Dailies: Meaning in Film Production

Dailies

Definition

Dailies are the unedited footage from a day of shooting, processed, synced with production sound, and delivered for review, usually by the next morning. The director, producers, and editor watch them to check performances, focus, exposure, and coverage while the crew can still fix problems.

From card to screening link

On a typical digital feature, the chain looks like this:

Camera cards come off set with the camera report, and sound files come with the sound report.
The DIT or loader offloads the cards to at least two drives with checksum verification.
The dailies operator applies the show LUT and any on-set grade notes so the images look the way the DP intended.
Picture is synced to sound using timecode or the slate clap, and scene, shot, and take metadata is added.
Two sets of media are rendered: proxy files for the editing system, and viewing files for the director and producers.
The assistant editor imports, checks sync, and organizes bins by scene.

A shoot that wraps at 7pm and ships drives by 8pm can usually have review links up by the next morning. Distance from the lab, the amount of footage, and whether dailies are processed near set all change that.

Reading the day's footage

A reel of dailies for Day 12 might contain Scene 42 and 42A, eleven setups, and 38 takes. Watching every take is rarely possible for a producer, so most teams review the circle takes marked by the script supervisor and skim the rest. Editors watch everything.

The point of dailies is catching problems while the location, cast, and set still exist. A soft close up found the next morning can go on the schedule as a pickup at the same location. Found three weeks later in the edit, it may mean a separate pickup day.

Common confusions

Dailies are not graded. The LUT is a starting look, and the real work happens in the color grading session months later. Directors sometimes panic over a flat or noisy image that the colorist will handle easily, and DPs sometimes let a real exposure problem slide because the monitor looked fine.

Dailies also affect the budget. Footage volume, which comes from the shooting ratio, sets processing hours and storage. Two cameras shooting long takes can double the dailies bill, so the post supervisor should know the camera plan before the post house quotes.

Keep the metadata clean. If the scene and take names in dailies don't match the lined script, the assistant editor loses days fixing it later.

Frequently asked questions

Why are they called dailies?

On film, the lab developed and printed each day's negative overnight, and the director watched the prints the next day. The name stayed after the move to digital.

What is the difference between dailies and rushes?

They are the same thing. Rushes is the more common word in the UK and some other countries, dailies in the US.

Who makes dailies on a digital shoot?

A DIT or near-set dailies operator, or a post house. They back up the camera files, apply the show LUT, sync sound, and render viewing files and editorial media.

What should producers look for in dailies?

Soft focus, exposure problems, boom or light stands in frame, and whether the coverage the scene needs was actually shot. Performance notes go to the director.