Delivering The Cut — A Post Production Insight

Back in 2010 I shot my first feature film in HDV on miniDV tape. Once finished I formatted the hard drive to make the next project. Unthinkable really, but I did this as I knew HDV wasn’t a great technical standard and I couldn’t afford a new drive.

This February I watched sixty or so hours of those tapes import back into Final Cut Pro 7 for a potential remaster. It flashed me back to how naive I was when it came to the data created by film production. Whatever your role in production is, don’t shy away from understanding that efficient turnaround comes from having a broad knowledge of all the basics and data management is one of them.

Your production isn’t tangible rolls of film anymore. It’s gigabytes of information. Data recovery software is now mind-blowing. Losses can be managed in the direst of circumstances. Avoidance of errors comes with preparation. Data wrangling is a vital role, but in your indie film it’s unlikely to be a dedicated position; someone will be doing this in addition to something else.

Unless money is involved and constant data backup is a workflow reality, you probably don’t have a five or six-figure storage budget. That’s not the real world for most of us; a few hundred dollars on yet another hard drive is an essential most indie films can’t afford.