Cue Naming

[sokeft 0]

Hi, I'm new and non-English speaker! I browse the forum but couldn't find the info: how does cue naming works ? I refer particularly to things like "1m1", "2m32", etc. I can't understand the logic behind it, because it doesn't seem to refer to sequence or scene numbers or to any timecode. I understand it's a way to list in chronological order the cues, but how does it work exactly ? 

[Holko 9,499]

Films used to be separated into film reels, 1-x, could be 1-7 or 1-15 or however long it needed to be. Nowadays since film is not analog anymore, it's mostly kept up just arbitrarily for production.

 

1m1 means reel 1, music 1 - the first piece of music heard on the first reel. 4m3 means it's the third piece of music heard on the fourth reel. But this was not always consistently applied, sometimes it goes reel number+number of music cue in the entire film, so 2m32 would mean we're in reel 2 and this is the 32nd piece of music heard in the entire film. This latter is more problematic when the cut changes a lot - you cut out a scene and suddenly every piece of music after it would have to go down a number. In the first system I explained, if you remove the scene containing 3m3, 3m4 and 3m5 would have to go down, but 4m1, 4m2, ..., 5m1, 5m2, ... 6m1, 6m2... would still remain the same.

[NL197 368]

And then there's things like 4M4R, R for "Revised", or 6M1A, like "Alternate", meaning the cue was changed in some fashion or totally re-written to accommodate a change in the scene's musical needs, or 2M7s, the S usually for a song / source cue. 

[Holko 9,499]

Or "6m3 New New Ending".

 

Or a wholly different lettering like R5P3 (Reel 5 Part(?) 3).

[NL197 368]

and some scores are numbered M1, M82, M116, etc. 

If there's any rhyme or reason to changing them up so it's either 9M1, or R9P1, or M90-whatever, I don't know what it is. 

 

Then there's a rare one like Titanic, which just uses scene numbers: 

Sc034-R Southampton (Revised)
Sc273-R A Promise Kept (2nd Part Revised)

[Manakin Skywalker 4,891]

14 hours ago, NL197 said:

And then there's things like 4M4R, R for "Revised", or 6M1A, like "Alternate", meaning the cue was changed in some fashion or totally re-written to accommodate a change in the scene's musical needs, or 2M7s, the S usually for a song / source cue. 

 

"A" usually doesn't stand for "Alternate", typically "Alt" is written instead. "A" typically means "part A"; usually there's also a "B" section, sometimes "C" and so on, although in some cases the original number is used for the first part and "A" is used for the second (something JW does quite often).

 

Personally I like to incorporate the date in case I mislabel something and need to search for a project file by date, something like M01C-210705 for example, just out of sheer forgetfulness. 

[Datameister 2,037]

Lots of good stuff in the previous posts. To sum up:

 

• In the olden days, you'd often see something like Reel 2 Part 3, perhaps abbreviated to something like R2P3 or R 2 Pt 3. This indicates the third cue of the second reel. For cues that spanned two reels, you might see R5/6 Pt 4/1 (so the fourth cue of reel 5 into the first cue of reel 6).
• Over time, this morphed into the 2M3 format. (Williams switched in the mid-90s; some other composers switched earlier.) You also sometimes see this as M23, especially in earlier scores. I've also seen just M1, M2, M3, etc. for smaller, less filmic projects - theme park rides, stuff like that.
• In recent years, there's been a shift to 2M3 indicating the third cue of the whole film, not just its reel (which is still 2). So instead of a finale cue being something like 9M3, it might be more like 9M62. Williams switched starting with KOTCS.
• Regardless of time period, there are lots of other possible add-ons: R or Rev for revised, extra letters that usually indicate finer divisions (so 4M6A would probably be followed by 4M6B), descriptors like Insert or Alt (alternate) or Ext (extension) or whatever, version numbers, etc. These can vary between scores, composers, and time periods.

Some scores make it really easy to follow...others are really tough, particularly if there were a lot of changes to the cut while the composer was still writing.

[Manakin Skywalker 4,891]

1 minute ago, Datameister said:

Some scores make it really easy to follow...others are really tough, particularly if there were a lot of changes to the cut while the composer was still writing.

 

*cough*

Spoiler

The Rise of Skywalker

*cough*

[DeltaPupJux 47]

Don't forget these:  ins, overlay, etc. 

 

Also, the M-slates (ie: M01, M02, etc) are usually typical of Warner Bros releases, fyi.  That's not to say it cannot happen elsewhere, but it is most common in the WB "realm".  And those are done by a ME usually; as the score itself could have 'normal' slates (1m02, 3m32, et al).

[Edmilson 7,394]

I did a research about how long are the reels in a movie in the 80s/90s and today. It's here: