Large Project Organization Help!

[John Rivers]

Hello,

I'm editing a pretty large project right now that is a bit of a mess in some areas. For some of the larger dialogue scenes, the "cinematographer" used a combination of zoom and angle changing DURING the shooting, and combined with the multiple takes, I find myself having to sort through 4 MiniDV's worth of footage, some of which have 80 start-stop markers for a single clip.

It's glorious really. I'm not bitter about it at all...

...

BUT ANYWAY! The main question is:

Now would be a good time to figure out an ideal organizational structure for large projects with multiple good and bad takes such as this. I have 4 reels, but due to time code breaks, each reel has about 3 splits (Reel 001-a, 001-b, etc.). Also, the entire length of each tape was used (so half of one scene is on the end of one reel, and finishes on the next).

I have ZERO organizational skills (when it comes to devising systems at least) so any help would be greatly appreciated). I'm just not knowing where to begin when sorting through so much good and bad footage. Ideas, comments, ANYTHING, would be immensely appreciated (and some ideas for naming conventions and tips for streamlining these things would be ideal as well, as it doesn't help when all I see are "Reel ###" and "Segment #" to summarize the entire film).

Thank you so much for your time.

 

[KingsReign]

Hello,

I'm editing a pretty large project right now that is a bit of a mess in some areas. For some of the larger dialogue scenes, the "cinematographer" used a combination of zoom and angle changing DURING the shooting, and combined with the multiple takes, I find myself having to sort through 4 MiniDV's worth of footage, some of which have 80 start-stop markers for a single clip.

It's glorious really. I'm not bitter about it at all...

...

BUT ANYWAY! The main question is:

Now would be a good time to figure out an ideal organizational structure for large projects with multiple good and bad takes such as this. I have 4 reels, but due to time code breaks, each reel has about 3 splits (Reel 001-a, 001-b, etc.). Also, the entire length of each tape was used (so half of one scene is on the end of one reel, and finishes on the next).

I have ZERO organizational skills (when it comes to devising systems at least) so any help would be greatly appreciated). I'm just not knowing where to begin when sorting through so much good and bad footage. Ideas, comments, ANYTHING, would be immensely appreciated (and some ideas for naming conventions and tips for streamlining these things would be ideal as well, as it doesn't help when all I see are "Reel ###" and "Segment #" to summarize the entire film).

Thank you so much for your time.

If you use the "DV Start/Stop Dectect" Under the "Mark" menu, it will organize each tape wherever there is a cut and create markers at each clip. They can then be turned into subclips from there.

I usually create a lot of bins and sequences. I like to oraganze by scene-shot-take. I often create a seperate "titles" and "music" bin as well and make them there own tabs.

Hope this stuff helped.

 

[oneinfiniteloop]

I've spent a good deal of time trying to come up with an effiecient pipeline, and I'm constantly refining it. Here are some of the tactics I use:

1. I use an uniform naming convention across all my programs. You will have to have a descriptive name for each scene, shot, etc. So, let's assume you have the "Chase" scene, the shot is of the car interior, and it's the 2nd take.

chase001_carInt02_v1r1.mov

The scene name and reel is the first part, the description and take is the second part, and the third part is version # and revision #. The version/revision #'s are really useful if you're exporting the shot to another program for modification, when you export them from the other program you give them a new version/revision number. Version for the big changes, revision for small ones.

If you use a similar naming convention all your scenes will group together alphabetically, and your takes will group as well in the same manner. It works quite well.