According to me aka working on Route 66 documentary

Incredible! It is really incredible how one can make a mistake while being almost 100% sure that the mistake didn’t happen.
What am I talking about? Let me explain.....
I was importing the footage for our Route 66 film into my Avid throughout the year. It took a couple of weeks to travel it (back in 2009) and shoot it, so we had bunch of hours. It took a couple of months to import it all because of computer problems, work etc. So, it was not a constant progress. Still, I though I was keeping pretty good track of what was done and what still needed to go in.
Second part was logging all the footage. I was going to work on this only after ALL the footage was in so I imagine at one point I went over everything, double checked that it is in the computer and archived the original clips.
Nothing came to my attention at this point. All footage was in.  

Well, at least according to me.
Then I spent few more months logging the footage. It is very important for our editing process to have it precisely organized by date, state, village, city or town, time of day, interior or exterior, action or event, weather etc. Again, going chronologically, one would think that I was double checking that nothing is missing and none of our experiences/footage got left out.
Everything was logged few months later. Well, at least according to me....
Now it is almost the end of the year (2010) and the fun part slowly begins. Pulling the good shots, organizing by subjects, getting ready to put it together into a story.
So I start. And so you imagine how amazed I was when while searching for one of the most important events that took place during our journey, I was coming up with nothing. 

 No clips, no footage, not even a reference. I tried all possible keywords. I could not imagine I did such a bad job logging, that I couldn’t find this by any related subject that came to my mind.
The possibility, that something didn’t get imported also wasn’t an option.
Well, the confidence in my work didn’t last long. Precisely, it lasted only as long as it took going back to the original archived clips and discovering the missing stuff hidden in subfolders of subfolders. So, who do I blame? No one, but myself.
Because, it was also me, and only me, who originally put this footage into those subfolders in a first place. Why did it seem like a clever idea at that time?  Why did I think that 1 year later I could not possibly forget that there is footage hidden withing other footage...? You tell me...
The lesson? Never ever assume that you did everything right. Human mind can play tricks on us. Double check, triple check...and mainly, don’t make movies alone.
Ask for help, let other people do things for you, so when a mistake is made, you have someone to blame :)

So, because I am missing whole day of footage in my Avid, I have time to write this blog for you..and by the time it all imports, and by the time I get it all logged, it will be 2011. One small mistake, and the difference can be a whole year people......

Happy New & Productive Year 2011
- Filmester