What is a camera report? Keeping a take log on set

A camera report is the record of what the camera shot: every take, on which roll or card, and which ones are worth using. On a film shoot the 2nd AC fills one in for each roll and it travels with the footage to the lab or the edit. On a small digital shoot it is often nobody’s job, and that is how an editor ends up scrubbing through forty takes of a shot to find the one the director liked.

What goes on a camera report

Paper or digital, the same handful of facts, written as each take happens rather than reconstructed at lunch:

• The header: production, date, shoot day, camera (A, B), and the roll or card it is on.
• Scene, shot and take, exactly as the slate said them, including the letters a pickup gets.
• Circled takes: the ones the director wants printed or wants the editor to start from.
• A note per take when there is something to say: soft on the turn, plane overhead, boom in the top of frame, she found it on this one.
• Lens and stop when the camera team wants them, which on a VFX shot is always.

Film reports also carried footage counts so the lab knew what to develop. On digital the clip names do that work, which is why the roll or card name matters more than ever: “A003” on the report is how a take is found again on a drive.

Camera report, sound report, script notes

Three people are writing down the same takes, for three different readers:

On a crew of four, the three collapse into one list kept by whoever has a hand free. That is fine, as long as the one list has the circled takes on it.

Circled is not the same as good

A rating and a circle answer different questions. Three takes can all be good, one can be a maybe because the focus buzzed, and one is NG because a car went through the back of frame. The circle is a separate claim: of the good ones, this is the one we meant. Keep both. The rating tells the editor what is safe to use; the circle tells them where to start.

The end-of-day report

When the day wraps, the takes become a summary for the producer and the AD: what was planned, what was shot, what was not, what has to come back as a pickup, and what was dropped for good. A useful day report counts these up first, so the gap is visible before anyone reads a shot list:

• Planned, shot, and not shot
• Pickups still owed, and shots dropped
• Takes logged, and how many were circled

Then the detail per scene, then any notes from the day, including the ones a client left. That last part matters more than it sounds: a note from the agency at 3pm is the first thing the editor needs to know about.

Paper, a spreadsheet, or a phone

Paper still works and never runs out of battery. Its problems start at wrap: someone has to type it up, and handwriting at 6am on day four is a guess. A spreadsheet on a laptop is clean but nobody stands at the camera with a laptop open. A phone is the thing already in a pocket at the camera, which is why most small crews log on one now. What it has to cope with is the place you shoot: a basement, a warehouse, a field with one bar. A log that stops working without signal is a log that gets abandoned by lunch.

A take log template

If you keep your own, these are the columns worth having, one row per take. They are the columns Frameboard writes (plus two ID columns of its own), so a log kept in a spreadsheet and one exported from On Set line up:

1. Shoot day
2. Date
3. Scene
4. Shot
5. Take
6. Circled
7. Rating
8. Roll
9. Logged
10. Take note
11. Shot status
12. Size
13. Lens
14. Description

A shot planned for a shoot day with no takes still gets a row, so the log shows what was planned and missed as well as what was shot. The free shot list template is a good place to start the planned half.