There aren’t many more awkward moments in an edit than when you’re sat next to a Director, searching for a clip that you’re pretty sure you’ve seen somewhere, but really can’t find anywhere in your project, wondering if they think you’re an idiot.
Although it can be tedious, making sure your projects are well organized can save you a lot of time in the long run. It can also help you avoid those embarrassing lost clip moments when working with a Director too.
The Benefits of Organization
While many creative people are quite disorganized, as an Editor you’re looking to convince the Director that they’re in safe hands. Having a chaotic mess for a project is not the way to do that.
Everyone has their own preferred way of working, and obviously you can create a system that fits your own needs, preferences and type of project you’re working on, but being organized will work to your advantage, even if it takes a little bit of time to set up and keep coherent.
Being organized starts with having a system. And that system will work best when it’s SIMPLE and FLEXIBLE. In addition to these two principles, you should have two rules: everything should be in folders, and your project on the drive should be organised the same way it is in your edit software.
Here’s how I organise my projects. I sort files into a set of top-level folders by the type of asset it is, so all music files together, all camera files together, all VFX assets together and so on. Numbering the folders means they always stay in the same chosen order.
Folder Structure
00 CUTS – This is where all my sequences live. These are generally sorted into sub folders of each cut. I define a “cut” as a version of the full film that has gone out for viewing. It might just be for viewing by the Director, or may be seen by far more people.
I break my features up into 5-6 reels just to make things easier to manage, and the reels for each cut will live together. There are also multiple sub-versions (3.2, 3.3 etc), which have their own folder.
Because it’s likely that other people will access the project at some point, usually an Assistant Editor, or perhaps another Editor, I also have a folder called Current Cut, which always contains THE latest version of the film or the reels, and nothing else. Going into a project where I can’t see what the latest version is without asking the editor has been a surprisingly common occurrence over the years.
It’s useful to keep old versions of reel and scenes, so I never delete previous sequences, although sometimes they need to be archived into a separate project if the project file gets too bloated (this is a Premiere rather than Avid thing).
01 FOOTAGE – This is where all the raw files from the camera and the sound recordist live. Generally, they’re organised by day. This might also be called Dailies if you’re in the US, or Rushes if you’re in the UK.
Plenty of editors put the audio from the sound recordist into a separate Audio folder, but I prefer all the material I receive from set to be in the same place, so there are two sub-folders within here, PICTURE and AUDIO.
Within those I have the material sorted by shoot days, so DAY 01, DAY 02 etc. Documentary material is more complicated to organise because you often get material from different sources, but I start by putting footage shot by the crew into dated folders.
02 SCENES – Once footage has been synced, checked, and renamed, it’s divided up and placed into a folder for each scene. Then when I’ve decided where each reel begins and ends (usually after the assembly is completed), the scene folders will be moved into the appropriate reel folder. Any sequences related to that scene, whether rushes rolls, or assemblies, also live in these scene folders.
After the assembly stage, I will cut in reels and not individual scenes, but I will always have the scene folder open for whichever scene I’m currently working on.
Usually, within the scene folder I will have all the material for that scene, and what I call a Scene Roll, which is a sequence in which all of the material from the scene has been laid out. In this, all takes from a particular setup will be put together, with a small gap between each setup. Sometimes the setups will be laid out in shooting order, sometimes I will re-arrange them into an order that makes more sense. For instance, I may put a wide shot at the beginning, or if the scene has been broken down into sections when blocked and shot, I will group these together.
In Avid I tend to work from the bin and will group the thumbnails of each setup together, but in Premiere, I mostly cut from my Scene Rolls. To be honest I prefer to have all the shots on a timeline in front of me so that I don’t have to keep clicking to open a clip and can instead skim through the shots I have, which will sometimes remind me of a moment I’ve forgotten, or prompt an idea to try something.
03 SOUND FX – Usually divided into categories, as the edit progresses more and more files and folders are added here. I have a library of sound effects, both on a portable drive and on the internal drive of my home machine, but whenever I search for sound effects and add them to my project, I will copy them to the project folder so that if I move to another machine for whatever reason, all the files go with me.
This applies to everything that goes into the project, not just sound fx, but sound and music tend to be the elements I’m adding most regularly.
04 MUSIC – This is generally organised into two sub-folders, Temp music, and Composer music. I have a library of movie soundtracks acquired and shared over the years with assistants and other editors, (or taken from YouTube), and as with sound effects, I will add any music I may use to the project folder so that everything is kept in the same place.
When music comes through from the Composer, I will add it to a dated folder within the Composer sub-folder. Sometimes these tracks are written for specific moments, sometimes they’re just intended for experimentation.
05 GFX – All graphics elements live here, from clocks and overlays, to effects presets, sourced and stock images and video. This can be the messiest folder because there are often all sorts of different files in here.
I do tend to have assets at the top level of this folder that aren’t always sorted into sub-folders, but if I’ve got lots of stills or stock footage (obviously more common on a doc project), I will create sub-folders for these, and then as ever, put the batches into either dated folders or folders which describe their contents (and often both).
06 VFX – This is generally just for any VFX shots that have come back from VFX Vendors. Again, they’re usually organised by date sent or ingested. I will also color code batches, just so that I can give myself an extra bit of info to differentiate versions.
07 EXPORTS – Sequences that have been prepped for export with added onscreen overlays such as timecode, or with temp music stripped out for the composer, are kept here.
I generally create folders for each destination, so Viewings, Composer, and the Sound Designer will usually have their own folder. In your main folder on the drive, this will end up full of files from multiple dates.
Additional Tips
Backing up Projects
You should always back up your projects (and your media too). Personally, I do a daily backup which I will duplicate, date, and store, meaning I can always go back to a previous day if necessary. That doesn’t happen very often, but occasionally a need for it arises.
I use Dropbox for backups. I know a lot of people dislike it and it can be messy, but it gives me a place I can do end-of-day backups that will upload to the cloud, and which I can quickly access from any other device I’m logged in on. I find that as long as you don’t use it to share assets with other people, and avoid falling into the trap of switching account types (there are many, they are confusing, and you should stay away from all but the simplest), Dropbox can be easy and reliable.
Creating Templates
If you create a template folder containing all of the folders above, then every time you begin a new project all you need to do is copy the template and rename it. You can also create an NLE template project with the folders already created to re-use for every subsequent project you work on.
Dating Files
When adding dates to files, you should use the Year-Month-Day system, which means that everything is always sorted chronologically, first by year, then by month, and then by day.
Color Coding
Having a system for color-coding your files can also help to differentiate different types of assets at a glance. Although your files should be sorted into asset type folders, it can also be useful to color code your files so that when they are added to your sequence you can quickly and easily see what is what.
I will often use a different clip color for different types of audio (sync, music, spot effects, atmos etc.), or within a documentary, I might give each character a different color, so I can see the balance of characters within the runtime, or just to identify where scenes begin and end.
Storing Your Footage
Alongside having an organized, backed-up project, you’re going to need to make sure that all your footage is organized. It’s easy to put a small project onto a portable USB drive, but as the scale of your projects increases, managing all the media can be challenging too. On a feature documentary, I will often have upwards of 10TB of media, and will often want to proxy all that footage too, meaning that I need to put a storage system in place. The following video is a great guide on the storage options available and the things you need to consider and decide in order to store and manage all your footage effectively.
For more information on what an Editor is expected to do during an edit, check out the site’s Workflow category.