What are 'dailies'?

What are 'dailies'?

Ben Lyons (Producer) gives expert video advice on: What happens during a typical day of independent film production? and more...

During the production of a movie, you want to watch what it is you're shooting, so after a day or two of shooting, you want to make sure that the director of photography is lighting the film the way you want it to be lit and that the actor is giving the performance you think should be giving. It looks different on the monitor as opposed to when watching the dailies, the actual footage that you shoot every day. Dailies are a way for the financiers to keep tabs on where their money's going. If they put ten million bucks into this independent film, while it's shooting they want to see where their money's going and say, "Hey I like this, I like where this is going." Dailies are a good way to nip problems in the bud before they become really big problems. For example, if I saw on the first two days of dailies that the lead actress kept scratching her nose all the time when she's listening, I could get her to stop that, and she'd stop that for the rest of the movie. Dailies are a way for film-makers to keep tabs on the production.