Today I was out in Tega Kay filming the Buddhist monks on their peace walk, and I got some incredible shots. But I messed up big time: I didn’t back them up, I dropped my hard drive off my desk that night, and just like that, everything was gone. It was a total gut punch, but it taught me that if you care about your work, you have to protect it. Now I stick to a simple 3-2-1 rule: I keep three copies of my footage on two different drives and one in the cloud. I also stopped leaving my folders a mess; I give every project a clear home for video, audio, and exports, and I actually rename my clips so I’m not searching for “C0001.mp4” forever. To some people, this probably feels like way too much work, and honestly, if you’re fine with a messy “Downloads” folder and the risk of losing your files, then this system isn’t for you. But if you want to make sure your work actually survives, this is how you do it. If you want to see how we handle files for real projects, you can request an invite to our Charlotte campus here.
The only surviving footage, from my celphone:
How do you keep your stuff organized?
