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Organize Footage & Photos From a Session

Lesson 34 from: Filming Families: The Modern Family Video

Courtney Holmes

Organize Footage & Photos From a Session

Lesson 34 from: Filming Families: The Modern Family Video

Courtney Holmes

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Lesson Info

34. Organize Footage & Photos From a Session

Lessons

Class Trailer
1

Class Introduction

09:38
2

The Spark That Inspired Me

13:50
3

What Are Family Films?

06:15
4

Gear for Family Films

11:50
5

Camera Settings for Video

02:56
6

Frame Rates & Slow Motion

20:48
7

Picture Profiles & Color Grading

06:47
8

Settings for Audio Capture

14:13

Lesson Info

Organize Footage & Photos From a Session

Editing, excited to get here. So I'm gonna show you first, I've already imported all of the footage and the photos so I'm not gonna waste our time waiting for it to import, so it's already in there. And I'm gonna just take you through my process for organizing that for clients and how I do that and just what that looks like on my hard drive. And then I will take you through a brief rundown for what I do for the photos in Lightroom and then we'll go straight on into Premier Pro and I'll explain how I import and organize in there. So we'll get as far as we can in this segment, and then wherever we stop then we'll pick up at the next one, okay. So I just have my hard drive pulled up right now and this is gonna give you a little bit of a view into what my (laughs) hard drive looks like. Look, US taxes down here. (crowd laughing) I still have to do them, I'm American. So I have my folders listed 01, 02, 03. I keep my client work and personal work separate. So for my client work that's then ...

broken into I do brand films, I do families, and I do weddings. Very rarely, weddings are not a thing for me, so don't ever anybody hire me for one (laughs). I don't want to do them anymore. But I have done them, so they're there. And kinda the same thing for brand films. My heart is with families, that's what I love. I can do them, but this is where my heart is, this is where I'm spending my time, this is what I wanna do, so that's where I'm focusing. So families are then organized by folders listed with the date first, so 2018 02 03, Christie family. 2018 02 17, so it's the year, the month, the date. Then that way they just kinda go into for some reason, I don't know why, oh that's 'cause I wrote 2019 (laughs) for that one. Anyway, in a folder I'm just gonna pull up this family who we've just done from Sunday. This is the Millos family. I will create a folder for the photos and a folder for the videos, and then I pull in all of the CR two files cause I'm Canon all of the roll files into the photos folder, and then all of the video clips into the video folder. Then when I'm in Lightroom, I import the photos from the photos folder and then when I'm in Premier Pro I drag over the video clips folder, the video folder. This just helps me keep them organized and the way that I do that is I usually sort by the file type when I have them on my card. So I pull them into my card and... Whoops, sorry, didn't mean to do that. So I just open up a new Finder window and wherever I have the card pulled in, I use a card reader so I find the card there. I don't do this in Lightroom, I don't pull it in direct from the camera, I take the card out of my camera, I put it into a card reader, I pull it into I create the folders on the hard drive first. I just like that from an organizational point of view, I feel like I have more control over where the things go. It's just what I've always done so I'm used to. Then I just drag them over into the client folder that I've made under photos and then under videos. Make sense, any questions on that so far? We're good? Okay. I also will, when I create the Premier Pro project, I like that to live within the client folder. So you can see that there, it's within the client folder. That way, 'cause what happens is the files that live within the project, if you move or you change hard drives but you have the project on your computer and then you don't have that hard drive plugged in it's then missing that media. So if I just always have the project living with the files that are for that project, and I just move them together if I ever move them or archive them or any of that, then that just works better. So that's where I have it, it also means that everything's written to that hard drive. So you need to determine for yourself how fast the hard drive is that you're working with. Mine is a LaCie and it's got a Thunderbolt connection, it's pretty fast. So I like working on an external hard drive on the projects within Premier Pro, I just find it faster and I don't run into as many issues where my hard drive fills up on my computer, okay. So I will... I've already pulled up all of the, oh I'll show you really quickly just 'cause I think probably a lot of people are curious about this, but the personal, the way that I organize my personal stuff is I have under the personal folder I have photos and then I have video. So instead of organizing it by the months and the dates first I organize by photos and video, okay? So that's the parent folder of it. And then under video I'll have a month. So if I have for example, I clearly haven't pulled anything from (laughs), January was the last time I did video footage of my kids, so that's where it is. So it's pulled into there, and then I have the project for the year, I have and this also depends on how fast your computer is, it might be better for you if you're doing multiple projects throughout the year, to have multiple projects. I like to have one project and multiple sequences within the one project, okay? I'll get into that when we go to the edit and explain how you can have multiple sequences. But that's what I like to do. And then under photos you can see I've got some of the months here where I took photos and when I put them in, I organize them by date and then what we were doing. 'Cause I'm finding that when I try to go back and find photos from last year, the stuff that we were doing, I just had organized it with the date and then my last name the way I do with the clients, but it's like a whole bunch of dates and my last name, it's not telling me anything. So I've started just throwing in a quick explanation or sentence or description of what it was that we were doing, where it was that we were, who I was shooting in that moment. This is Cooper, Lydia bath, Lydia bedroom, this is when I was freelancing, and Cooper morning light. It just helps me quickly go back and see them. And then that information gets pulled into Lightroom as well. So you can see that quickly when you're going through on the left-hand side, it just makes it easier to reference, so that's what I do.

Class Materials

Bonus Materials with Purchase

Shot List Worksheet Template
Shot List Worksheet Example
Ideas for Your First Film
Discount Code

Ratings and Reviews

Adam Nicholls
 

Worth a watch! Courtney provides a clear and organised class, she is also very passionate about what she does which is always nice to see. She has a great back story which is fantastic. This course is good for beginners who have some knowledge in photography and want to learn more about video. I would recommend that people do not refer this class to the bible of filmmaking as I feel you can expand further on what Courtney teaches. Some useful tips for beginners but some methods I personally feel can be taught differently. I feel a gimbal is a useful bit of kit if used correctly. You can still use a gimbal when in manual mode providing you follow the basics rules! Obviously if Courtney prefers not to use a gimbal then that's also fine but I wouldn't discourage students from exploring useful filmmaking tools. Slow motion can be achieved with 50/60fps however I feel other frame rates should have been discussed like 120fps. I liked that Courtney engaged with the students as it gets them involved and will help them remember what they have learned during the class. Thank you for taking the time to share some of your knowledge

a Creativelive Student
 

Courtney's work is absolutely amazing and inspiring. I feel lucky that she has chosen to share her process and that this class is available! After watching all the videos and trying my hand at this video thing, I am feeling really encouraged and inspired to do more- both personally and professionally. I appreciate the way that she breaks things down in the video and that she shares her thought process. A really great course!

AShley
 

Courtney’s course completes me! I have storytelling “holes” in my film previously, but this course helped fill those holes to create a flow and a film with emotion. Not only is the course wonderful (and well worth every penny) but Courtney is wonderful as well! I had such an amazing experience at Creative Live!!!!

Student Work

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