The shooting ratio or "Bertolo code" in

filmmaking Filmmaking (film production) is the process by which a motion picture is produced. Filmmaking involves a number of complex and discrete stages, starting with an initial story, idea, or commission. It then continues through screenwriting, casti ...

and

television production A television show – or simply TV show – is any content produced for viewing on a television set which can be broadcast via over-the-air, satellite, or cable, excluding breaking news, advertisements, or trailers that are typically placed betw ...

is the

ratio In mathematics, a ratio shows how many times one number contains another. For example, if there are eight oranges and six lemons in a bowl of fruit, then the ratio of oranges to lemons is eight to six (that is, 8:6, which is equivalent to the ...

between the total duration of its

footage In filmmaking and video production, footage is raw, unedited material as originally filmed by a movie camera or recorded by a ( often special) video camera, which typically must be edited to create a motion picture, video clip, television show or ...

created for possible use in a project and that which appears in its final cut. A film with a shooting ratio of 2:1 would have shot twice the amount of footage than was used in the film. In real terms this means that 120 minutes of footage would have been shot to produce a film of 60 minutes in length. While shooting ratios can vary greatly between productions, a typical shooting ratio for a production using film stock will be between 6:1 and 10:1, whereas a similar production using video is likely to be much higher. This is a direct result of the significant difference in price between

video tape Videotape is magnetic tape used for storing video and usually sound in addition. Information stored can be in the form of either an analog or digital signal. Videotape is used in both video tape recorders (VTRs) and, more commonly, videocassette ...

stock and film stock and the necessary processing. Although the decisions, styles and preferences of the filmmakers can affect the shooting ratio of a project greatly, the nature of the production (genre, form, single camera, multi-camera, etc.) greatly affects the typical range of the ratios seen – documentary films typically have the highest (often exceeding 100:1 following the rise of video and digital media) and animated films have the lowest (typically as close to 1:1 as possible, since the creation of footage frame by frame makes the time costs of animation extremely high compared to live action). Animated productions will often shoot acting reference (by animators of themselves and or others), location reference, and performance reference (taken of voice actors), but these pieces of reference footage are not regarded as counting towards the shooting ratio, as they were never intended to appear in the projects they were created for. Audition footage,

screen tests The ''Screen Tests'' are a series of short, silent, black-and-white film portraits by Andy Warhol, made between 1964 and 1966, generally showing their subjects from the neck up against plain backdrops. The ''Screen Tests'', of which 472 survive ...

, and location reference are similarly not counted towards a narrative film's shooting ratio, live action or animated, for the same reason. Since a documentary may potentially use any footage that is shot at any point for any reason, documentary productions do not have similar exceptions. Head slates, tail slates, and

outtakes An outtake is a portion of a work (usually a film or music recording) that is removed in the editing process and not included in the work's final, publicly released version. In the digital era, significant outtakes have been appended to CD and D ...

are counted live action shooting ratios because, although the footage is not intended for use in the final picture, it is contained on the same reels and masters as the footage that is intended for final picture. Animated and visual effects projects typically do not include slates as part of the shooting ratio, since they virtually are instantaneous and zero-cost to create in digital formats. In modern productions, due to the rise of

digital cinema Digital cinema refers to adoption of digital technology within the film industry to distribute or project motion pictures as opposed to the historical use of reels of motion picture film, such as 35 mm film. Whereas film reels have to b ...

, shooting ratios are less limited by price of stock and storage, since the vast majority of productions are now entirely or partially digital. Shooting ratios instead defined and limited by the expense (in time, labor, and money, and memory) of actually shooting and editing the film, rather than cost of raw media.

References

Film and video terminology Ratios Television terminology {{film-term-stub