Sturdiest brand of slate?

sdog

sdog

Greetings,

Want to get my wife (a script supervisor) a new slate for her birthday. I know a lot of slates are cheapies that crumble after a day on the set. Willing to pay a little extra for a slate that will take a little punishment.

Prefer simple whiteboard/dry-erase style, non-TC.

Anyone have particularly good luck with any particular brand of slate?

Thanks,

Doug
 
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Thanks, AcousticAl

Yeah the apps are kind of cool - I've previously tried some on my android phone.

But she really needs something that makes a loud enough whack for sync, and is big enough to be seen, and doesn't display cracked glass if you stand a tripod leg on it.

I'll take a look at the Birns and Sawyers. Thanks.
 
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Oh god, I hate iPad slates! So many potential issues, and so inefficient!

I personally own this Don Earl slate: http://www.filmtools.com/donclasensla.html

It's served me pretty well. I tend to take the time to clean it properly about every year, as it gets covered in tape residue etc. It gets a bit of a beating, but still performs perfectly.

The Don Earl hasn't come out for a little while though, more commonly I'm on sets these days where the soundie provides a TC/smart slate. It's almost always this model: https://www.abelcine.com/store/Ambient-ACD-301-Clockit-Master-Slate/ and generally has a custom overlay for the production.
 
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Yes, Cheeseandachallenge. That is the rough budget range.

I am first and foremost interested in build quality. If I'm going to spend $30, $60, $100 on a piece of plastic glued or bolted to a couple of sticks, it d**n well better hold up on a typical set. I've seen quite a few that are incredibly cheap and flimsy, but don't know what brand they were, so therefore didn't know what to avoid.

Second is erasability/cleanability. Seen a few dry erase slates that didn't seem to be able to handle dry erase markers, but again didn't know what brand they were, so what to avoid.

Third is any field layout that's not too odd. Most layouts seem O.K., but I've seen a few with tiny little fields for scene/take and big giant fields for director and DP. Just want any field layout that makes sense.

Definitely not interested in TC slates unless someone here has a couple thousand extra bucks laying around that they want to mail to me. In that case, I'm interested.
 
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cheeseandachallenge said:
What are the important things to look for in a slate? Is it essentially build quality between the $30 and the $100 options?
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Essentially, yes. I've owned cheapo eBay $20 ones which have fallen apart on me and had terrible acrylic that you could never clean properly. I've owned the $50 Filmtools standard slate, which was okay but didn't really stand up to the constant day-in day-out usage and the beating as much as I would like.

Now I own a Don Earl and it's working great for me so far. None of the issues I've had with the others.

I've seen corporate guys use iPad slates, and even cheaper dumb slates, but the needs of corporate productions are generally very different to narrative sets.

sdog said:
Definitely not interested in TC slates unless someone here has a couple thousand extra bucks laying around that they want to mail to me. In that case, I'm interested.
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You don't need to be interested in TC. To have TC slates, you need an audio recorder and camera that will take TC-in, as well as boxes to ensure they stay in sync for the day. Plus, TC isn't 100% reliable which is why we still clap at the start of each take. Almost more hassle than it's worth.
 
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I guess a related question would be: Is a $100 slate really built that much better than a $30 slate?

I know that in many areas of life, you get what you pay for, but the prices for most filmmaking equipment are still jacked so out of proportion to cost that I'm not convinced that there's that much difference between the various slate options. Just curious to hear from people who have had good or bad experiences with particular brands.

I'm always amazed that with such a boom in the number of filmmakers in the world, equipment is still priced like it's a niche market.

I think Jax Rox may have just answered this while I was writing it.
 
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Thanks, Beatlefan1225.

Agreed. It's fairly difficult to justify $100 for a piece of plastic with sticks.

Having said that, I did go ahead and splurge for the Don Earl slate. I was easily chunking up $100 worth of my time shopping for the dang thing. And Hey: it's for my sweetie. Gotta treat her right, I suppose!! We'll see how it holds up after a few productions once it gets here.

Pleasure to meet a fellow Denver musician, BTW!
 
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