#166 Editing Pt1

Organizing your media

• Keep it simple, keep it lean

Consistent, uncluttered, organization of media that would allow you to return to the project 3 years later and find everything even though you've completely forgotten everything about the job. Although I didn't refer to organization of files on the desktop level, I strongly suggest that you organize all your media in the same hierarchical fashion both in your editing software and your computer's hard drive.

Something else I didn't mention it in the show which I will have to discuss it at length in a later show is that a very important part of organization occurs on the other end of of production, when you're done: consolidation.

Consolidation is the process of saving out the project and all the pieces of media that was used in the projects - in one folder. This is done once you are finished and you're preparing to archive everything and take it offline.

Someday you're going to want to re-edit this video, include it in your reel, or a compilation, or just find a piece of footage that you used and consolidation is a critical, time saving process you can use to do that.

#105 Subclipping Hell

Subclipping is a necessary part of organizing your project, creating structure. Doing that will allow you to rip through your media as you pull the story together. With the deadline I have, about 3 weeks when I recorded this show, what I feel I really need to do is begin editing, but that would be disastrous and lead to chaos with the amount of footage I have to work with.
Editing

I'm using Avid over FCP. I've chosen to use Avid for this project even though I have more experience using FCP. I've discovered a few drawbacks that could negatively affect meeting the deadline.

Finally I have begun editing the footage, starting with discrete topics, keeping a general story order in my head. I find this process works for me. Once I got enough footage cut together I moved the contents of these sequences into a single timeline sequence to see how well everything pulled together to tell a cohesive story. It's still incomplete, but I'm very encouraged.