I have a project to edit that was shot over 3 days of a business conference. It consists of pretty much all b-roll of different things like people at keynotes, people walking around booths, signs, etc.

I'm doing a couple minute highlight video of it all, and theres tons of footage from multiple shooters.

Would you break it out like an Event for each of the three days? All one event? Etc...

There is a lot of the same stuff in each of the days as far as b-roll, so I dont know if it really makes sense to break it in to Events like Day 01 // Day 02 // Day 03 which will have somewhat overlapping keywords within each of them...although I really like the ideal of it being broken down in to more bite size pieces as theres so much footage.

I'm just curious before I get too deep in the weeds with this project organization- what would you do?

Thanks for you opinions.

Since the three days don’t have different types of material or any time / date related significance I’d put everything in one event.

Personally I tend towards using ratings to thin things out and keywords to group.

Since this is mostly b-roll you might also create a smart collection of unused favourites to help you see the good stuff that you have yet to add to your project?

Just a few thoughts...

Ian.

shane82388 wrote:
define 'highlight' before indexing the material …

What Ian said already - e.g. create a * to ***** rating system. Index wide to close-up, pans, static. Sort by mood, from serious to smile (is the term 'beauty-shots' p.c. in that context ? )

And, for a conference, I guess you have to have to show 'the alphas' plus find 3-4 short quotable statements....

… comes to my mind. Stuff like 'Date of record' or diff. 'angles' are in the metas anyhow, no need to tag that manually …

What you don't say is how definite the concept of the project is. A very elaborate plan should work as a 'prejudice'. You review all hat footage with that in mind, and favoring, rejecting and tagging is a matter of a few hours, even for thousands of clips.

If that concept is too vague, I suggest to find it first. Rough edits of different approaches, very sloppy, off-the-cuff. Only one a day to let thoughts sink, better one in three days or so.

Editing as an art of course slows things down. Walter Murch treated the massive amount of material for Particle Fever as found footage. Many long passages are composed of seemingly unrelated B-roll. The scientists talk about the intricacies of quantum physics (audio), but they are shown drinking milk from the fridge, binding their shoelaces or sleeping on he sofa.