Post production is the editing phase of visual and audio material in the film creation process. The editor assembles all footage material from the camera persons, combines other effects such as sound and visuals, and adds music. The weaving together of these elements to create a multi sensory action is what we refer to as a movie. This editing phase is among the most crucial steps in film editing.
Below are the reasons you need to learn post production.
1. Understanding The Rough Cut
Before doing anything else, you should put together all the visuals to create a rough cut for the video. In this process, you scour through the footage, classify it, and select the best shots to use in the video. You’ll also require to work with software such as Adobe Premiere Pro’s to select, cut, and splice the footage together. After creating this rough version of a video, you will have what is known as assembly edit. At this point, you do not add any music or special effect, although you can add a temp track in case your video contains no dialogue. If you take a little time to learn this step on your own, post production becomes easy.
2. How The Picture Lock Is Done
Once you have created a rough cut of the video, the second step is to attain a picture lock. A picture lock is a stage in video editing in which all the shots get looked into order. Mostly in movie productions, the video is ready to be handed over to the sound and visual effects team. But in case you are creating a video on your own, you will likely change a few things after adding music and voice-overs. Therefore ensure you watch the entire video together with sound and voice over before completing the picture lock.
As a filmmaker, work in Adobe Premiere Pro’s knowledge and expertise when combining visual effects with the video provide a low-quality rough mock-up of the visual effects. By doing so, you will visualize where to place the effects, especially if the shot will be VFX.
3. How To Sound Mix
After the second step, you can begin the sound mix. At this point, you edit different audio tracks for the video. The audio might include dialogue from actors or interviewees, sound effects, background music, and voice-overs from the off-camera talk.
Some audio elements you will need to record in a soundproof studio room separately. Voice-overs and sound effects need to be clear of noise. There is nothing worse than a video with bad sound. Therefore learning such a skill will be an added advantage to your career in production.
4. Understanding Visual Effects
The fourth step in post production is adding visual effects. At this point, you have already figured out where you want to place your visual effects in the pre-production phase. Also, keep in mind the commonly used visual effects in videos is animation. However, other visual effects such as filter, fade-in, and fade-out are usually available in Adobe Premiere Pro. With practice, you can master these skills and get confident with your abilities.
5. What is Lower Third?
In cases such as news broadcast, interviews, and documentary production, you will need to learn about lover third. The lower third is texts added to an image or a shot placed on the lower third of your screen. They are used to provide information such as the location or occupation of the person on your screen. Additionally, they should be less distracted and straight to the point.
6. Color Correction
When everything else is in order, the final step is a color collection. It is the process of modifying light colors in each shot using a digital filter to make sure they match each other. They include white balancing and exposure problems. If done correctly, the video should flow nicely with equal audio levels and similar visuals on each shot, preventing people from noticing editing.
7. What Are Title and End Cards?
The final step of the post production is adding title or end cards. They are graphics set at the end of the video. As a person in the film industry, you should be familiar with the end credits concept. They give credit to you and everyone else who worked on the film or video and are a cool way to remind the viewer about your brand and hopefully succeed in your career.
When you learn all these post production elements, you are likely to create exceptional pieces of videos and films and heighten your career. The creative decisions made throughout film editing will automatically result in a crisp flow of the video. Also, keep in mind the early you get things right, the better the outcome.
