Label and Log Your Footage

It is good practice to label all of your tapes, store all of your consent forms and take notes from each shoot throughout the filming process.

If you have more than an hour or so of footage, it’s worth taking the time to log your footage so you can quickly find shots, quotes and content that you want to use in your video.

You can be creative with how you log your footage, but be consistent. Using a spreadsheet with the following columns is a good start:

• Column 1: Timecode that lists the start and end time of the footage (i.e. 00:05:32 – 00:06:45) – this will save you time when you are trying to find the clips to edit
• Column 2: Briefly describe the footage (who, what, where, when, etc)
• Column 3: Comments for you to refer to later – is the footage worth using? Describe why or why not?