General question about how people are logging and organizing footage

[Tony Sarafoski]

[Michael Garber] “I’ve been doing some tests with footage I shot the other day and I’ll be doing some off-the-cuff tutorials that I’ll put on Vimeo.”

Michael, that’s something I’ve been investigating as well, and had plans in recording different workflow scenarios. Would you be interested in iChating and shearing ideas and information?

[Michael Garber]

…and together, we shall rule the galaxy… er, yes, sounds like a great idea!

i’m PM you with my contact info.

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company

[Richard Jacana]

Did any of you guys put together a little video of what’s being talked about? Love to see an actual video of someone logging footage and adding keywords ranges and favorites etc. Still a little confused.

[Michael Garber]

There are tons of videos out there. I’m writing an article about my methods which will hopefully be up in the next week or two.

I think you’ll find that it’s different for various kinds of productions and we’re all in a bit of a trial and error mode. What I’m finding similar between everyones methods is that the process can be done in 3-4 stages. This does not cover syncing dailies, which should be done first and would involve some additional metadata tagging.

1. Start with general keywords (b-roll, interview, name, location)
2. Add roles to audio, if necessary. If you need to output to Protools or a multitrack QT, then I find it’s best to get this out of the way before you start complex logging.
3. Go back for a second, more complex keyword pass. (question, answer, topics, frame size if working in 4k, etc…) This where it depends on the type of production you’re working on, 1080, 2k, 4k, whatever-k…
4. Then go back and favorite clips in your keyword collections. This way you can filter out all the stuff you don’t want to see.

I’m sure there are more things (or less things) other people are doing between passes, but it seems this is generally the way it’s going.

Michael Garber
5th Wall – a post production company
Blog: GARBERSHOP