You shoot videos but not without the essentials – careful planning, finalizing the script, budget, hiring the best heads, storyboarding, doing recce for your locations, and casting actors and crew members. You graduate smoothly to the next phase – i.e. the production stage, which is about the actual video shooting.
Post-production is the final stage where you put together important shots in correct sequences, eliminate the inessentials, and add a final gloss to your video to ensure maximum mass acceptance, engagement, and popularity across different platforms. Put more simply, the post-production stage is about assembling a video before its final release. It is time consuming and excruciatingly painfulphase of video filming.
However, there are a few strategies that can be skillfully employed by video makers in the post-production phase to get the best out of their online content.
Let us have a look at the seven most essential steps to follow in the post-production phase to make a video successful.
1. The Rough Edit
This is one of the key steps in the post-production timeline of a video. The first edited version of a video is its assembly cut, and the rough edit follows soon. Many tweaks and revisions continue to follow after rough editing and before finalizing a film as a finished product. Rough cuts are required for test screenings and to assess the general pacing and performances. In simple words, a rough cut is editing a video in its preliminary stages and follows the assembly cut where shots are pieced together with minimal editing. The rough edit is followed by a fine cut and the final cut. The rough cut gives a fairly good idea to the director about what is and what is not working in the video so that the extra bits can be chopped off to make the final product more on-point and less lengthy. This offers scope for a re-draft.
2. Picture Lock
Editing is the first step toward getting your video footage trimmed down. The next step involves sequencing the picture shots in perfect order and locking the video. It is recommended that you get all your edit notes and feedback in place before pictures are locked. Coordination between departments in video making is imperative to avoid ripple effects and dissent regarding edits and video locking. It is not that alterations are impossible to make post picture locking, but the process is expensive and practically opens a can of worms. A professional video editing team will ensure that the audio (dialogues, sound effects, music tracks) is in sync with the video in picture locking. Revisions are hectic, time-taking, expensive, and may cause a lot of disruptions and frustrations at work.
3. Sound Design
Sound mixing is a far more complex process than you would believe. It involves audio cleanup, audio restoration, Foley, sound effects, and automated dialogue replacement work, besides the actual mixing. Incorporating different sound elements in the video would include dialogues, sound effects, background score matching the visuals on the screen, and eliminating unwanted sounds from the video track. A good sound quality guarantees good video quality, and eventually rakes in high-volume online views.
4. Visual Effects
Visual effects are like the cherry on the cake. They have been used by video and filmmakers exponentially in recent decades. Visual effects are manipulated images used to enhance the video viewing experience during the post-production work. VFX are simulated environments that do not exist on real shoot locations (for the sheer perils they involve) but are built and integrated into the film deftly in the post-production stage. They give a realistic look and feel to the video.
5. Titles and Lower Thirds
The lower third is the crafty execution of both textual and graphical content in the lower area of the screen used to convey pertinent information about the subject of a documentary or an interview to the audience. It should carry the minimum but most essential information (for example, the name and role of the interviewee) to keep the audience informed, without distracting them from the actual video content. Makers must take note of the color, font, style, shape, logo design, size, and position of the lower third to make it readable and on-point.
6. Getting The Color Right
Color correction is used to stylize video footage optimally. Colorists use editing software to adjust color elements and contrast such that they appear natural to the human eye on screen just as they would in the real world. The colorist will also make changes to exclude incorrect use of lighting in a shot so that it is in sync with the rest of the footage. Color correction is also required where VFX is used and meant to seamlessly blend with the video graphics. Color grading follows color correction and is needed to accentuate tones, and give the video a cinematic look and feel.
7. Titles and End Credits
These typically appear at the end of the video and are the final step in post-production. The filmmaker will use end credits to thank everyone who was actively engaged in the video-making process to make it a success. End cards are similarly used to remind the audience of the brand (like its name and logo), and may contain additional information to encourage the audience to take a call to action after watching the video.
Final Thoughts
As you can tell, post-production is an uphill task. It is incredibly helpful to get experts like Motion Edits to handle a multifaceted post-production project rather than attempting to do everything yourself.
Our video editing team does an excellent job of executing a complex task like post-production with versatility and perfection from start to finish. We take time to interact with our clients and gather valuable input about their projects inside-out to take charge with full confidence and deliver amazing results even under the tightest deadlines. Our in-house team believes in working proactively with all our clients, pitching creative solutions, and producing a final product, second to none, that makes us tower above our competition.
Get in touch with us today to discuss your project!
