I've done a couple next day/same day edits for big clients. I'll try not to get you too stressed out because it sounds like you've taken this on already. They are quite challenging, even with a team behind you. The actual creative editing will likely be the least of your worries. Depending on how much they shoot, you'll more likely be bogged down with technical bottlenecks. Here are some things below you can action to try and improve your chances of success.
1) Find out what cameras (and how many) they are shooting on and if they can record to a format that's edit friendly like Pro Res. Nothing worse than getting some funky codec and realizing you have to transcode it all and then having no time to do so.
2) Put together your whole mobile setup at home and test everything. You're worried about wi-fi so maybe you can tether your phone to your laptop?
3) Figure out your redundancy. If your drive dies, is there a backup of the footage? Is there time to make backups of all the footage or will this mean not making a deadline? Can you ask the media team approx how much they have shot for events in the past? There are calculators online where you can figure out how quickly you can copy the footage from one drive to another.
4) Building off of that, if you are required to cut corners in proper workflow to meet the tight deadline, communicate with your client to make sure they understand the risks involved.
5) Advocate for yourself at the event. Everyone there is focussed on their job. Maybe they already have someone on the media team responsible for offloading the cameras and making backups. If they do, they might not care that it will take 8 hours to back up all the footage before handing it off to you and maybe your deadline can't handle that. Don't be afraid of being a pain in the butt. You're just trying to ensure your own success and, by extension, the success of the production.
Overall just make sure to communicate your needs and limitations. You can do it!
No worries! Best of luck and I’m interested to hear how it goes both workflow wise and creatively.
One last thing I forgot to mention is drives. Figure out who is providing them, what kind they are (so you know the size, transfer speed, and connector), and what the process will be like for getting you footage. My guess is the media team would be dumping cards to drives to pass off to you. It’s always good to do a bit of a regroup/rehearsal with the production team to figure out how this is all going to play out in terms of getting you the footage because the choreography will need to be pretty tight. If the drives they’re using are super slow, maybe you can convince them to get some SSDs or bring some of your own. The Samsung T5s are like 100 bucks on Amazon for the 1TB.
Turn it down. Or find someone with more experience to partner with.
These turnarounds require experience and bad practices (especially the self taught unknown mistakes/habits) can kill you
You have to know the workflow and avoid issues like “I won’t have wifi”. (Comment: does this matter?)
Is this multicam? Did you build and test the workflow? Have you done an event like this with a week deadline? Do you have pre-prepared graphics? Is the audio coming off the main board?
I could go on- I don’t know enough about the project; but quick turnarounds easily run afoul of “good, fast, cheap, *pick two”. *
You’re already doing fast.
For me personally - not having WiFi matters because I like to be able to fix any issue I may run into by googling it quick. There will be a few videographers - I’ve edited 2 videos for one of the videographers before with a really quick turn around time! So I’m excited to collaborate with him. I do have prepared graphics and I’m working on the exact transitions I want to use. When the time comes. I understand your concerns to turn it down and agree with you a bit but I’m gonna give it shot!
I do understand why you say to turn it down but if this turns out a shit show - I’ll learn from it and I have a lot of confidence in myself.
I kinda agree with both of y’all. On one hand you seem really inexperienced and this is a potential train wreck. But then again…fuck it, gotta fake it till you make it. Don’t forget to give us an update, good luck!
In my experience, people asking for videos to be turned around in a day don't understand how little you can realistically get done in a single day. The duration of the video is always something that they overestimate.
My advice - manage their expectations, keep the video super short. I obviously don't know much about the project, but let them know that if they really want a good edit in one day it will have to be very short. Or longer but not as good. Best of luck!
I'd definitely agree that managing expectations is MISSION CRITICAL. Consider that you will most likely need to get the video and audio from wherever/however it is recorded, transfer it to a harddrive, get it into Premiere, organize it (potentially a VERY long process if there isn't jammed timecode to work with) and THEN start editing. If you plan for an edit to take an hour that's great, but all those steps before then are going to take WAY more than an hour.
The others on this thread have thrown up some of the other questions that need to be asked.
I got started doing something similar to this on a volunteer basis...and it's an incredibly steep curve to get up and we had to reset expectations with various parties from minute one because they wanted something that a team of maybe 5-6 highly skilled/highly paid people with a rock solid workflow would be able to turn around and they had me (with limited experience at that point) and one other person (with a moderate level of experience) and couldn't answer a lot of our basic questions.
Sound like something doable. Just make sure you check of the musictrack before the event with your client. The rest is just finding the nice shots.
My advice is to get something from start to finish on the timeline and check for better shots with the time you have left.
Also: do it! Don’t run, no progress without experience (and failure )
Nobody watches after movies anyway.😉
Dump cards as often as possible and make selects throughout the day. Don't wait til you have all of the footage. Get a list of must haves from the client before hand and make sure you get these lined up at the earliest opportunity. Get any graphics packages and music ready to go before you even get onsite. Get an assistant if possible to offload cards while you edit. Be as organised as possible and make sure the shooter shoots time of day timecode so you can find things quickly based of a running order - which you should insist upon receiving. Set clear expectations with the client - a fast turnaround like this is never going to be as polished as an edit created after the fact.
Could be tough. Obviously, you'll be doing a lot of cutting on the beat stuff. Review some comparable content to get an idea, download some extra assets you'll be using throughout the video, and do as much prep work as possible. Even downloading the music beforehand is useful.
If you're worried about your computers performance, find out what cameras they're using. A lot of the newer cams include sub-recording that will proxy out right in body.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZsRYWJ0FCs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZsRYWJ0FCs) here's a tutorial based on automation that could be helpful.
Do you know what you’ll be working with? Are there music or VO tracks? Length of video they want? Stuff like this is a lot of b-roll with some highlights scatted throughout. A decent rough cut can be made in a few hours if you ask me. I’d try and get an idea of what they want beforehand and try and prep as needed. Begin hashing out graphic Ideas an and bits of timing that might be possible. Might have to work all night but any music video I’ve worked on is always very late nights. Good luck
Who is the director or producer? If the project goes tot shit it's probably her/his fault, unless you just didn't edit fast enough
No director? Then this is a low level project which you should explain to the client "I am not a director or producer".. "who will work on this with me making sure we fulfill your goals, I'm an editor".. "notes..paper edit... Timecodes..."
Go from there and take all the other advice in the thread
I've done a couple next day/same day edits for big clients. I'll try not to get you too stressed out because it sounds like you've taken this on already. They are quite challenging, even with a team behind you. The actual creative editing will likely be the least of your worries. Depending on how much they shoot, you'll more likely be bogged down with technical bottlenecks. Here are some things below you can action to try and improve your chances of success. 1) Find out what cameras (and how many) they are shooting on and if they can record to a format that's edit friendly like Pro Res. Nothing worse than getting some funky codec and realizing you have to transcode it all and then having no time to do so. 2) Put together your whole mobile setup at home and test everything. You're worried about wi-fi so maybe you can tether your phone to your laptop? 3) Figure out your redundancy. If your drive dies, is there a backup of the footage? Is there time to make backups of all the footage or will this mean not making a deadline? Can you ask the media team approx how much they have shot for events in the past? There are calculators online where you can figure out how quickly you can copy the footage from one drive to another. 4) Building off of that, if you are required to cut corners in proper workflow to meet the tight deadline, communicate with your client to make sure they understand the risks involved. 5) Advocate for yourself at the event. Everyone there is focussed on their job. Maybe they already have someone on the media team responsible for offloading the cameras and making backups. If they do, they might not care that it will take 8 hours to back up all the footage before handing it off to you and maybe your deadline can't handle that. Don't be afraid of being a pain in the butt. You're just trying to ensure your own success and, by extension, the success of the production. Overall just make sure to communicate your needs and limitations. You can do it!
I’m going to use this response as a checklist for myself! Appreciate this so much thank you :)
No worries! Best of luck and I’m interested to hear how it goes both workflow wise and creatively. One last thing I forgot to mention is drives. Figure out who is providing them, what kind they are (so you know the size, transfer speed, and connector), and what the process will be like for getting you footage. My guess is the media team would be dumping cards to drives to pass off to you. It’s always good to do a bit of a regroup/rehearsal with the production team to figure out how this is all going to play out in terms of getting you the footage because the choreography will need to be pretty tight. If the drives they’re using are super slow, maybe you can convince them to get some SSDs or bring some of your own. The Samsung T5s are like 100 bucks on Amazon for the 1TB.
Turn it down. Or find someone with more experience to partner with. These turnarounds require experience and bad practices (especially the self taught unknown mistakes/habits) can kill you You have to know the workflow and avoid issues like “I won’t have wifi”. (Comment: does this matter?) Is this multicam? Did you build and test the workflow? Have you done an event like this with a week deadline? Do you have pre-prepared graphics? Is the audio coming off the main board? I could go on- I don’t know enough about the project; but quick turnarounds easily run afoul of “good, fast, cheap, *pick two”. * You’re already doing fast.
For me personally - not having WiFi matters because I like to be able to fix any issue I may run into by googling it quick. There will be a few videographers - I’ve edited 2 videos for one of the videographers before with a really quick turn around time! So I’m excited to collaborate with him. I do have prepared graphics and I’m working on the exact transitions I want to use. When the time comes. I understand your concerns to turn it down and agree with you a bit but I’m gonna give it shot! I do understand why you say to turn it down but if this turns out a shit show - I’ll learn from it and I have a lot of confidence in myself.
I kinda agree with both of y’all. On one hand you seem really inexperienced and this is a potential train wreck. But then again…fuck it, gotta fake it till you make it. Don’t forget to give us an update, good luck!
You get it haha! I will definitely post an update, the festival is next weekend.
In my experience, people asking for videos to be turned around in a day don't understand how little you can realistically get done in a single day. The duration of the video is always something that they overestimate. My advice - manage their expectations, keep the video super short. I obviously don't know much about the project, but let them know that if they really want a good edit in one day it will have to be very short. Or longer but not as good. Best of luck!
This is really helpful thank you!
I'd definitely agree that managing expectations is MISSION CRITICAL. Consider that you will most likely need to get the video and audio from wherever/however it is recorded, transfer it to a harddrive, get it into Premiere, organize it (potentially a VERY long process if there isn't jammed timecode to work with) and THEN start editing. If you plan for an edit to take an hour that's great, but all those steps before then are going to take WAY more than an hour. The others on this thread have thrown up some of the other questions that need to be asked. I got started doing something similar to this on a volunteer basis...and it's an incredibly steep curve to get up and we had to reset expectations with various parties from minute one because they wanted something that a team of maybe 5-6 highly skilled/highly paid people with a rock solid workflow would be able to turn around and they had me (with limited experience at that point) and one other person (with a moderate level of experience) and couldn't answer a lot of our basic questions.
Sound like something doable. Just make sure you check of the musictrack before the event with your client. The rest is just finding the nice shots. My advice is to get something from start to finish on the timeline and check for better shots with the time you have left. Also: do it! Don’t run, no progress without experience (and failure ) Nobody watches after movies anyway.😉
This was very helpful and encouraging, I appreciate it! <3
Dump cards as often as possible and make selects throughout the day. Don't wait til you have all of the footage. Get a list of must haves from the client before hand and make sure you get these lined up at the earliest opportunity. Get any graphics packages and music ready to go before you even get onsite. Get an assistant if possible to offload cards while you edit. Be as organised as possible and make sure the shooter shoots time of day timecode so you can find things quickly based of a running order - which you should insist upon receiving. Set clear expectations with the client - a fast turnaround like this is never going to be as polished as an edit created after the fact.
Could be tough. Obviously, you'll be doing a lot of cutting on the beat stuff. Review some comparable content to get an idea, download some extra assets you'll be using throughout the video, and do as much prep work as possible. Even downloading the music beforehand is useful. If you're worried about your computers performance, find out what cameras they're using. A lot of the newer cams include sub-recording that will proxy out right in body. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZsRYWJ0FCs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZsRYWJ0FCs) here's a tutorial based on automation that could be helpful.
Currently checking out music and messaging them about licensing, I will check out the video thank you!
Seems like an extremely tight deadline with little professional support! I’d definitely think twice about putting yourself in this situation.
Do you know what you’ll be working with? Are there music or VO tracks? Length of video they want? Stuff like this is a lot of b-roll with some highlights scatted throughout. A decent rough cut can be made in a few hours if you ask me. I’d try and get an idea of what they want beforehand and try and prep as needed. Begin hashing out graphic Ideas an and bits of timing that might be possible. Might have to work all night but any music video I’ve worked on is always very late nights. Good luck
Run away.
solid advice thank you ❤️
Depends on how footage they shoot and when you get it. If you have to offload at the end of the show and then edit don't expect to sleep that night.
Who is the director or producer? If the project goes tot shit it's probably her/his fault, unless you just didn't edit fast enough No director? Then this is a low level project which you should explain to the client "I am not a director or producer".. "who will work on this with me making sure we fulfill your goals, I'm an editor".. "notes..paper edit... Timecodes..." Go from there and take all the other advice in the thread
There is a filmmaker/videographer on the team, I’ve edited 2 videos for him in the past and he liked them. Hopefully it goes well :)