I'm going to state the obvious here, once in a while. But I bet some people need to hear it anyway.
After you're 100% done with your film, completed finished with post (or good enough for now) and even distributed the film, the movie lives on as a set of assets.
If you have film, you have the negative and answer prints and optical track and all that. If are working in digital video (as so most of us are) or even have a digital intermediate (as we did on Quality of Life, which was originally shot on super16mm film), you have all the digital files.
Plus, you have all the other digital files: scripts, notes, emails, and much more. Those are valuable too -- particularly if there's any life left in your project (further distribution or if you're still producing it somehow).
The message here is simple: protect your assets at all times, even after the film is behind you.
If you lose these things, you've basically lost your movie. Don't be that sob story. Please.
For film, that means you need a safe, dry, cool place to store your neg and prints. Labs will probably charge you a monthly fee to store them -- so if you need them at the lab for a long period, you might want to find out their vaulting fees and factor that into your budget.
For digital assets (video, audio, scripts, notes, etc.), that means back-ups.
Some quick back-up reminders -- use this as a checklist:
- Above all, back it up. Here's one case where you can be smarter than Francis Ford Coppola. Coppola just got his laptop stolen...with 15 years worth of data on it. What could suck more?
- Back up BOTH archival data (like your old projects) and your working hard drive data.
- Don't just have one back-up. Ideally have multiple ones.
- Put your back-ups in different locations. Don't have all your back-ups in one place. And definitely not the same place as your original/working drives (i.e. your laptop or other main computer).
- Back-up often, if you're still working on the stuff. Daily is probably a good minimum, during the week.
- Remember to back-up as much as possible: including scripts, shooting schedule, emails, PDF contracts, etc. Much of this cannot be replaced if lost and that could hurt your ability to distribute your film.
Look for solid hard drives. I use G-Tech drives, since they are affordable and have a great reputation. Get used to buying big drives. Digital video is about as resource-intensive as it gets. For my new film -- all HD -- I have two twin 500GB G-Drives. For Quality of Life (which has an HD digital intermediate, even though it was shot on film), we house it on a 1TB (!!) drive, after the original drive crashed.
We need to back that up, now that I think of it.
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