Hi everyone, I'm Stephen van Vuuren, an independent filmmaker and post-production specialist in Greensboro, NC. I've edited well over 200 films, music videos, commercials and promotional work including four feature length films. My documentary "In Saturn's Rings", made for IMAX and narrated by LeVar Burton, had over 7.5 million sources images and a total of 31 million files on the master project drives, consuming nearly a petabyte, that's 1,000 terabytes of storage.
It was then I was forced to be obsessive about organizing post. So today we are talking about the organization of the edit. We all start just throwing stuff in a few bins and organizing as we go, but often that ends up a big mess, especially on projects that take months or years. Add multiple collaborators and it's recipe for problems, problems I often see in film edits that are sent to me for post work or projects that have render problems when moved to other machines due to missing files, fonts, plugins etc.
To kick off the discussion about how to organize your edit, let’s start where I started my current system. I decided a few years ago to find out what the best editors were doing. I found this interview with Eddie Hamilton who recently edited Top Gun Maverick talking about how he organized a Mission Impossible edit: https://www.provideocoalition.com/art-of-the-cut-with-eddie-hamilton-of-...
My current system uses the hallmarks of this approach.
1. Numbered bins to map out your post-workflow so your bin organization matches the workflow of your edit.
2. A tight, short master bin list uncluttered by any files, everything is in a bin and a bin for everything.
3. Your master timeline is made of scenes, not individual clips. Scene bins and timelines are nested so you can edit individual scenes as complex as you want but moving scenes around with all audio and tracks is easy and instant.
4. COLOR-CODING. It’s not only pretty, I believe it is essential for speed and accuracy while cutting and mixing.
5. METADATA, I request a script supervisor always (don’t always get it) but love to have all the continuity notes for all footage in the file metadata. I start every project by watching and listening to everything (all hail Walter Murch), filling out any gaps in metadata.
I love to hear what YOU think about this approach and how YOU approach organizing. I’m always refining my tools, especially the new AI smart identification, so it would be wonderful to also learn new approaches from others here.
A big thing that is helpful is posting screenshots of your edits as Eddie did in the article above, so I will post a few below. Post yours as well!
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Nice find, Maurice Vaughan I see many similarities between writing the first draft of a screenplay and the first edit in post: get it down. Don't expect it to be Oscar worthy on the first attempt.
I al...
Expand commentNice find, Maurice Vaughan I see many similarities between writing the first draft of a screenplay and the first edit in post: get it down. Don't expect it to be Oscar worthy on the first attempt.
I also liked Kent's tip for getting through an edit quickly by working problems from big to small.
And finally, perhaps my fav bit, "The mouse is lava!" Same for software programming. The mouse is a time killer. I cringe when I watch some reach for the mouse when a quick one-two keyboard combo completes the task instantly.
Thx for sharing!
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You're welcome, Ty Strange. I try to do the same thing ("edit quickly by working problems from big to small"). The keyboard shortcuts save me A LOT of time, especially when I'm switching between windo...
Expand commentYou're welcome, Ty Strange. I try to do the same thing ("edit quickly by working problems from big to small"). The keyboard shortcuts save me A LOT of time, especially when I'm switching between windows and copying/pasting.
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Maurice Vaughan I love how he starts this out to grab our attention, and show his editing chops at the same time.
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Yeah, Kent does a great job grabbing our attention in his videos, Debbie Elicksen. He knows his stuff, and he explains things really clearly. His videos are some of my favorites. He has editing videos...
Expand commentYeah, Kent does a great job grabbing our attention in his videos, Debbie Elicksen. He knows his stuff, and he explains things really clearly. His videos are some of my favorites. He has editing videos, screenwriting videos, filmmaking videos, and more.
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I work as a professional editor and post-pro as well. His tips are fine for very short-form, client-work with relative simple setups. I do similar things for those types of jobs. And keyboard shortcut...
Expand commentI work as a professional editor and post-pro as well. His tips are fine for very short-form, client-work with relative simple setups. I do similar things for those types of jobs. And keyboard shortcuts are always great to use as is some type of hardware controller device (shuttle wheel so much better than JKL keys for me). But beyond the organized project method, these techniques will create more problems than they solve on a feature, complex project or collaborative projects. I've posted some stuff from Eddie Hamilton that is a much better guide on narrative, bigger, collaborative project workflows.