9 - BE ORGANISED

It pays to keep your house in order when it comes to implementing a system for organising your archive. Keep things simple and robust.

Cameras and smartphones autoname the files you create. If you erase a memory card and reuse it, you may find the camera allocates the same filenames to your new footage. At best this is an inconvenience: you’ll waste valuable time figuring out which footage belongs with which trip. At worst, video files of the wrong location can find their way into your edited movies and ruin your hard work.

Get into the habit of naming your files according to your own system. This may be by date, location, or theme. Keep it clear and consistent: it’s easy to manage a motley set of files while you’re shooting, but coming back in a couple of months you’ll be at a loss to remember what logic you followed. And if someone helps you with edits, it needs to be logical to a third party too. So whatever system you choose must be simple and robust.

And as for the outtakes? Hard drives offer so much memory space at such good value that it’s worth holding on to all the raw footage you shoot, even if doesn’t make the cut for your current project. You never know what will have value to yourself or others in the future.