BACKTIMING

Does anyone out there do it (backtiming - get your mind out of the gutter . It's crowded here! )? If so, how?

I put a sheet of black paper beside the CRT and kept glancing back and forth, reading and visualizing, and used a stop-watch to record an estimated run time. Did I ever get a surprise!

I realized that while I had written in/allowed for some good visuals, POVs, etc. there were too many of them for the camera to exploit - so, I did some housecleaning.

Any thoughts?

To explain

dpaterso said:

Sorry, I can't quite grasp what you mean.

Sheet of black paper...

Glancing back and forth...

Too many for the camera to exploit...

Nope, you lost me somewhere after "sheet of black paper"

-Derek
Derek's Web Page - stories, screenplays, novels, insanity.

Click to expand...

It's reading/visualizing the script as a movie, to get an estimate on the running time. For example; you could have a few dozen great scenes with even greater visuals, but if they were all used, the movie would run into next week.

Like on a POV. Three shots, each taking from, on the average, two to eight seconds, sometimes more. If the POV runs and runs, the time gets eaten up. That and maybe talking. The average person speaks three words a second (except for the folks on Gilmore Girls - four and a half). Add in time for pauses, gestures, whatever, a beer bottle or two flying past the lens, and more time is used.

I think, and Joe you can jump in here on this, the term comes from cutters/editors, who time the length of each cut and scene, beginning at the end and running it to the beginning. In TV news, it might be looking at the run time on the TBC (time base corrector) to see how much time you're using from the total allowed by the segment producer, so the talking head will know when to do the insert reel or so the editor/director will know when to que the music and logo to go into a commercial break.

When I do it, the black piece of paper takes the place of the movie screen. It's a head thing I have. I gotta "see" it, somewhere.