Speaker 1: When you're making a film, having a good understanding of file organization and properly planning out your post-production workflow ahead of time will save you a lot of headache, a lot of hassle, and it will help you to make sure you keep track of all of your footage. We'll be looking at how to stay sane during the post-production process in this episode. Welcome back to Filmmaking for Noobs. I'm Kyle Lawrence and in this entire season of Filmmaking for Noobs we've been going through the entire filmmaking process from start to finish. We are getting near the end of the season, which is why we're talking about post-production, but it's just as important to watch this ahead of time before you begin filming. If you are pretty new to filmmaking or don't have very much experience in the filmmaking world, and if you haven't seen any of my previous episodes, I highly recommend you go back and start at the beginning of the season as I guide you through the filmmaking process. In this episode we're looking at how to efficiently organize your files and footage and how to arrange your post-production workflow to keep the editing process smooth. We'll start with the post-production workflow. There are quite a few people involved in the post-production workflow getting your footage from set to post and keeping it organized along the way. Whether you're doing most of this by yourself or you have a whole team working with you, I'm going to help you understand how it's typically done in the industry and then you can adapt it to fit your specific circumstances. And obviously in the film world this does not typically fall on the director, the producer, hence the filmmaker. However, if you're doing a really small project or just starting out or doing a very limited budget project, then obviously a lot more things fall on you as the filmmaker or the director or the producer or whoever you are in this process because there's so many more hats for so few people to wear. And disclaimer, it is quite possible that other workflows or variations of this workflow exist. This is just one example of a commonly used workflow that could work for you, but yes other variations do exist and I'm not making any claims that this is the only possible way to do it. Typically when you're shooting a film, throughout the day the second assistant camera will be handing off the camera's hard drives, mags, memory cards over to the DMT, which stands for Data Management Technician, or the DIT, which stands for Digital Imaging Technician. The sound mixer will also be handing over sound files to the DMT or DIT, usually at the end of the day, but sometimes also at lunch. The DIT then backs up the footage and the sound files onto a hard drive array that he or she typically has with them on set. Once that's done, the DIT will then copy all the footage and the sound over to a portable hard drive, referred to as a shuttle drive. At this point the DIT holds on to the memory cards and the camera team does not yet reuse them. The shuttle drive is then delivered to the dailies operator once the day wraps, sometimes also at lunch break. The dailies operator works through the night backing up all of the footage and sound onto a second hard drive array at the dailies processing facility. In addition to backing up the footage and the sound, the dailies operator is also responsible for syncing the audio and the video, labeling the files and takes with the scene, slate, shot, and take information, quality checking the footage and audio and files, and making sure everything's all right from a technical perspective, creating proxies to edit from, usually in 1920x1080, and usually this is going to be a ProRes or DNxHD or similar codec, and creating lower res versions of the footage in either 720 or 1080, usually in an H.264 or similar codec, so that it can be viewed easily by the director and the DP. These are referred to as dailies or rushes. The masters which are backed up are stored on site and typically the dailies operator is also creating a magnetic tape backup onto LTO drive. The proxies are then shipped off to the editing team, usually over a very fast internet connection or possibly delivered by hand on a hard drive. The shuttle drive is then returned to set or to the production office first thing in the morning, containing a copy of the dailies files so that the director and the DP and the DIT or DMT have access to those. The dailies may also sometimes be uploaded to an online dailies viewing service, allowing director, DP, key executives, studio people, whoever, all the important people to log in and view the dailies the morning after the shoot. And if all is well, the dailies operator now gives the DIT the green light to allow the camera team to reuse the memory card. In the editing team, the assistant editor will then receive the proxies and the reports from the dailies operator. The assistant editor's job is to then go through all those files, make sure everything's in good order, and organize things for the editor to begin editing. This also may include sometimes laying it out in the editing software, whether that's Avid or Premiere Pro, basically the only two professional ones. I don't know who's using Vegas, and don't get me started on Final Cut by Fisher-Price. Anyway, the assistant editor is bringing the footage into the editing software, getting things ready and organized for the editor to then take over and complete the cut. The assistant editor is likely also going through and making sure that he or she has a really good understanding of where shots are, where takes are, what angles are what, and going through all the reports and helping the editor to find any takes or shots that the editor is looking for. At this point, it really is up to the editor as far as how much the assistant editor does to prep for the editor. Maybe the assistant editor is doing a little bit of a rough assembly or rough laying out of clips and maybe making a few cuts so that the editor doesn't have as much stuff to go through, or maybe the assistant editor is just getting things ready and organized and prepped so that the editor can come in and do everything. Regardless, that's more between the assistant editor and the editor to decide what's going to work best for them and what the editor ultimately wants. Then the editor comes in and does their edit. Once the edit is complete and locked, that gets shipped off to visual effects and color and post audio mixing and sound design and music and all that other stuff and they do their parts as well. As you can see, there are typically quite a few people involved in this entire process and the footage and the sound files are passing through quite a few hands from set to finish. This is one reason why file organization is very important to help make sure that no files get lost or overlooked and to help make sure that everyone is able to do their job efficiently. It's definitely quite possible that you're not going to have a team this big or at least not have this many people involved in your set to finish post-production workflow. However, now that you know how it's typically done or a version of how it's typically done, now you can better divvy up the tasks among your team and among those that you do have available to you. Maybe in a lower budget example, you have an on-set DMT and an assistant editor and maybe the editor is you or the director, the filmmaker, the producer. In this case, you have a much smaller team and less people touching the footage. So in this scenario, maybe your on-set DMT is not just wrangling data but is also organizing the files, labeling the files, and generating proxies for you right there on set. However, keep in mind that in this scenario, it's possible that the on-set DMT will not be syncing the audio with the video. That means that if you eliminate the dailies operator, the assistant editor will now have the added task of syncing the audio with the video before the editor comes in and does their edit. In this scenario, if the director or the producer is also the editor, then that means you really just need to find two additional people for your team. An on-set DMT or DIT and an assistant editor. Hopefully, you are already planning on having a DIT or DMT because their role is so important and the director, the producer, the filmmaker should not be having to wrangle the data, especially when there are so many things going on on set that you need to have your mind focused on. Once you have your post-production workflow figured out, the next step is determining your file organization plan and stick to it. This also means informing everyone else who's involved in this process, anyone who's going to be touching the files or the footage, make sure that they are also aware of the file organization plan and make sure that they stick to it as well. So, you can certainly come up with your own file organization plan, but here is an example of what that may look like. Depending on the size of the production and whether or not it is my own project or someone else's project, I typically use a variation of something like this, but it also changes a little bit from project to project based on that project's individual needs and all the many other variables involved. But, you can take this as a starting point and alter it a bit to suit your needs. Typically, you'll want to start with a single master project folder with the name of your project. In this case, we're going to call it No Internet. Inside of our folder, we'll create a handful of folders. We'll have a folder called exports, footage, LUTs, masters, project, reports, and VFX. These obviously are the containers where we're going to be putting each of those things as they come along through our post-production workflow. Depending on your project and what all files you're storing, you may also need to have other folders as well. This could be something like comps, graphics, music, sound effects, stills, stock, or titles, or any other folder that you need to use for organization. Each day has its own folder. Typically, I like to use year, month, day, followed by the number of shoot day that it is. In this case, June 3rd, 2020 was day one. June 4th, 2020 was day two. Inside of our day folder, we then have each roll as it came off the camera or came from set. So we have camera roll A1, camera roll A2, A3, B1, B2, and sound roll 1. Inside of our roll folders, we have the actual footage as it came from set, keeping and maintaining the names exactly how they were from the camera. We're not making any changes to the naming structure of the master files at all. We're simply using these files to generate proxies. Our proxies are then saved to our footage folder, also organized by day, day one and day two. In this case, the date is not really as important. Inside of our day one folder, you'll see that we have our proxies from day one, and they're now labeled with the slate information. 41A is representing scene four, take one, A camera, just like this one is scene four, take one, B camera. Scene four, take two, A camera. Scene four, take two, B camera. For Apple, take one, A camera. For Apple, take two, B camera. If for some reason the camera stops rolling and begin rolling again during the same take without an additional slate and without a tail slate, you would then have your first one marked as that take. For example, scene 12, take three on A cam, and the second one becomes scene 12, take three, part two on A cam. You can also use the letters FS, which means false start. This can be used to identify a clip which is not actually a take, but was just extra footage on the roll. I usually edit using Premiere Pro, so the product folder is where I put my Premiere Pro project, as well as all of the other associated files and directories that come with that. Our reports folder contains our camera reports, our reports from the script supervisor, and our sound reports. Our VFX folder contains a to folder and a from folder. Once I'm at the place where I'm ready to send stuff to VFX, that gets exported in a high quality format and goes into the to folder. That then gets sent to Visual Effects, and whatever comes back from Visual Effects goes in my from folder, and then later ends up in my project. The exports folder is where I put any of the exports once I finish editing or have a cut to release, and the LUTs folder is where any LUTs from set or from the DIT or DMT are going to be placed. I hope that this episode has helped you to figure out and plan out your post-production workflow. I highly encourage you to use these tips and put them into practice on all of your film projects to help you stay organized, to make sure you don't lose track of footage, and most importantly to help you stay sane. Thanks for watching Filmmaking for Dubes. Come back next week for more.