Comments on: Organization is key! (Part 2)

By: Ben

Ben — Fri, 01 May 2009 22:15:08 +0000

Hi,

Not sure where to post this but here goes: I’m trying to create a tape list for an online.

Thanks!

By: Hollyn-wood (Norman, that is) » What Being An Assistant Really Means

Hollyn-wood (Norman, that is) » What Being An Assistant Really Means — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 05:25:40 +0000

[...] Leavitt, over at the ever valuable blog View From The Cutting Room Floor, has a great definition of what an assistant editor’s job is on a blog post: “Anything that [...]

By: Rob

Rob — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 19:06:25 +0000

Never story anything you care about on your desktop. It’s too easy to move them around and loose track of them. Only store things on the desktop as a temporary location … perhaps while moving it somewhere else.

#4 Establish a folder hierarchy on all your disks with a place on each to keep imported files. Create a folder with the project name to contain all the imported files.

#4a Name all files with a unique name that identifies what it belongs with. If it’s part of a project then the name should start with something that identifies that project. Perhaps a three of four letter prefix.

When I worked on a periodic show called “Shades of Life” I used SOL as the identifier. The reusable elements started with SOL-LIB and the files unique to an episode included the episode number like SOL-098. This permits me to know what every file is no matter where I might encounter it on any hard drive.

Peace,

Rob:-]

By: AndrewK

AndrewK — Sun, 01 Jun 2008 06:20:11 +0000

Tim,

I used to do something similar to your tip #4 where I had a folder on the Unity (I mostly worked on shows w/a Unity) that had all the gfx in it, but I took it one step farthter. I number each disc and made a folder that corresponded to the disc number to put the contents from that disc onto. That way it was easy to track back to where an element came from if need be.

By: What Being An Assistant Really Means « H o l l y n - w o o d (Norman, that is)

Thu, 29 May 2008 03:45:52 +0000

[...] makes this all possible and goes on, in a three-part blog entry (part one is over here, part two is over here, and part three is over [...]

By: Norman

Norman — Thu, 29 May 2008 03:42:11 +0000

Because creating additional bins doesn’t really add to any overhead, I usually keep several bins of dailies — normally, one divided up by tape numbers, another by scene numbers, and others divided by whatever I may need on a given film (shoot days, et al).

James’ idea is good though it would might be impractical on a film with a ton of clips. I have to say that I rarely find it difficult to get a good find bin result, since the Avid will open up the appropriate bin, so this isn’t a strong need of mine. But that’s just how I work. The beauty of an NLE is that you can create a multitude of bins for whatever your particular needs are.

By: sawdust

sawdust — Wed, 28 May 2008 18:38:43 +0000

sawdust says : I absolutely agree with this !

By: James

James — Thu, 15 May 2008 21:25:59 +0000

Sound advice Tim.

However, although using seperate bins for every tape is standard practice (that’s how I find all my rushes organised when I arrive at a new job), I have a different system. The first thing I do after installing my settings is to move all the rushes into a single ‘rushes’ bin. This means I can flip bewteen the timeline and through all my rushes without using the mouse. By using ‘Match Frame’, followed by ‘find bin’ and then using the arrow keys, I can easily flick between sources using the keyboard.

Keep up the good work.