Changing Ways, Adapting Workflows

Planning has been a major point of difference in quality between this production and the ones I have completed in the past so I am trying to continue that over to post-production, in an attempt to restructure my workflow. Seeing the other two members of my team grow and adapt throughout the course of the production has motivated me to address my own weaknesses as an editor. This process began for me with organisation. My usual editing procedure sees my ceremoniously dump all the footage into Premiere Pro and sift through the mass throughout the course of the edit. This time I decided to forego this. This project has so far taught me that time spent preparing means time saved producing, so I spent almost 2 hours before even opening Premiere Pro organising the footage into folders and marking my favourite takes. I also named the majority of the shots beginning with the shot type. This has so far proven to be immeasurably useful. All the footage is organised into respective scenes and within them I can search for long shots/mid shots/closeups freely. Instead of wading through a sea of footage, or collecting all my favourite shots randomly on the timeline I found access an incredibly smooth process and one that made it much easier for me to continue my creative thought process as my train of thought wasn’t being broken by a long winded search for footage. This process was also useful in checking to make sure all the necessary footage was available. When the footage isn’t reviewed before the edit, there can be shots missed that aren’t accounted for until the moment that you need them. Whilst that wasn’t a problem during this project, it was great to open the software with the knowledge that I had all the tools I needed to compose the video.

All in all, this process worked to both organise my footage and my mind when it came to editing the music video. I was really happy with how this shift in workflow has assisted in the edit so far and look forward to incorporating this more structured approach into future projects