okay this is maybe a weird question but every time i come back from a shoot i just dump everything into a folder and then spend like an hour trying to find anything when im editing. its gotten to the point where i have folders called stuff like "drone footage good maybe" and "final export v3 USE THIS ONE" all over my desktop and its driving me crazy.

im using premiere pro and i have no real system. i shoot maybe 2-3 times a week so its not like im a professional with massive projects but the clutter adds up fast. does anyone have a workflow they actually stick to or is everyones setup kind of a disaster behind the scenes. also slightly related ? how do you decide which clips to even keep when youre culling? i feel like i keep too much and then get overwhelmed

haha "final export v3 USE THIS ONE" is painfully relatable. my system is pretty simple honestly ? date folder at the top level, then inside that a raw folder, a selects folder, and a project files folder. anything i know is garbage i just delete on the day, i dont even import it. took me a while to be ruthless about deleting bad clips but once i started doing it immediately it saved so much time later.

for culling i do a really fast first pass where im only looking for anything with a technical problem ? bad exposure, jello, clip where i obviously messed up the move ? and those go straight in the bin. second pass is slower and thats where i pick the actual selects. still not perfect but way better than the chaos before

i switched to resolve a while back partly because the media management feels a bit more intentional to me but thats probably not helpful if youre already in premiere. the thing that actually helped me most wasnt software though it was just doing a quick review on my phone while still at the location and flagging the obvious keepers. by the time i get home ive already mentally sorted it a bit and the import goes faster. also i cull pretty agressively, if a shot doesnt make me think "yeah" immediately i usually skip it, theres always more footage