Data management plan template

What this is about

The plan governs the window between the card coming out of the camera and post confirming receipt. Inside that window everything is fragile: cards are reused, drives travel in the same car as the crew, and a rename after copying quietly breaks every checksum. Written before day one, the plan removes the two decisions nobody should be making at 22:30 — whether this copy is enough, and whether that card may be formatted. Where the archive checklist deals with the years after delivery, this document deals with the days when the material exists only as originals.

A template is the starting point, not the goal: once it has been filled in by hand twice, it is worth asking whether the document should come out of the plan instead.

What runs differently here

Where this differs from the general case:

• A naming and folder convention fixed before day one: project, shooting day, camera and roll, so a filename alone locates the material
• The copy rule written out as 3-2-1 — three copies, two different media types, one of them off-site — with a verified checksum on each copy
• The formatting rule: who may wipe a card, and only after two verified copies exist and someone has actually watched the material back
• The proxy specification agreed with post: codec, resolution, burn-ins for timecode and filename, and where proxies are delivered
• A handover manifest listing rolls, file counts, sizes and checksum report, plus the receipt confirmation post sends back

Step by step

This order gets you there fastest:

1. Agree naming, folder structure and proxy spec with post before the first shooting day and put the example path into the document itself.
2. Set up the offload station with the folder template pre-created, so nobody invents a structure at the end of a fourteen-hour day.
3. Copy with a tool that verifies checksums and keep the generated report — a drag and drop in the file browser proves nothing.
4. Log each card in the camera report as it lands: roll, clip count, size, and the initials of the person who verified the copy.
5. Hold cards unformatted until two verified copies exist and the material has been played back, then format in the camera, not on a laptop.
6. Move one copy off-site the same evening, in a different vehicle or bag from the working drive.
7. Hand over to post with the manifest and wait for an explicit receipt confirmation before anything on set is reused.
8. Note at the end of the shoot which copies exist and where, so the archive step later starts from a known state.

Common pitfalls

What most often goes wrong in practice:

• One copy on one drive, travelling in the same car as the crew and the second drive that was supposed to be the backup
• Formatting cards to avoid buying more, which converts a hardware saving into an unrecoverable shooting day
• Renaming files after the copy, so the checksum report no longer matches anything and the verification becomes decorative
• A handover with no receipt confirmation, leaving a gap where both sides believe the other one holds the only copy

With TillyGen

TillyGen knows which scenes were shot on which day and with which camera, so the data plan and the daily card log line up with the actual schedule instead of with a folder someone remembered to create.

Change one constraint and the consequences travel through the whole plan: affected shots are flagged, the call sheet is regenerated, and nobody keeps working from yesterday's version.