General question about how people are logging and organizing footage

[Tony Sarafoski]

Loren, appreciate you taken the time to run us through this.

I will attempt to replicate your workflow with screen grabs, let me know if I’m heading in the wrong direction.

First you start by giving your Event and Project a similar title.

This is a workflow I also follow, makes using Event Manager X really easy 🙂

Next you add keywords to Audio, B-Rolls & Interviews

This is something I also do at the start of every project, and absolutely LOVE how FCPX handles this.

[Loren Risker] “Then I’ll go through the interviews and make a keyword for every answer I’m given called “answer.” If a subject is talking to the camera, it’s called an answer. I also keyword it with whomever’s name is in the shot.”

I perfectly understand your project is a lot more involved than mine, especially being a documentary edit, where you have multiple interviews & loads of cutaways, however I’ll try replicate this with the project I recently worked on, being testimonials.

Let’s say the interviewing person is Rick. You start by placing Rick’s interview in a Main Keyword Collection called “Interviews”. Then you skim through and begin making your selects, and add keywords to break these up.

From what I understand, if the interview is directly at the camera, you add “answer” to the select, and if you want to detail it even further, then you’ll add the name of the interviewing person, plus a short description

eg: Answer [Rick} – Hi my name is Rick

So if I’ve understood you correctly, your Event Library should look something like this?

Now from what I understand, if you come across a sound bit within that select, and you think you might use it as a quick drop shot, then you add a favourite!

[Loren Risker] ” I favorite my favorite quotes, but I know in my “answer” bin I’ll have everything everyone has said broken down into bites.

Am I on the right track..?

[Loren Risker]

Tony, that’s nearly exactly how I do it. The one difference is how I tag “answers.”

I would add 3 keywords where you made 1 long one. First tag would be answer. Second tag would be speakers name, and third tag would be the subject.

I like having everyone’s “answers” in one answer bin, and then use a smart collection to combine answer, speaker, and subject.

[Tony Sarafoski]

Hmm… ok let me try this again.

You create a folder and call it Interviews, and place “all” interviews in this folder.

You then create a new folder “Interview [Rick]” and drop Rick’s “full length” interview in that folder.

Then you skim through Rick’s interview and add “answer” to selects.

You then create a new folder (calling it bites) and go through a 3rd pass, which at this stage you give these a more descriptive keyword.

Am I understand this right?

[Tony Sarafoski]

Loren,

Here is another screen grab with now a second interview added.

The problem I find is, let’s say your working on a very long form documentary, and you now want to search for the words “what I love about AMEX”, because a few of the people interviewed answered this perticular question.

From what I can see you can’t…?

or am I missing something…?

[Michael Garber]

Say I’ve created my interview keywords and favorites. I’m watching an interview select and for whatever reason, I want to go back to the original full clip. Shift-F doesn’t do it. Is there another way to go back up a “level?”

Also, is there an easy way to increase the range length of the keyword in a clip without having to go back to the original clip?

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company

[Tony Sarafoski]

[Michael Garber] “I’m watching an interview select and for whatever reason, I want to go back to the original full clip”

Michael once you add your selects to a timeline, there is no reason why you can’t extend or trim the in/out points.

Unless your trying to do this in the browser instead?

[Jeremy Garchow]

[Michael Garber] “Say I’ve created my interview keywords and favorites. I’m watching an interview select and for whatever reason, I want to go back to the original full clip. Shift-F doesn’t do it. Is there another way to go back up a “level?””

Click on the Event itself, not just the keyword collection. When you click on the event, the keyword range will be selected.

From the timeline, if you shift-f, it take you back to the clip w/keyword on it in the event (basically, the whole clip) and not the range based keyword collection.

Make sense?

[Michael Garber] “Also, is there an easy way to increase the range length of the keyword in a clip without having to go back to the original clip?”

Not within the Event, but on the timeline, the range can extend beyond you have marked it the Event.

[Loren Risker]

Tony,

That’s still not quite how I approach it.

I see no need to have a tag called “interview rick.”

I would only have 2 tags, interview, rick.

That way in the Rick bin will be EVERYTHING related to Rick, not just interviews. And in the interviews there will be everything that’s an interview, not just Rick interviews.

I’m including a screengrab. Notice this combo of Keyword collections and Smart Keyword collections. Now if I’m looking for a shot of Zach performing, I can make a smart keyword collection of Zach, b-roll, live. And if I want to narrow it down to b-roll from just one show, I can add 042412-NaturalChild-ElRrio. In the screengrab I have 2 smart collections so far, Seth Answers and Wes B-Roll.

So the idea is I do all the general broad sorting at the beginning, then narrow it down with smart collections as I’m editing and realize I want something specific.

Note that I’m not done sorting this project, but when I do, there will be subject keywords as well. So I’ll probably have one for each venue (“Blue Lagoon,” “El Rio,” “Sugar Mountain”). I’ll also have ones called “New album,” “Touring,” “Nashville.”

Once I’ve gone through everything 2-3 times, and my keywording is thorough and as general as possible, I’ll be able to do more specific smart collections. It won’t take into account what they say, but as long as my keywording of subjects match up it will be easy enough to find say Zach talking about touring on the first day.

Does that make sense?

[Michael Garber]

Loren-

when you keyword the answers, do you include the interviewer’s question in the first range pass?

And then you would further refine with more keywords – general summations of the answer/topic the interviewee is discussing, correct?

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company

[Jeremy Garchow]

Hi, Michael.

I know that you want Loren’s opinion, but I will interject my own.

If you want to add searchable words to your clips like “this is what Rick says right here”, I think markers are perfectly suited of this.

This way you don’t have to clutter up the Event with more keywords just for one clip.

I, personally, like to keep keywords fairly general and save markers for more detailed text. The keywords (and subsequent smart collections) can organize larger groups together and the markers describe the clip in more detail.

Again, just my personal opinion.

Jeremy