What’s Post-Production?
Post-production is the art and science of building the story after the story is shot. Typically for Pressing Pictures clients, this is where we sit down with the captured footage, go through it second-by-second searching for the best moments and starting to outline the story they want to tell.
Once those moments are identified, our post team assembles a “rough cut” (similar to a rough draft) that embodies the spirit of the message. There’s some back-and-forth between client and editor, and eventually “picture lock” happens (meaning the order of videos and their length is fixed and will no longer change) a “fine” cut emerges (this is typically the edit just before the “final cut”.)
Music and sound effects are added, the sound is “sweetened” and the colors of the videos are matched to one another and any stylization is added.
Technically speaking, this means lots of things:
- Importing all the camera files onto hard drives and creating backup copies
- Converting from proprietary camera formats to “edit-friendly” formats - also called Transcoding
- Synchronization of sound to picture (yes - this still happens in a modern age!)
- Adding metadata to clips, marking favorite sections, and in and out points for future use
- Reducing noise on dialogue files using advanced digital tools
- Selecting music or on those special days writing it!
- Building the initial timeline from the favorited clips
- Making L-cuts, J-cuts and other advanced edits in order to create “flow” in the video
- Balancing color across all clips (“shot-to-shot matching”)
- Applying stylistic color “looks” to augment the story or to indicate time, place, mood or other intent
Some may look at the above list and say “No way, man. Too much work.” But, for those of us in Post, this is the fun part and is where your story truly comes together.