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 be ...
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 ...
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
Film stock is an analog medium that is used for recording motion pictures or animation. It is recorded on by a movie camera, developed,
edited, and projected onto a screen using a movie projector. It is a strip or sheet of transparen ...
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, videocassett ...
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 oth