I have been editing not for 22 years, since I started on The Lord of the Rings The Fellowship of the Ring Special Edition Behind the Scenes in 1999 or 2000. And even that far back I was also working with Assistant Editors and figuring out best practices to work in a company and with multiple editors and graphics people. And on Lord of the Rings in between the editing gigs, I oversaw the Assistant Department who were logging the thousands of hours of footage to make it searchable.

The pandemic and remote editing has made it more important, and I have helped the company I am working with develop some methodologies, though they didn’t follow all of my ideas (some of which I think are a big mistake). And example is that I break each project into 3 major categories, the project, renders and exports and this is for Backup purposes, as it is easier to back up the project and exports separately from renders, but they have combined all into a single folder making backups more difficult, especially when using software to do it (which you should always do so that you can have Checksum’s checked on copy).

Another huge issue is graphics files. We have managed to get sequences to include dates and editors initials so you can track files back to their creators, but the graphics guys have not done that at all. And it is one thing to be given graphics files and use them, but most of them have a name and maybe a version number at best, and the problem is that while we use an after effects project that has a basic look, each of us are doing variations on graphics, but there is almost no set nomenclature for anything, So there is basically no way to track anything!

I am being given a timeline like above in after effects, for a completely spot, which each graphic pre-composed in it’s own sequence, and while I have blurred the project so you can’t see it, the individual graphics projects are named text 1 and so forth, WTF!

And we have even been given footage lately straight from the set, without an assistant conforming anything so even project names are up to editors.

This could so easily be fixed with job numbers, even if they aren’t final job numbers, but just within the post department, Or even client_jobnumber_Initials. So say a 2 letter abbreviation of product name and 4 digit job number then 2 or 3 letter initials of the person working on it. And you name your project this, or at least the start of it, I think it should also have a year for the After Effects version number in there (so 2022 or 2023). And every graphic file should start the same, so client_jobnumber_initlals, I would then add a description, and a date and version number.

So for example, a FedEx commercial, job one with my initals JLW would have a project name of FE_0001_JLW_2023.aep, and my main logo animation would be called FE_0001_JLW_MainLogo_22-11-03-V01. And at the end of every job the projects should be uploaded to a central repository, so if anyone needs to modify one of those graphics you know exactly which project it is, and who did it.

If you don’t implement something like this, it is going to be such a mess finding stuff, even without freelance editors who might not be available to make changes.

And I know graphics people might complain at first, but everything will be so much easier in the future that it doesn’t matter. They are easy changes to make and implement and it will quickly so many future problems.