kinda is self-explanatory !!

Print it. Ya got it more or less on. Most camera reports, a multi-layered carbon copy document about 9" x 7" would be filled out as the takes were shot, in real time. Let’s say you did 11 takes of Roy Batty’s famous speech at the end of BladeRunner.

Takes 2, 9 and 11 would get circled and let’s say Take 9 made it into the movie.

The camera report would read just as seen here.

The circled takes represent takes to be “printed”- as stated above, to be made into positive film takes on the roll of Work Print film to be used in editing. Any takes not circled were not printed.

I spent a few years as a Camera Assistante or “A.C.” while learning the trade. Damned humbling work, being an A.C. Even now in the age of digital H.D. video taps on film cameras, the A.C. is the only person on the set who can wreck a take and nobody will know it until the film is developed and printed. That is because you can not only get emulsion build-up in the area at the edges of the actual frame “hole” ( the gate ), but more likely you get “hairs”- tiny fibers that drift in the air. They can float in as one is loading a fresh magazine or changing a lens or - and this is evil incarnate- you can get a hair in the gate * by virtue of taking the lens off of the camera body to check the gate for hairs*. :eek::eek::eek:

Now, it’s a nifty trick and one that can save your career to learn to check the gate without removing the lens. How can this be, you may ask? Glad you asked.

A lens- any lens, be it still photo or cinematic camera lens- will act as a magnifier if one looks right into the taking element. You learn the trick of holding a flashlight right next to your eye, pressed to the temple, aimed into the lens. As you slowly move your head around and look into the lens, the flashlight is severely focused onto different areas of the gate- with the single film frame in place. You can see if there are hairs or other offending matter in the gate without removing the lens.

It doesn’t mean you remove risk of airborne crap. One changes lenses all the time and one changes magazines every 400 feet or 1,000 feet depending on the mag in use. But still. One takes GREAT care to avoid stuff being lodged in the gate.

It’s hairy work, pun intended. Then… there are emulsion scratches. If you get a speck of dirt in there, it can get lodged in the bottom edge of the gate and literally introduce scratching into the film as it moves oh-so very quickly through the gate.

You develop the film, you have footage that is scratched. Horrorshow stuff. NOWADAYS, one can literally fix this digitally so it’s gone. But whoa back in the day…

My hardest gig as an A.C. was a documentary shooting along the Green River in Utah. We started near the Tavaputs Ranch and spent 2 weeks working our way down to the Green River. Then we rafted along the river and put out finally at Moab, Utah.

I was responsible for 4 different camera bodies, each of which had 3-4 magazines that fit onto it. All 16mm format.
Arriflex M ( for a Tyler Mount for the helicopter we used every day.
Arriflex S
Arriflex BL
Arriflex SR II.

For all of the wet, the incredible dust ( helicopters landing in the hard dry desert ground, etc ) I only took one scratch. It was one of the Arri M mags and it ruined most of a 400 foot magazine. And we didn’t know it until we got back to NYC and had the film developed and printed into positive work print. :frowning:

On the one hand, it’s a pretty good ratio. On the other hand, that footage was useless. Or so I thought. Turns out for quite a pretty penny, Production could have the negative printed through something called a Liquid Gate and in doing so, made an internegative that was clean of the scratch.

Still. I thought I’d lost a client.

Hope this is all useful. :slight_smile:

Oh- one last note: nobody…but nobody calls out “Cut” on a set except the Director. On some shows, the 1st Assistant Director, or “First AD” is charged with calling both Action and Cut and that transfer of power is worked out between the Director and First AD. Otherwise, you call Cut out at your own peril. I only called it out a small handful of times and only when I was in physical danger.

It would be no great undertaking to build a flashlight into a fixture with a beamsplitter so that you could hold the damned thing (by the flashlight part – it’d make a great handle) with one hand and look down through the beamsplitter and then through the lens at the gate. You wouldn’t have to hold the flashlight right at your temple. Your lighting would be better.

did no one ever build one of these. Did no one see a marketing possibility and sell these in Hollywood? sounds like it’d be indispensable.

I love it !! Dunno. Might be money to be made !!

Thank you for that extended answer, 'verse.

Speaking of “cut” being reserved for the director, after some 35 years I remember the scene in Stunt Man when someone minor (grip? focus puller?) calls, “cut” in the middle of a scene and when Eli Cross, the e-e-evil director demands who did it protests there’s only 30 feet left in the magazine. Cross winds up on him.

It will come as no surprise for you to hear that that is one of my favorite films. When that scene unwound I had already been working as a camera assistant and I laughed.
I also grimaced.

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Oh- 35mm runs at 90 feet / minute.
So the dialogue was technically accurate, give or take 2 seconds.

There are plenty of times when you run out of film while you are shooting. It makes it impossible to accurately check the gate for things like Harris because the end of the film pulls elements out of the gate. You always Mark the magazine to be developed and handled carefully because the laboratory tends to eat up eight to 10 feet on other end of the roll in the process of threading the negative onto the developing machines.

" Critical End " means that every frame to the end is exposed and important. The lab clips leader onto the end of the film and in doing so wastes nothing.

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Question: What happens when the word “cut” is a significant part of the dialogue? I’m thinking specifically of the scene in The Boys From Brazil where the kid uses “Cut!” and “Action!” to command his dobermans.

Nothing at all.
It’s in the script.

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I was just wondering if the director would change his commands (such as saying “Stop!” instead of “Cut!”) to avoid confusion with the dialogue.

I never saw it with subtitles but I remember hearing it in the theater as thirteen feet. When I looked up the quote at IMdb (I knew it had to be there) it started with “In 22 seconds…” so I figured that was accurate. Then I said, “Wait a minnit! Eighteen inches a second… Thirteen feet isn’t any where near 22 seconds!” Calculator out. “Yup. That would be 33 feet, but I distinctly remember two syllables, not three.” It could be my infallible memory (ha!) slipped a cog, or the victim rounded the footage off, or they figured nobody’d know.

Yep- the last I would guess !

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