Did you know that experts expect the market for post-production to grow by more than twenty billion dollars by 2026?
More and more people in the film industry are beginning to understand the importance of post-production. Those who don’t master the technique tend to produce unprofessional videos that are not cohesive. This is why it’s essential to understand this important process.
To help you out, we’ve created a guide. Keep reading and we’ll tell you what’s important to know.
The Basic Facts About Post-Production
Post-production is when editing begins. The post-production crew’s job is to weave together raw footage, create visual transitions, and add sound (including songs, voiceovers, and special effects). The goal of the post-production crew is to turn the video into a single story that will engage viewers.
The Importance of Post-Production in Film
A film won’t be finished until it’s gone through the post-production process. Without post-production, all there will be is a mass of raw footage that doesn’t tell a story.
Post-production experts know how to design every aspect of a film so that there is an engaging story being told. It might be somebody’s job to add sound effects to enhance the emotional resonance of certain moments. Somebody else’s job might be to select the right background music.
The Relationship Between Production and Post-Production
The production process involves doing the actual filming of a movie or video. The entire film crew, including directors, actors, filmmakers, and lighting and sound experts get together to film different scenes.
The director will take control by making sure that every shot gets filmed.
In most cases, the post-production process starts after the production process ends, but this is not always the case. Sometimes the two processes take place simultaneously. If this is the case, it’s important for production and post-production teams to coordinate closely so that they are on the same page.
The Post-Production Process
Every project will have a different kind of post-production process. If you’re making a documentary film, your post-production process will look very different than if you were doing post-production for an action movie. With this being said, most post-production processes involve the following basic steps.
1. Editing the Raw Footage
The first thing that people usually do is start ending their video footage. The ultimate goal of doing this is to thread together different clips so that they begin to tell a story. Many projects have a post-production editor, whose job is to examine the script, assess raw clips, and then start combining different shots to create a narrative.
A good post-production editor will leave more footage behind than they add to the film they’re working on. Footage that gets left out is often of high quality.
But if it doesn’t help tell a story, it has no reason to be in a film. It takes a lot of skill to know which clips to include and which ones to get rid of.
Most editors will create several drafts of a film before they consider it to be complete. The first version of a film is known as a rough cut. Depending on the complexity of the project, it could take a post-production editor anywhere between one week and several months to complete their work.
2. Adding Sound Effects and Background Music
Sound designers don’t usually start their work until all of the video editing has been completed. It is usually somebody’s job to choose the right background music, soundtrack, and special effects.
There might be another person on the post-production team who is an expert at getting rid of background noise and improving the dialog’s sound quality. This person might also focus on positioning parts of the dialog in a strategic way to help tell the story.
If sounds that were recorded during the production process are damaged or of low quality, it’s possible that a sound editor will do another recording of these sounds and then add them back into the movie.
Those who are in charge of creating a soundtrack will either hire an artist to perform original music or they will license music that already exists. Since it’s usually more expensive to hire an artist to perform original music, those who are on a budget will choose to license their music.
3. Creating Visual Effects
During this part of the process, engineers will create digital effects. They often do this by working with computer-generated sounds. Not only is this easier than recording real-life sounds, but it also costs less.
For example, recording an explosion involves working with an entire team of pyrotechnicians. But it’s also possible to use a computer program to create the same effect.
If there are scenes in a movie that need to be filmed on a green screen, this is when the filming gets done.
4. Sound Mixing and Color Grading
The sound mixing team will adjust audio levels so that a film’s dialog will be louder than the background noise. A color grading team will assess the movie frame by frame to make changes to the color. Their goal is to set an intentional mood and to make sure that the colors are consistent.
Film directors often give explicit instructions to those who do sound mixing and color grading if they want certain sections of their films to have specific moods.
The Post-Production Process: Turning Raw Footage Into a Story
There is a lot of work involved in post-production. The first step is to edit raw footage and create a story. The next thing a post-production team does is add music, create visual effects, and do color grading.
If you enjoyed reading this article about the post-production process, please consider checking out other articles on our blog.
