thestoryofjory.com

Today, I started up the second half of the SCC project and was immediately grateful that everything was so clean and neat.  Over the years, the one thing that has become abundantly clear to me is this: Organize your files or die.

When you’re excited to be starting a new project, it can be so hard to resist the temptation to jump in and start editing right away.  This happens to me every time.  Editing is fun.  Organizing really isn’t.  However, organizing is imperative for clean, efficient workflow; and if you start a project without all your ducks in a row, you’re going to be wasting time later.  Final Cut (and many other creative programs) have an immense and customizable work environment, so it can be easy to lose a file inside the wrong bin, or cross sent files up with something else and accidentally trash them.

I’ve screwed myself up enough with those mistakes that I now take my editing preparations pretty seriously.  While my clips log (I shoot on tape), I think about the particular project at hand and how to best sort and categorize the video I have.  The Ignite event was easier to organize because it was a simple shoot.  However, it still required a lot of attention because there were 3 cameras that needed to be synced. Thus, naming each shot after the individual, camera, and take was all it took.

The SCC project was much more complicated (and thus, more important to keep organized) because there were 35+ interviews conducted for about 20 hours of raw video.  Each interviewee was asked about eight other people, the subjects of the eight, five-to-seven minute videos.  With 20 hours of footage, it would’ve been so easy to get overwhelmed and lose important sound bites. Because I was also a co-producer in this venture and I had to be very familiar with the interviews anyway, I filled a legal pad with notes from each interview including the timecode for good sound bites, which were assigned a number.  The sound bites were categorized in FCP by interviewee, subject and the assigned number.

Really, every project will require a slightly different organizational scheme.  You have to invest some time thinking about how your project is going to come together before your start going all willy-nilly on the editing.  Depending on the size of your project, organization could take a few hours or it could take you a week, but it’s worth every moment you spend on it.

One final note: organization of your files shouldn’t stop when you’re project is finished.  If you plan to keep your work file, you should tidy up your bins so it will look less confusing if you have to come back to it.  I look at it this way: If another editor took over this file, would he or she be able to understand it?  The answer should always be yes.