# How are film cues numbered?



## PaulWood (Nov 4, 2008)

Hi guys,

Just a point of interest: what is the numbering of film score cues. You see pictures with "4M1" and the like on. What do they actually mean?

Cheers!

Paul


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## musicpete (Nov 4, 2008)

Yay, finally something that I think I know! 

"Real" movies for the cinema come in reels, and those reels are numbered throughout the movie. That is the first number.

"M" stands for "music" and the second number is the sequential number of the piece of music in that particular reel.

"4M1" means: The first piece of music on the fourth reel of the movie.
"3M5" would be the 5th piece of music on the 3rd reel. And so on...

When working for modern producers that don't use film but video instead, you can omit the leading number. My cues are usually named "M1", "M4b", "M24", ... It all depends on how the cuesheet was arranged.


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## PaulWood (Nov 4, 2008)

:D Thank you very much Pete!


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## midphase (Nov 4, 2008)

here's a tip...

use 01m01, 01m02 etc. Most computers are too stupid to figure out that 1m21 comes after 1m3


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## Brian Ralston (Nov 4, 2008)

There are also two conventions to labeling music cues in the style that musicpete & Kays touched on. 

One is the 1M4, 3M1 examples. 

but

There is also another convention I have seen recently where the number of the music cue keeps going up and does not begin again at the start of a new reel. 

So...

1M1, 1M2, 1M3...then 2M4, 2M5, etc...

This leads to sometimes seeing cues listed as 4M50. "50" meaning not the 50th cue in the 20 minute reel 4...but the 50th sequential cue in the entire film. 

The first number is always the reel. The M stands for music. S can also be used for source cue. Then the last number is either the sequential order in the reel...or the sequential order in the entire film. The advantage of this is that sometimes due to visual editing changes...the film reels need to be rebalanced and what was on the front of reel 4 might be moved to the end of reel 3 if some scenes were deleted up front, etc...having the music cue number continue in order regardless of reel number helps make the order of the cues a bit easier to follow for the music editor/post sound folks.

For me so far...I have used the convention that musicpete outlined. It is traditional. And since my features have been on film where they were delivered to me with picture locked reels...that is also what made the most sense at the time.


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## PaulWood (Nov 4, 2008)

Very true! If memory serves, there is some kind of registry tweak for XP which attempts to "intelligently" list file/folder names, but also (again, if memory serves) it messes up something else on the OS...

P


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## PaulWood (Nov 4, 2008)

Brian - thanks for the expansion on the answer.

I know that production schedules are getting tighter and tighter, but I was under the impression that music would be recorded some time before the pictures were locked (to allow time for mixing and music post etc), so the reel numbers are surely subject to change quite a lot...?

Also, as a point of interest, is there an audio equivalent of the "slate" (ie does someone record onto the audio track at the start of the cue what it is)?

Cheers,

Paul


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## Brian Ralston (Nov 4, 2008)

PaulWood @ Tue Nov 04 said:


> Brian - thanks for the expansion on the answer.
> 
> I know that production schedules are getting tighter and tighter, but I was under the impression that music would be recorded some time before the pictures were locked (to allow time for mixing and music post etc), so the reel numbers are surely subject to change quite a lot...?



In a perfect world...I would not start to actually score a film till picture lock. But the perfect world does not exist. On Graduation, they actually went back in, re-opened the film and re-edited the first act of the film one year after I delivered the score and thus I had to go back and re-score a bunch of stuff. Now...my deal was such that they had to pay me to do so. But...this changed all of the music cuòœ^   Šu¥œ^   Šu¦œ^   Šu§œ^   Šu¨œ^   Šu©œ^   Šuªœ^   Šu«œ^   Šu¬œ^   Šu­œ^   Šu®œ^   Šu¯œ^   Šu°œ^   Šu±œ^   Šu²œ^   Šu³œ^   Šu´œ^   Šuµœ^   Šu¶œ^   Šu·œ^   Šu¸œ_   Šu¹œ_   Šuºœ_   Šu»œ_   Šu¼œ_   Šu½œ_   Šu¾œ_   Šu¿œ_   ŠuÀœ_   ŠuÁœ_   ŠuÂœ_   ŠuÃœ_   ŠuÄœ_   ŠuÅœ_   ŠuÆœ_   ŠuÇœ_   ŠuÈœ_   ŠuÉœ_   ŠuÊœ_   ŠuËœ_   ŠuÌœ_   ŠuÍœ_   ŠuÎœ_   ŠuÏœ_   ŠuÐœ_   ŠuÑœ_   ŠuÒœ_   ŠuÓœ_   ŠuÔœ_   ŠuÕœ_   ŠuÖœ_   Šu×œ_   ŠuØœ_   ŠuÙœ_   ŠuÚœ_   ŠuÛœ_   ŠuÜœ_   ŠuÝœ_   ŠuÞœ_   Šußœ_   Šuàœ_   Šuáœ_   Šuâœ_   Šuãœ_   Šuäœ_   Šuåœ_   Šuæœ_   Šuçœ_   Šuèœ_   Šuéœ_   Šuêœ_   Šuëœ_   Šuìœ_   Šuíœ_   Šuîœ_   Šuïœ_   Šuðœ_   Šuñœ_   Šuòœ_   Šuóœ_   Šuôœ_   Šuõœ_   Šuöœ_   Šu÷œ_   Šuøœ_   Šuùœ_   Šuúœ_   Šuûœ_   Šuüœ_   Šuýœ_   Šuþœ_   Šuÿœ_   Šv œ_   Švœ_   Švœ_   Švœ_   Švœ_   Švœ_   Švœ_   Švœ_   Švœ_   Šv	œ_   Šv
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## musicpete (Nov 5, 2008)

Brian Ralston @ 4.11.2008 said:


> PaulWood @ Tue Nov 04 said:
> 
> 
> > Also, as a point of interest, is there an audio equivalent of the "slate" (ie does someone record onto the audio track at the start of the cue what it is)?
> ...



And I would like to add: Those constant changes, switching and last-minute decisions by whoever is in charge is bound to give you sleepless nights and early grey hair.... That is, why a composer should have a good music editor whose job is to keep track of all changes, update all cuesheets etc. so that the composer won't have to think about that.

On my last composing "job" (unpaid, but that is another story...) I was in charge of the whole music production part: Music editing, composing, mixing, ... It drove me mad. get an assistant or music editor if you can, it's worth your sanity.


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Nov 5, 2008)

I use the timecode burn-in In Point position on the locked final edit of the movie/episode as the first part of the name of each cue, ie: 01010520NedWinsBigRace. This signals that this cue is to be dropped at 1min 5secs 20frms into the film.


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## musicpete (Nov 5, 2008)

What do you do if the position of the cue is changed? Just being curious, as this happens to me all the time and multiple times per cue.


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Nov 5, 2008)

I usually work from picture-locked versions, meaning that there is no change to the pictured edit. If the director changes his mind about the position of some cues, it's not really much of a problem to adapt the numbers at the beginning of the name of the cue. Of course, all that can (and usually does) change once they start the mix!


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## PaulWood (Nov 5, 2008)

Interesting replies so far. Thanks everyone.

At some point along the way in this project I will be getting an assistant. But for the first few weeks it's just me...

I think I'm going to go with a simple numbering scheme (M1, M2 etc.) and have a single Excel file with cue points in (along with descriptions of them so when the timecode position changes, it should be easy to update).

Cheers,

Paul


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## musicpete (Nov 6, 2008)

@Ned: That clears it up! Seems that I have been not as lucky as you, regarding the "finished-ness" and "locked-ness" of "final edits". In my experience there comes the final edit, then the final re-edit, then the really really final editing touches, then the approaching of the deadline and the frantic really definitely final edits combined with "we need you to fix the music for this and that, we have 7 hours until we need to deliver the project. Can you do it?". 

@Paul: That seems a good idea! It will save your mental sanity for sure! However I suggest adding seemingly "stupid" stuff to the cuesheet, too: 

* Video formats (Codecs, resolutions, framerates(!!!! - I once had a project where I scored to 30fps NTSC and it turned out that the final movie was in 25fps PAL... no cue was fitting, no hitpoint lined up.... they just exported the files in a careless way; And even today I always get codecs that are unusable with Cubase and force me to re-encode all files... )
* Timecode format, Cue numbering/naming conventions (+ reference points if necessary - In case of a video file I usually define 00:00:00:00 as the reference)
* Delivery format of the music ( 44kHz?, Bitrate?, how many Stems? file format?, compression (I use FLAC to save FTP space and transfer times)
* and so on...

I learned the hard way that this saves a lot of time and grief...


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