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Because things can and do go wrong, you need a solid workflow on location.
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After we finished shooting this video I got some clarification on the name. It's not "Lassie,"
like the dog, but it's pronounced "lah see." LaCie. So when you hear me say it wrong in
this video, my apologies, it's "lah see."
Hi this is Jay P. Morgan. Today on The Slanted Lens we're out here on location in Chatsworth.
We've been shooting a great portrait here of Keith on his motorcycle. But we're gonna
show you our workflow process in the field, how we get our data backed up and what we
do. Let's get started and see what we can do.
The reality of this business is that we have a ton of data that we're working with. It's
fascinating. You take, uh, a card-- you know a CF card, a whatever card. It's worth a hundred
bucks.Fifty bucks, twenty bucks. The minute you get images on it and you walk away from
the shoot it's now worth thousands of dollars. Because it is the value of everything it took
to get the photograph. So when you're doing an image the worst thing you can do is walk
away with what was worth fifty bucks, it's now worth thousands of dollars, and you only
have it in one place. So this is a system, a workflow system in the field, to make sure
that you back everything up. You protect your data, that you walk away from the shoot with
your data in several different places and you feel secure that you have it before you
walk away. So let's look at that system.
So your workflow in the field starts in the studio. I get on the computer, I assign the
next job numbers to the job, the shoot we're gonna do that day. Whether it's one, two or
three shots. It's Morgan dash S dash. We'll talk more about that in our workflow, uh,
lesson we're gonna do in the studio. But I assign that number there. I know the number
before I go out on location. That's my first step.
Now on set it just depends on the type of shoot we're doing. But generally speaking
we have a lot of cameras going. So a lot of cameras mean a lot of different cards. So
what we do is we have A, B, C, D, E, F, G however-- whatever number of cameras we have
on set we put a piece of tape on the side of each one of the cameras. That's an A camera,
that becomes A dash one. The next card you put in there becomes A dash two. So you put
the piece of tape on the side of the camera, A dash one. When it comes out you put it on
the card, put a piece of tape on the side of the camera that says A dash two. The reason
this is important is some cameras set to zero every time you put a new card in. And you're
gonna, on the same shoot have a number one, two, three, and another one, two, three. Which
drives me crazy. So there's how we label our cards in the cameras.
When I go to download cards on the computer I don't put a folder on the computer. I put
a folder on one of these LaCie drives. I've got my folder that shows my job number. In
that folder I've got two folders. Shoot assets, and sound assets. When I go into shoot assets
I'll now create a folder, Camera A dash 1, and I'll download all the images there. I
love the LaCie Raid drive. So there's a Raid 1. What that means is there's two drives inside
the LaCie Raid 1. And those drives back up. It mirrors to each other the way I have it
set up. So that means when I download to a folder on the LaCie Raid1 I'm getting it in
two different places, on two different internal drives. One of those can die and I still have
all of my data. The reason I use LaCie drives is really simple. The rugged drives in the
field, I have never, ever had one of them go bad. I've used a lot of other drives in
the past and I've had problems with them but I have never had one of these go bad. They're
rugged, they take a beating. They're just a great drive to have on location. I must
have at least ten or twelve of these things. A tool use at the studio and I use on location,
and I certainly fly with it, there's by Lexar, a tower that you can plug in four cards at
a time. And because it's Thunderbolt it has enough bandwidth to download all four of them
at a time. It's basically a stack where you can stack four drives. It makes it so easy
to download your cards extremely fast. So there's our first download. Now though I don't
have it any other place but in one housing, one case. So I now download from the original
media to a second drive. And that becomes my second download. My second backup. The
reason I download it directly to the second one- I don't drag and drop from the first
to the second- I download directly from the card to each drive. And that way if there's
any data issue, any corruption of data I'm gonna make sure I get a clean copy somewhere
in that process.
I now put the card back in the clamshell and I try not to have to erase it. Uh, I like
to have it in what I feel like is a third place. That's on the card, in two of the LaCie
drives, and now I have it in three different places before we, uh, head off from the location.
I start my shoot with three clamshells. There's a card in every space in every clamshell.
So I know that there's twelve cards there. And I've got a card in every camera. Then
when you're done, flip those upside down. In the clamshells for me--. I have the clamshell,
when cards are face up that means they're empty. When they're face down that means they're
full. So card's face down there should be a piece of tape on everyone of them that says,
"Camera A-1," "Camera A-2," "Camera B-1." You see all the different cards, you see the
cameras they came out of. That way at the end of the shoot I can look as long as there's
a card in every space in the clamshells and there's a card in every camera, I know that
all the cards are accounted for.
On location I label these drives Jay P. Morgan Pictures 1, and Jay P. Morgan Pictures 2.
There's a reason I do that. I know that this is my RAID drive. And it's gonna be backed
up where there's two different copies in this drive. And it's also is the place I'm gonna
back up to first. And then I'll back up to the other one second. This is my primary copy.
This is the one I'm gonna copy back at the studio. This is the one that becomes the master
per se.
It's a hard thing to do to sit on location and to make yourself back the data up before
you drive away. It's a really difficult thing to do. But when you're shooting a huge shoot
and you have so much money involved I want to see the backup, I want to look at the images,
I want to know the data is clean before we drive away. Before we break everything down.
So when I fly I leave the cards in the camera case, and of course the camera case goes on
the airplane with me in the overhead. I give one of the, uh, LaCie drives to one of my
assistants to put in their bag, or Julene. To put in her bag. And I put one of the LaCie
drives in my bag. The reason I do that is if I leave my bag sitting somewhere and it
gets stolen then it at least it's in Julene's bag. Or it's in the camera case. And so I
have it in three different places. And if the airplane goes down they're all lost. And
we'll all be dead. And we really won't care.
Now when I get back to the studio I can take this data, back it up to our system there
at the studio. Which is a RAID system. I back it up in two different places there. Two different
RAID systems. And once I have it on both those places I know that it's safe and I can now
erase the cards. So let this be a lesson. Don't learn this the hard way. I shot in Dallas
one time, we thought we had everything backed up. It wasn't backed up in two different places.
I had a card that was missing on one place, it wasn't on the other place. And when we
got back to the studio we had several files missing and they were key shots we had to
have. And do you know what I did? I had to book an airplane, go back to Dallas to pick
up two or three shots that I had missed. So before you walk away do this simple process.
Make sure it's in three different places and the data's there, and you're safe to fly and
to, to head on your way. So to wrap this up- when you put your data onto this drive that's
worth a couple hundred dollars, your data becomes worth the entire value of the shoot.
And sometimes that can be thousands of dollars and worth way more than money than all the
equipment you brought to the shoot. So this becomes the thing you've got to protect and
take care of till you get it back to the studio and back it up. Simple process, but a process
that will save you thousands of dollars if you follow it meticulously every single time
you shoot. So do it, don't have any problems.
So join our Facebook group and share your horror stories. We want to hear from you.
Keep those cameras' rollin' and keep on clickin'.
Trisha Zemp made a stop motion out of The Slanted Lens' logo. She's gonna teach you
how to do this and much, much more if you go to theslantedlens.com/stopmotion, buy the
download. It'll teach you everything you need to know about stop motion.
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