My film slate is a masonite economy thing which gets used with some frequency. When I got this slate it came with a notice to use a particular DRY erase marker.
Last summer white shooting a tiny film, my sound person (aka my Beloved) discovered the dry erase marker was DRY. Dead. Dry. The only alternative we had on us was a wet-erase marker. We used it and kept the shoot on schedule.
Many folks are worried about “what kind of whiteboard” they should use with Noodler’s Waterase. As I’ve written before, I use an acrylic sheet custom cut for my purposes. So I cannot say with any authority what kind of whiteboard you should use.
I did want to note for you, though, that the slate pictured below worked very well with Waterase. In the photo below, any imperfections you see in the “wiped clean” slate were not in any way caused by Waterase.
On my custom acrylic board, I’ve left notes up for days and days, adding more notes of course as I live along. Still no ghosting issues here. The masonite slate, however, gets wiped clean after filming. We learned the hard way last summer not to leave the board marked up for days at a time—both dry or wet markers. So for cheap-y whiteboards do a test in a far corner you don’t normally use for notes. That’s the only way you’re gonna know with any certainty what will work for you.
I love this stuff. As someone who employed four different colors previously, my note taking has adjusted to the two available Waterase colors far more easily than I imagined I would.
Don’t forget you need a damp cloth or a cloth alongside a spritz bottle of water in order to clean Waterase off your boards.
Feel free to chime in about the whiteboards you’ve found that are working for your Waterase, eh?
