What is the most overlooked and least understood part of the filmmaking process? It would have to be the last leg of the race, or post-production.
Once production is complete and you have all of your video and you have all of your audio, your movie is magically ready to be sent out into the world for all to see, right?
Nothing could be further from the truth. There is still a massive amount of work to be done.
As I’ve said before, there are three main parts to filmmaking and they are pre-production, production, and post-production.
Pre-production consists mainly of all of the planning and organizing that you do to allow you to successfully complete the other two parts.
Production is when you gather everyone together with all of your equipment and you shoot all of the video and collect all of the audio that you will need to successfully complete your project.
Post-production is when you gather together all of the pieces of the puzzle that you acquired during production and you then turn those pieces into something pretty and assemble them into something meaningful.
I have found that there are really eight steps to the post-production process: organize, import, edit, add visual effects, color correction and grading, score, sound mix, and export.
I’m going to tell you about each one of these in detail and how I go about the post-production process for each one of my projects so that I can get safely across the finish line.
Organization is One of the Fundamental Keys to Success
By the time I start post-production, I already have all of my video and audio files labeled on my desktop and backed-up to an external hard drive.
I have each of them separated by shooting day. For example, I have a Day 1 Audio – Labeled folder, a Day 2 Audio – Labeled folder, and so on.
I have a sound effects folder which contains all of the sub-folders for the sound effects in each scene. That is, I have a SFX Scene 1 folder, a SFX Scene 2 folder, and on down the line.
You can subscribe to a service online or purchase a lot of different sound effects libraries online for reasonable prices. The same is true for royalty-free music and visual effects.
I also have folders for music and Foley. They are organized the same way.
I will explain more about Foley and what it is a little bit later.
I also have a Production Stills folder, but I haven’t created any production stills at this point. I will write more about production stills in a later post.
So, I have a Video Feature – Labeled folder, an Audio Feature – Labeled folder, a SFX Feature folder, a Foley Feature folder, a Music Feature folder, and a Production Stills folder all contained within the one movie folder.
I will also have a Special Effects folder in there, if the project calls for it.
At this point, if I haven’t done so already, I rename all of the files so that I can easily find them and organize them again in my NLE (non-linear editor) after I import them.
When I rename files, I will include the project name, file type, and scene, shot, and take for that file. For example, tdi_v_s1s1t1. That means that this file is from The Devil’s Instrument and that it is a video file of scene 1, shot 1, and take 1.
For audio, the file name would be tdi_a_s1s1t1.
Import, Please
After I have renamed all of the files, I am ready to import them into my NLE.
The non-linear editor that I use is Adobe Premiere Pro. So, I set-up a project in Adobe Premiere Pro and I import all of these files.
The next thing I do is organize again. Remember, organization is one of the fundamental keys to success.
After import, all of your files will show up in the project panel, but that’s all it really is right now, a mess of files.
You don’t want to be in the middle of editing and have to spend an outrageous amount of time trying to find a video file or a sound effects file out of the thousands of files you have imported.
That’s why organizing everything before you even begin is so important. It will allow you to work faster and it will save you a lot of time in the long run.
Adobe Premiere Pro allows you to create bins in the project panel, that act as folders in which you can name and insert files.
I will create several bins for each scene in the film.
I will have a scene 1 (S1) bin that has several sub-bins, or sub-folders, in it. Those bins will be S1 Audio, S1 Video, S1 Merged, and S1 Coverage.
I take the audio and video files and merge them together. The video files I have do contain audio, but it will be from the camera’s onboard mic.
This audio will be terrible. I don’t want to use that; I want to use the audio that we recorded separately using the proper equipment and proper techniques.
But I did want to record that audio from the onboard mic, because Adobe Premiere Pro can match up the wavelengths from the onboard mic and the separate audio, and it then allows me to merge the video with the good audio.
If for some reason this doesn’t work with some or all of the files, I still used the slate or clapper board for the takes and I could manually sync the audio if I had to. It’s always good to have a backup for everything.
After I have done this, I put this in the S1 Merged bin and this is what I will put on the timeline and edit with. It’s just easier because then your video and your audio can’t get separated on the timeline when you start moving things around because they will be linked. Of course, you can always unlink them, if need be.
The S1 Coverage bin has all of the coverage shots that I got for that scene because I won’t know if I will actually need any of these shots until I start editing. But they are there, just in case.
Next, I will have an S1 Foley bin, an S1 SFX bin, and an S1 MX bin.
The S1 Foley bin is empty at this stage because I won’t know what Foley effects I will need to record until I have edited the scene.
Foley is the art of creating and recording sounds that are for the specific film that you are working on. You playback the scenes in the film and act out different movements and other things while you record the sound. That way, everything will match up perfectly when you add those sounds to your movie’s soundscape. The guy’s last name who first did this was Foley.
The reason you do this is because everything that you need won’t always be recorded on set and it would be impossible to find all of the individual sound effects that you would need and then to try to match those effects to your specific project. Foley is easier and much more effective.
Once I do have an idea of what sounds I am going to need, I will playback the scene as many times as needed, record the sounds I need, import them, and put them on the timeline where they need to be.
The S1 SFX bin is where I will put all of the sound effects that I have imported that I purchased from a sound effects library that I think I will need for that scene.
The S1 MX bin is where I put the music files.
If I add something later on and want to find it quickly, I will create a second bin. For example, S1 MX 2, or S1 SFX 2.
I create all of these bins for all of the different scenes in the project even if I know I won’t be putting anything into some of them.
Why?
Because it could potentially give me a heart attack if I go looking for a bin and it’s not there.
“Oh no, did I accidentally delete something,” I would think. “What else could I have accidentally deleted, then? Everything? Help!”
But, if I open the bin and find it empty, I’ll remember, “Oh, that’s right, I didn’t have any music for this scene.”
After all of the organizing is complete, it is now time to start editing.
Continued in The Post-Production Process and How I Go About Doing It: Part 2
