Bin structure for 22 Day Shoot (first time feature editing)

[Richard Herd]

Hello,

Before we talk about bins in the NLE, we need to talk about the camera archives, storage, and backup.

I use two separate storage drives (RAIDs are better). The first one is my camera archive. When the footage comes in from the camera department, it goes there, named appropriately in folders according to the shoot date and whatever might help the camera department find their footage. More than likely the camera department will retain their footage too. Keeping your own camera archive is important because you want to avoid the conversation of “Hey, I lost all your data, can I have another copy?”

Then, use Prelude (not premiere!) to ingest the footage into a Scratch disk that is not your operating system drive. Using Prelude is pretty cool, but not problem free. So google “adobe tv prelude” and find several tutorials. I use CS6, but CC is better.

Part of Prelude you want to use is the ability to ingest footage, transcode it, and put it in a new location. For this post, your new location will be your main scratch disk, media drive (RAID is better). Then as you go through the footage and mark it up and so on, when you hit “go” all the media move to your scratch disk, in the exact way you want it to.

You can even make rough cuts.

Prelude files, might be an interesting problem I haven’t wrestled with, but in thinking about it, I would make a different Prelude file for each session, probably by scene.

Prelude is cool because it “sends to Premiere.” And wallah, everything mostly moves over. One big bummer for me is the markers and comments do not show up as metadata. It’s a bummer, CS6. I think CC fixes that, but I cannot confirm.

Once I’m in the NLE, I like to create bins by scene. Then inside that scene folder is a footage folder and a sequences folder and an audio folder; inside the audio folder is a folder for Masters, Stems>VO; stems>Music; Stems SFX.

Right click a footage item from Scene 1, and “create sequence from clip.” Rename the sequence to SCENE 1 (assemble edit). Then make the assemble edit. When that’s done, copypasta the assemble sequence and rename to SCENE 1 (rough cut). Then cut. When that’s done, copypasta the rough and call it SCENE 1 (fine cut). It’s totally reasonable to have SCENE 1 (rough cut) v2 (and so on and so forth). The last sequence I make is called SCENE 1 (finishing); and that is when you start exporting for color correction and audio mixing and so on.

After a few days, you’ll have a bunch of scenes as sequences. And it’s time to roll those up into narrative blocks – what screenwriters call “sequences.” New Bin, call it “STORY” (or something like that) and you can drop the SCENES in there, to get a feel for how the story is moving. Or you can select-all the clips and copy/paste them.

Organization is very important.

In addition to editing a film, you will be telling a story, and in addition to that, you will be managing personalities and expectations. Sometimes reality and expectations get misaligned. It’s wise to never ever ever show an assemble edit to anyone. This is for you and you alone. Maybe you can show a rough cut in the moments before you copypasta to the fine cut. You want to be able to stand by the work and not defend it. That’s worth contemplating a bit. This always helps to: Editing the film is not the most important part of the film. IT IS THE FILM! Everyone gets a big rush from production, and they often remember the feeling they had when they got a complicated shot. That rush biases the director’s opinion of the footage. It’s your job to tell the story and not be biased by on-set shenanigans. Last bit to opine: the screenplay adheres to 1 page to 1 minute. And now, you are doing that, you are the arbiter of that 1 page to 1 minute rule of thumb. If the screenplay is 100 pages, guess what? The finished movie should be 100 minutes. If the scene is one line of action: you get 1/8 of a second to tell that sentence. And so on and so forth. It’s a rule of thumb, mind you.

I like to start editing with the climax, because that way everything else aims at that moment.

Have fun!