I like order. It allows me to look at things in a balanced way, make the appropriate decisions at the appropriate time and see clearly. I am not a freak about it mind you – I’ll leave that to the mad woman at the supermarket yesterday who asked – no, INSISTED – that all her groceries be packed alphabetically. I kid you not.

In film making, having a vision of what you want makes it easier to get to the end product. This is why it is so important to do things such as shot logging, taking notes on location, having a proper script to work from and so on. But to make things easier for you, a few tools I find are a great help, and with the assent of cloud computing, they can even be free!

The two major ones are a good word processor and an easy to use spreadsheet. What makes a good word processor? In this case, that it has an outlining feature. As well as for general writing, outlining for me is indispensable for scripting as it is so easy to move sections to new areas, swap subsections and change styles very easily. In the absence of a dedicated scriptwriting package, you can’t go past it.

The spreadsheet is used for shot logging tapes from the camera and marking scenes in order of order, takes as best to worst etc. All of this is simply catalogued by the time code and can be referred to again and again. Done correctly, these shot logs can be exported from Excel to a database with a tape naming convention added and you have a readymade catalogue available to recall any scene you have taken on any tape you keep.
Master time saver when you simply want a generic shot of something.

I have an Excel version of a basic shot logging system I am happy to make available to anyone that wants a copy. Simply send an email requesting it to david@australasiancamcorder.info