Adventures in Logging…

By Tessa Moran

We finally captured all 45 hours of tape, and have now embarked on the task of logging. That is, labeling and organizing all of our captured footage. We have tried to be very detailed in our descriptions of each scene so that we can use the searching function in Final Cut Pro to quickly find the footage we need as we edit. For each scene, we’ve included the time of day, the location, characters involved, any important dialogue, and on occasion, descriptions of our camera technique. Hopefully this will make the process of searching for footage much easier.

The hardest part of logging has been organizing the scenes we’ve labeled. We created several bins to sort the footage: bins by character, by type of b-roll, by group scenes and by interviews. But some of our scenes fit in more than one bin, a problem that occurs especially when there is more than one character in the scene. We’ve worked around this by establishing the following conditions:

1) Scenes in which one character is dominant will be placed in the corresponding character’s bin. All characters in the scene will be listed in the description.

2) Scenes in which several characters are involved, but no one character is dominant, will be placed in the ‘social gatherings’ bin. Each character in the scene will listed in the description.

We originally considered separating our footage by theme, but we realized that the process would be far more confusing, and may limit our creative process.

Time Management

Logging has been a somewhat tedious task that we are finding ourselves reluctant to do, especially after a long day at work. Ben is working as a producer and editor, and I as a reporter. Both our jobs are demanding, and involve many hours in front of a computer screen. Frankly, its been hard for us to sit down, focus and edit instead of just crash on the couch in our pajamas. Perhaps if we were full swing in the creative editing process, we’d be less inclined to be lazy. But logging isn’t exactly fun and creative, so we have been putting it on the back burner.

Last weekend, we woke up late and went to the gym, making up for the sleep and exercise we failed to schedule in during the week. Then we watched movies and caught up with friends. As a result, we didn’t put any meaningful time into editing, which we have said on repeated occasions is our priority.

There will always be an excuse for why we can’t get around to doing it, but we went into making this film knowing full well that there would be hard work and sacrifice involved. And so, what we need to do now after a week and weekend of procrastination, is to evaluate our limitations and to develop a realistic schedule for editing.

We know that we cannot possibly edit every evening after work. We would burn out quickly if we did. But a couple of nights during the week of about one to two hours each is a reasonable commitment. On the weekends, we know we need to catch up with sleep, exercise and friends in order to stay sane. But we can free up an afternoon or morning on Saturday and Sunday. It won’t be easy – sacrifice and hard work never is. But our vision for the film, our love for documentary filmmaking and our desire to succeed should hopefully help us meet our goal.