Correlating audio takes with Picture-Locked cut

[Tom Morrow]

I just did some audio post production for the first time on a narrative indie film. After having done lots of location sound, it's good to be in the editor's role and see how it feels to try and deal with what I normally provide.

It seems like the convention is for the audio post person to get:
- A picture-locked cut of the film, with a scratch (camera) audio track, often in quicktime format (audio and video flattened into a single track of each)
- Shot logs filled out by a PA on the shoot, saying which audio and video files go with what shoot/takes.
- All the separate audio files collected on set.

How do you go about figuring out which audio files to dig out for a particular scene? Is that something the picture editor is supposed to keep track of and give me? I suppose I could get a copy of the script with scene numbers and correlate that with the shot logs to get the audio file number, but that still wouldn't tell me which take ended up in the Pic-locked cut.

Just curious if there is a convention; I work with lots of first time filmmakers.

[Rick Reineke]

In the many post jobs I've done, I've gotten the files in a OMF or AAF format with a ref. (locked) video, either on a disc, .mov, or whatever with a 'rough' mix The OMF/AAF has the EDL and audio files are embedded... usually. I've never got a camera mic 'mix', if I did, I'd tell em to get someone else if there's no corresponding TC. Even with a manual slate, that's the dialog editor/editor's job.

[Tom Morrow]

Thanks Rick. I learned a new acronym: EDL for Edit Decision List. That's the missing link