Data Management
What is it, why is it essential, and what would happen if it were to fail
On set, filming produces a large amount of video, audio and metadata data every day, often representing the only existing copy of a moment that cannot be recreated or recovered. My role is to ensure that this material reaches post-production perfectly intact: I offload it, check it with a specific program, organise it and ensure it can be retrieved even after the film's cinema release.
Here is what it actually involves:
- Pre-production is undertaken in collaboration with the Director of Photography (DoP), the Digital Imaging Technician (DIT) and the Colourist. This stage of the process involves determining key technical specifications, including resolution, aspect ratio and frame rate. It also includes the drafting of the colour pipeline, a crucial step in ensuring that the final product matches the footage in terms of both timeline and colour space settings;
- Redundant backup and data offloading in accordance with the 3-2-1 standard (3 copies, on 2 different media, 1 of which is off-site);
- Verifying file integrity using checksums/hashes;
- Consistent organisation and naming of folders, metadata and scene logs;
- Management of CDLs (Colour Decision Lists) and ALE logs (Avid Log Exchange) for the transition to post-production;
- For documentaries: research, sourcing and organising archive material, in coordination with the director, producer and editor. Furthermore, the responsibilities include the management and signing of release forms, as well as the digitisation of physical materials;
What happens without this role:
Memory cards that have been formatted incorrectly prior the offloading, corrupted files that are discovered only during the editing process, disorganised footage resulting in a significant expenditure of time during post-production, backup copies that have never been checked and turn out to be unusable just when they are needed; all of which results in costs in terms of time and money that are almost always higher than the cost of prevention, or even impossible to recover.