Introduction

In case you were unaware, Mark and I were seniors at Stevenson University in Owings Mills, Maryland. When Mark and the rest of the crew returned from filming, our spring semester had just started. Classes were in full swing, extracurriculars began, but we decided wayyyyy ahead of time that we wanted to get to work as soon as possible. There was much, much to do…

Before being brought on to this project, I had already edited numerous short documentaries and short films both at Stevenson and my various internships. I knew how to organize and prepare footage, but I was only doing it at a semi-moderate level. Most of the time, the footage was on the same hard drive as the project and I was only dealing with-on average-maybe two hours of footage in any given project. I knew that this would be a totally different animal so I had to make sure I was ready.

Some Limitations

Ok, let’s talk tech since honestly, of all the hurdles I would need to jump through, this was the biggest one.. Mark and I decided ahead of time that we would edit on my PC that I had in our apartment since we didn’t really want to fight for the editing suites in the School of Design at SU. I’m going to warn you now though, this is going to be the most underwhelming PC spec list ever. I’m serious, if you know anything about this stuff, you are most likely going to cringe.

Still here? Ok…

My PC’s specs were as follows:

• OS: Windows 10 Home 64-bit
• Case: Dell XPS 630i
• Motherboard: MSI 970 GAMING (MS-7693)
• CPU: AMD FX-8350 8-Core Black Edition w/ Wraith Cooler
• GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 4 GB (EVGA)
• RAM: G SKILL RIPJAW X Series 32 GB (4 x 8 GB) Dual-Channel DDR3 (F3-12800CL10D)
• PSU: Dell H750E-01 (750W)
• HDD:
  • 500 GB WD Blue SSD
  • 1 TB Seagate ST31000528AS HDD
  • 1 TB WD Blue HDD

Ok so maybe it wasn’t THAT bad, but when you are working with over a TERABYTE of 4K footage and trying to handle a couple other big projects alongside this documentary, this isn’t the ideal machine to be working with. I built this PC five years ago, before 4K really started to become a standard and long before I was working with that type of footage. Computer parts are only at the top of their game for so long and when you are beating the life out of them everyday, it becomes an even smaller time frame.

My CPU was especially causing me some issues. It seemed like it was just slowing down and not able to keep up with all the things I was doing at once. For editing in particular, you need to be able to multitask and have a bunch of applications open at once. Usually, I will have my editing software open, in this case Adobe Premiere Pro, Adobe Acrobat for PDFs of transcripts and other needed documents, Chrome so I can quickly search for something when needed, and the chat app Discord because why not.

Knowing these limitations, one might think preparing for this would involve major upgrades. Nope, I had an ace in the hole… Proxies.

The Saving Grace Also Known as Proxies

Oh proxies, the light in my dark world of editing. For those not familiar, proxies are low-resolution files of 4K video that can be created inside an editing application in order for easier playback. Using these types of files is less taxing on the system and will be a lot more responsive when editing. Even low-grade computers can edit with these enabled. You certainly can’t do any color work on them, but for actually editing the film, they are your best friend.

I knew ahead of time that these were a necessity for this edit. It was going to help my aging system handle this footage with efficiency and grace. It would also prevent Mark from having to wait for things to be loading all the time and shoot me agitated looks. I’m kidding, sorta… Love ya bud!

So ok, I had the technical details figured out, great. I don’t want a pat on the back here, but this was the truth of what I had to deal with. Despite all that, there was something missing in my prep work, something important…

An Unknown

I will be dead honest, I had ZERO clue what this story was going to be. There was no way I could possibly prepare for what was going to land on my lap after the crew came back from the trip. Mark and I have had tons of conversations prior to taking off and I vaguely knew what he was trying to get, but that only went so far. I knew the purpose of Caring Hands’ mission and why it was important. I also knew the story of David, a child who has been previously helped by the organization, and how important he was to Caring Hands founder Alang Geh. However, how we were going to tell the story clearly depended solely on the footage that came back. Mark was going to experience and capture things that are totally unexpected and they will have to be included in the edit to help tell this story. That’s the beauty and the beast of documentary filmmaking, you never know what you’re going to get, which can be exciting. But at the same time, you never know what you’re going to get, which makes it pretty difficult to plan how post-production is going to go down.

All I could do at this point was just pray that the crew would be safe during the trip and be prepared for when they came back. We had three months to edit this first cut for our senior showcase and that’s it. It was going to be difficult, but I was ready to tackle this head on. I believed in my abilities, I believed in Mark and the crew, and I believed in this project. Whatever difficulties were going to come with the edit, we would figure out. The story would be told one way or the other. 

Luckily, the crew came back safe and sound, and immediately, it was go time…

So It Begins

The first week of February was our first editing session. Mark was given the impossible task of trying to give me context to what I was looking at in all of the footage he came back with. After he broke it down for me, we began our discussions on how we were going to share this story with the world. The sheer amount of footage alone had the potential to steer us in quite a few different directions.

And so it began. We would meet once a week for about 8 hours to begin crafting this project. During the first 6 weeks of editing, we were making significant progress in getting this film together. More importantly, Mark didn’t try and kill me during any of our sessions. Despite me being late on some occasions, even though the cutting room was also the room I slept in, and just generally being a stubborn person, we were doing great. The footage was beautiful and we were getting the story to solidify.

And then the virus came…