The Edit Room

Best practices for naming sequences

By Karen Everett

I began hunting for a systematic way to organize sequences soon after I began teaching in the documentary program at UC Berkeley. I noticed that many students were labeling their sequences “final." The problem with that nomenclature is that there was inevitably one more or more “final final," creating havoc when I attempted to grade or the class tried to assemble a show. One student labeled his sequences “Final Uno," “Final Duo,” “Final Tres," etc., to help me out.

Then, during a tour of Current TV’s production studios in San Francisco, I encountered a brilliant method for naming sequences and projects that I have since adopted and would like to pass on. Current TV’s post-production supervisor needed a way to keep track of multiple versions of Final Cut Pro projects and sequences that passed his desk. He showed us his simple, brilliant method. Warning: this method involves putting the date first, in a way that you are probably not used to. It’s not the American style, it’s not the European style, it’s a logical style!

topics: authors, bay area, digital filmmaking, diy

The Edit Room

Organizing your bins effectively

By Karen Everett

The majority of non-linear editing systems employ a bin or folder method to help editors organize their footage. This article displays screenshots of the Final Cut Pro Studio Browser window, but it is easy to duplicate this strategy in other software programs. Planning your organizational strategy before you start ingesting footage is critical, and for the anal, left-brained editing geeks among us, myself included, this will be fun. For the rest of you, remember that having a clear structural hierarchy for your clips will save you time and money in the editing process, particularly if you have to change editors midway through post.

topics: authors, bay area, digital filmmaking, directors, diy, documentary film

The Edit Room

How a story consultant saved me

By Karen Everett

When I was editing Women in Love, my fifth documentary, I found myself 18 months into the editing process staring at the computer screen, wondering if I needed another shot of caffeine. I felt tired, having culled 240 hours of footage that I was in love with down to about 20 hours of sequences. Although I had won awards for my films in the past, this film about the chaotic love lives of seven thirty-something lesbians was testing the limits of my ability to a craft a cohesive narrative arc. On top of that, it was a personal documentary. As I recut scene after scene, the little voice inside dictated, “You’re dragging your butt!” I knew the right thing to do was to turn the project over to an editor. Ego-wise, I was ready to do that. The problem was that I didn’t have the $45,000 a good editor would require. What to do?

topics: directors, distributors, diy, documentary

The Edit Room

Documentary story structures that funders love

By Karen Everett

We all know an editor who needs to get out of the edit room more often. (I just have to look in the mirror.) I recently had the delightful and heady experience of being on the other side of the fundraising table, giving the thumbs up or down to a slew of documentary directors seeking money for their works-in-progress. Granted it was a mock exercise, part of Holly Million’s popular “How To Ask People For Money” class at the San Francisco Film Society. But as I wielded the power of yea or nay along with my fellow make-believe funding execs, I learned something very interesting.

topics: diy, documentary, funding

The Edit Room

Crafting an elegant essay doc

By Karen Everett

The essay or topic-based documentary is the second most popular art form dominating today’s independent documentary landscape. Although it shares in the festival accolades and box office commercial success of the character-driven documentary, structurally the essay doc is a different beast entirely, usually organized around a central idea rather than a protagonist on a quest. It looks different too, often employing talking heads, text, statistics, man-on-the-street interviews, educational graphics and slide shows to make its points. Popular examples include An Inconvenient Truth, Religulous, Bowling for Columbine, and The Corporation. Other essay films, such as Werner Herzog’s Encounters at the End of the World and Jean Marie Teno’s currently released (and recently playing the SF International Film Festival) Sacred Places (edited by Christiane Badgley), are more introspective tomes or poetic profiles than quantitative or data-heavy docs.

topics: bay area, digital filmmaking, diy, how-to, san francisco, sundance film festival

The Edit Room

How to rate your doc’s story potential

By Karen Everett

“We’ll fix it in post,” may work fine when you forgot to white balance or turn off a noisy air conditioner, but if you forgot to vet your story potential, constructing a narrative arc in the edit room may prove a bit challenging.

topics: bay area, diy, documentary, independent film