Dailies are the cheapest moment to find a problem in a shoot. The location is still booked, the cast is still around, and redoing a shot tomorrow costs a slot in the schedule instead of a new day.
Two weeks later in the edit, the same soft close-up costs a reshoot or a compromise in the cut. That’s why productions that can afford it watch the footage every night.
In short
- Dailies (rushes in the UK) are a shoot day’s footage, prepared to watch before the next call time.
- The director, the DP, the producer and the editor each look for something different, and the client usually waits for selects.
- Check focus, exposure, sound, flicker, continuity, coverage and metadata on every setup.
- Write each note with the clip name, the source timecode and a decision: keep, reshoot or fix in post.
What dailies are
Dailies are the footage from one shoot day, made ready to watch that night or the next morning. On film it meant developing the negative overnight. On digital it’s a short pipeline that starts when the cards leave the camera.
The DIT or data wrangler copies the cards with a checksum, to two places, before anyone formats them, as in our folder structure post. Then someone syncs the separate sound and makes light review files.
Those files carry the show LUT, so the director sees the look approved on set, and they have the clip name and source timecode burned into the picture. The LUT management post covers why the LUT has to be the same file everywhere.
Who watches dailies, and what each person looks for
Everyone watches the same footage for a different reason, so it helps to know who checks what:
- The director looks at performance and picks the takes to keep.
- The director of photography looks at focus, exposure, framing and camera moves.
- The producer compares what was shot with the shot list and the schedule, and decides whether a reshoot fits.
- The editor or assistant editor checks sync, metadata and whether the coverage cuts together.
- Sound, when there’s no one from the sound team, falls to the editor, who listens on headphones.
The client usually doesn’t see raw dailies. The look is temporary, the sound isn’t mixed and a take with a stumble in it worries people who don’t know it will never make the cut. Send selects or a first assembly instead, with a line saying what they’re looking at.
A dailies checklist
Run through every setup with these seven checks, on a proper screen and with headphones:
- Focus. On close-ups, the eyes are sharp. A phone screen hides soft focus, so watch at full size.
- Exposure. Highlights on faces and windows aren’t clipped, and the shadows aren’t buried in noise.
- Sound. No clipping, no radio mic rubbing on clothes, no fridge or air conditioning under the dialogue, and every take has synced sound.
- Flicker. LED panels, fluorescent tubes and screens in shot can strobe at some shutter speeds.
- Continuity. Props, hands, hair and wardrobe match across the takes the editor might cut between.
- Coverage. Every shot on the shot list has at least one usable take, including the cutaways nobody remembers until the edit.
- Metadata. Clip names, scene and take numbers match the camera and sound reports, so the editor can find things.
How to send notes that get acted on by morning
A good dailies note says where, what and what to do about it. “Take 3 looked a bit off” gets a shrug. This gets a decision:
A012_C004, 14:22:10:05: soft on the close-up. Take 5 is fine as a backup, no reshoot.
A014_C002, 15:01:33:12: radio mic rustle under the line. Wild line tomorrow before lunch.
B007_C011: circled take for the walk-in.
Use the clip name and the source timecode, not the time in the review player, which usually counts from the start of the file. Our post on burning in timecode shows how to put both on the picture.
End every note with a decision: keep, reshoot or fix in post. The producer reads the reshoot lines, the editor reads the circled takes, and nobody has to translate.
Set a deadline before the next call time and send the reshoot list to the producer that night. If the director watches remotely, a review link with a deadline works better than a live session across time zones.
How this works in RecReview
RecReview isn’t built to hold camera originals. Uploads are capped at 2 GB per file on Creator, 5 GB on Pro and 10 GB on Studio, so the cards go on drives and the dailies files go to review.
The RecReview app for Mac can upload the night’s files on its own. Point a watch folder at the folder where the dailies are exported, choose Always create a new task, and set the client and project. Each finished video file goes up once it has stopped growing for 15 seconds.
Users are unlimited on every plan, so the director and the DP can join as members. Anyone else opens a review link without creating an account, types a name and an email, and every note carries their name and sits on the frame they clicked.
For a take, press I and O to mark the in and out points, and the comment covers the whole range, which is a quick way to circle it.
The player’s clock counts from the first frame of the file, not from the camera’s timecode. Keep the clip name and source timecode burned into the dailies, so a note at 00:01:12 still leads the editor to the original clip.
Uploading the day as one stringout is easier to review than forty separate links. Workspace members can then download every note as markers for Premiere or DaVinci Resolve on a timeline that starts at 00:00:00:00, which lines up with the stringout sequence.
On interview days, anyone on the team can generate a transcript in the Transcript tab, and the app’s global search finds videos by what someone said in them.
