Last time I went over my suggestions for how to prepare for editing while shooting your movie. That was all on-set stuff notation, note books, and developing an attention to detail.
This brings us to the uploading. You can upload footage as you return from shoots or you can wait until the end and get it all at once. Some people like to be influenced by the progress they see as they go, while others don't want to to even think about organizing shots until they're all captured. Go with what works for you. Generally during a shoot I'm too eager to get what little sleep I can to stay up those extra hours on the computer.
When you do pull the footage, there's a temptation to upload the whole tape at once then split it as you work. It's a strong temptation, really. Avoid it. It's probably the worst thing you could do for so many reasons. First off, you're more likely to drop frames. You're filling your RAM up for one. Also, dropped frames happen. If they happen for a one-hour upload, that's another hour you've got to start over on.
The second reason is hard drive space. Spare hard drives are getting cheaper, and that's all well and good, but the more room you have the better your machine will work, arguably. Also, the more tapes you can get loaded on at once if you trim the right stuff. Just cleaning out the filler before and after takes, spots where the camera was left running, or obviously problematic shots like a visible crew member or a bad lens flare can free up a ton of space. Besides, that's footage you can decide now not to have to sort through and look at again if it clearly isn't needed. Seconds off the clock in the long run.
The third reason, and the best as far as I'm concerned, is watching the footage. You can really start making decisions right away. If you're going over your note book as you log footage, you might see that you have four version of one particular shot. Let's say it's a stunt from one angle. All four are usable, but you spot one where the reaction on somebody's face is priceless, while another had just the right sense of timing. The other two are usable, but you know it's going to be one of these instead. Great, that's less uploading, logging, and shots to cut together.
Maybe there's a scene where one take nails the whole thing. The camera moved right, it got every important bit, and somehow you managed to emulate ROPE. Awesome. You can see it and (barring issues) skip grabbing footage from alternate takes of the scene.
As you grab take after take of a performance you might find you're picking up on something the actor was adding to the role that you didn't catch on set. Now when you put things together you can cut towards this performance (or away from it, if you hate it).
In general, this is your chance to do a major first-pass on what sort of movie you're going to be able to put together, and if you can sit down and go through every tape, every moment, and really get immersed in it, you're start to figure out some things before you even make the first cut.
Since I've said loading the whole tape at once is a bad idea, what do I think is a good idea? Bins. I use Final Cut to do my editing, so I'll be speaking in terms of that program. Still, all programs should have some method of creating directories, folders, subfolders, and so forth. Take what I say and adjust accordingly if it makes sense to you.
You have the time codes, the shot lists, the scene descriptions, etc. already noted in your note book. As you capture the tapes, you can use these to verify which scenes you're pulling. This means you can simply verify the content. At the end of the clip name it according to a consistent structure. Final Cut allows three fields of information when naming a clip, but essentially it just uses each field in order, separated by an underscore. If you had "Finale," "Fire," and "Reaction" as your fields, it would name the clip "Finale_Fire_Reaction_01" and then number up from there. If you have to do this manually, get in the habit.
My usual setup is to use the first field for the distance, frame, or purpose of the shot, such as Close, Two-shot, Establishing, or Master. If I'm cross cutting dialogue I can quickly grab the close shots, but if I need to pull back and watch both characters, or cut to an insert, well, it's that much easier to find.
My second field is for the specific characters or items in a shot. This is just a simple identifier, so again I can easily find takes of what I want to cut to. In some cases this field isn't even needed. If there is a master establishing shot of a location, we don't really need to know who is in the shot. Probably either everyone or no one. That's what they're there for.
My third field is for any specific comments I might want to note about the take. For the stunt example I used, you might want to put the "reaction" note here for the one take, the other "timing." If an actor gives different line readings, you might note "intense," "sarcastic," or whatever fits. Like with the notebook, the whole purpose is to avoid rewatching every scrap of footage a dozen times to figure out what you have and where what you need is.
Hopefully you've noticed I don't mention location, scene, or anything else that would actually be a bit more vital in identifying a shot. I can't imagine trying to cut BRAVEHEART if I was just given batches of footage named "Mel Gibson Close Up." That's why I mentioned my love of bins and folders.
Each location has a folder. Inside each folder are sub-folders for INT and EXT. In those are sub-folders for each sub-location if need be. That way I can keep INT HOUSE - BEDROOM separate from INT HOUSE - KITCHEN separate from EXT HOUSE - GARDEN. Within those folders, if needed, are further divides like DAY and NIGHT. Last, within these folders, I make a folder with the starting page number of each scene. Some of these folders may only have one shot, but you'll easily be able to find it.
Most of us jump around between scenes we're editing, so you might miss one of the smaller shots. As you go through the screenplay along with the footage, just look for dropped scenes. If you spot one, grab it. Easy enough. The script tells you where to look. If you set up your file system this way, the actual editing should be ten times easier and faster.
That's organization, though. That doesn't actually mean we've captured any of the footage. When do you put the files into these folders? As I log a shot, it appears in a list of footage to be captured. I go ahead and move it to the appropriate folder right away, but you can wait until you've captured all of the footage from that tape. Just go back to your note book page for the tape and line up the time codes and shot descriptions then shuffle it all off to where it needs to be.
An extra little tip if hard drive space is an issue, or if you're working on multiple projects at once, is to log but not capture the whole movie. Name each tape as you start to log footage. Drop everything into the proper bins. Then, when you go to a bin to start cutting that scene together, you can highlight everything and do a batch capture. The program should prompt you for each tape needed, grab what is required from that tape, then prompt you for the next tape. Once you have all of the footage, edit it as needed, set all of the markers, in and out point, etc. Once you're done, delete the scratch file. Do the same for the next sequence and so on until you've done the whole film. Removing the raw footage shouldn't affect the edit files. Once you've edited the whole thing, you can go back and do another capture run on that edit, only pulling the footage used.
With a good layout, some organization, and lots of notes, even the most complex editing experience should be doable without having a panic attack. I still opt for a steady stream of coffee, but that's so I wouldn't notice a panic attack if I had one.
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| Make Me Proud |
Every other Monday
Exploring everything you should consider as you make your
indie masterpiece.
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| Patrick Storck |
Patrick hails from Baltimore, MD, where playing by the rules is frowned upon. Only average things come from playing it safe.
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