This is the last excerpt from Inspired 3D Short Film Production that will appear in VFXWorld. Be sure to check out Parts 1-8 of Production Planning as well as other chapters that cover such topics as art direction, storyboarding and effective character design.

All images from Inspired 3D Short Film Production by Jeremy Cantor and Pepe Valencia, series edited by Kyle Clark and Michael Ford. Reprinted with permission.

Safeguards and Backup Plans
As you are working on your film, treat your digital files as precious commodities. Take every possible precaution to safeguard them from harm. If you are working on a team, try to make sure that your files have permission protection so they can only be overwritten by their owners. Also, protect your files by safeguarding the equipment that houses them. Purchase surge protectors, keep your warranty paperwork handy, and make sure you have sufficient technical support available for your computer and your peripherals.

In addition to safeguarding your files, it is imperative that you back them up on a regular basis (see Figure 39). And just in case you weren’t paying attention, we’ll say it again: It is imperative that you back up your files on a regular basis!

If something goes horribly wrong with your computer, your schedule might indeed be set back a few days while the repairman does his job. But if you failed to back up your files regularly, and all of your digital scenes, audio tracks, reference photos and rendered images were sitting on your computer’s single hard drive with the broken vacuum seal, you’ll lose an awful lot more than a few days.

Save your files often and back them up in a variety of locations. You should make daily backups of your most recent files or updates to devices such as secondary or external hard drives, CD-ROMs or DVD-ROMs, Zip drives or USB flash drives. You should also place weekly backups on removable media, such as CDs, DVDs or Zip disks, and then store them away from your computer, preferably at a different location altogether. If you are making your film at home, store your weekly backups at the office, in your school locker, at your Mom’s house or if you really want to feel secure, in a safe deposit box. Also take advantage of the Internet for additional backup storage solutions. Sites such as www.xdrive.com offer online hard drives where you can upload, download and share files. Consider a website where you can store your backups, and perhaps attach important files to e-mails and then send them to a friend or to your school or office computer.

[Figure 39] Back up files regularly!

Some filmmakers might think that daily backups are overkill and that once a month is sufficient; others will make quick backups every hour. Schedule your backups at whatever intervals will make you feel comfortable and secure. The most important time to make a backup is whenever you’ve made significant progress on a particular scene or image, where the work you’ve accomplished was especially difficult and you’d really be in trouble if you had to do it over again.

Murphy’s Law
Murphy’s Law suggests that everything that can go wrong will go wrong. We prefer to be a bit less pessimistic and merely state that everything that can go wrong might go wrong. Computers break and people make mistakes. Hard drives crash occasionally, and files sometimes get deleted and overwritten. Equipment can get stolen. Your dog might eat your storyboards. Your son could spill milk inside your PC. However, such problems will not be showstoppers if you protect your digital assets by locking your office door, photocopying and scanning your paperwork, setting file permissions and scheduling regular backup sessions.