Content creation is a very peculiar kind of service that needs additional attention to details when it comes to deliveries of the shoot or projects you did. You have painstakingly developed your business around the kind of artistic content you deliver, and that is how every successful cinematographer sets himself or herself apart from the competition. There are a couple of aspects that help you achieve the artistic look that you are going for in your films:
- The way you Shoot
- The way you Edit
All of the artistic creativity comes only from the summation of how you shoot and how you edit your footage. Although, in the ideal world, both are complemented by each other. There are chances that the skills that you may lack in one, can be covered by the proficiency of the other.
Video editing plays a very important role in putting your films together for an audience. There are directors who ensure they engage video editors or a video post-production company every step of the way, while they discuss their projects with other artists who are part of the film.
Being a content creator you would rather invest your time in creating content, than editing it, and at some point or the other, you must have considered outsourcing video editing to post-production companies or remote video editors. Here are the factors that you should consider before outsourcing any gig to a video editing company.
- Time is Money: in any services industry, and more so in the content-driven industry, time is, literally, money. And that is also how you charge your gigs. You cannot deliver your content to your clients the way it was shot. You have to invest a lot of time in editing. Considering editing is a tedious process, and can take up to 180-200 hours to edit a 60-minute film. This means you can easily spend about a month, that too working overtime, just to edit a film.
You could choose to outsource the editing part to companies that offer professional video editing services and invest this valuable time in meeting other clients, or shooting projects that you have already booked, or simply to upgrade your shooting skills which will give you far better returns.
- Expertise: You can either master one trade, or be Jack of all trades – metaphorically speaking. Video post-production companies invest a lot of money into software, plugins, digital assets, scripts, templates, and elements. These companies also invest a lot of time to master these, so implementing comes easy for them. On top of this, video editing companies work with teams, meaning there is a lot of exchange of ideas between team members which keeps these post-production companies on the cutting edge of technologies, workflows, and style. Being a content creator it’s very difficult to match the expertise of a company offering video editing service.
- Skills: Although content delivery requires you to shoot the video and edit it as well, running a content business does not necessarily require you to have both the skills. A lot of cinematographers have the best shooting skills, but lack editing skills. Their only option to make a delivery happen is to outsource video editing. You can choose to engage a video editor in this case or lookout for a company that offers the best video editing service. This can depend on how closely they can match the style you are going for, specific editing request of your client, how quickly they can turn around your gigs, remuneration, and costs they would charge to complete your projects.
- Match your Taste: This is an aspect that will take the most time while considering to outsource video editing. There are several companies offering professional video editing services, but how many of them can actually match the taste that you have been delivering to your clients over the years. And chances are you may not be able to freeze on any company just based on research or looking at their work on their website or social accounts. You may have to ask them to do a test project or might as well get a paid project done from them to understand how much they are able to match your style.
- Color Grading: Although any editing software offers some form of tools to support color corrections for your final edit, It’s impossible for any video editor or a cinematographer to achieve professional-level color grading on his own. Video editing companies hire resources specifically to offer color grading services, for it’s not just that the editor needs to know the art of color but also one needs to know the science of color space. Hence there are specific software that needs specific skills to grade the colors of your footage, and this combination of software and skills is usually available to you when you outsource video editing to these companies.
- Motion Graphics: Even if you consider editing your own gigs, sometimes just the editing is not enough. A lot of video content that gets broadcasted or is put up online has motion graphics integral to them. Motion graphics is a different set of skills, that needs additional knowledge of different software to achieve such kind of animations. And to have these kinds of animations included in your projects you may have to approach companies offering the best video editing services. Usually, a video editing company offers motion graphics as a service that you can choose.
- CGI & VFX: Producing artistic, cinematic, and engaging content is what keeps any content creator on their toes. Cinematographers and videographers spend hours or even days just to plan a 10-minute shoot in a way that they can have CGI elements included in the final timeline in the post-production stage. This is something where you need to hire a professional video editing company. There can be innumerable video effects that the project can demand which is impossible to be fulfilled without engaging a company offering professional video editing services. Tracking, keying, match moving, rotoscope are some of the examples of VFX that only a video editing company can fulfill.
In brief, you may know editing, but you might not just have time or it might not be worth it for you to invest your valuable time in video editing. At times the scope of your project can easily be more than the skills you have to complete it. The factors discussed above are the ones that should be considered before you hire a video editor or engage a video editing company to work on your projects.
