post production and editing
Even though the word post-production englobes all the processes which happen after the filming is finished, people often refer to post production as the adding of special effects, colour correction, etc... for the sake of clarity, we’ll split this section in two parts: Editing and Post-production (or what happens after the editing)
Editing
“to collect and prepare materials by deleting, arranging, and splicing, by synchronizing the sound record with the film, etc."
Dictionary.com
"I love editing. I think I like it more than any other phase of film making. If I wanted to be frivolous, I might say that everything that precedes editing is merely a way of producing film to edit."
Stanley Kubrick
Film editing is often referred to as the "invisible art" because when it is well-practiced, the viewer can become so engaged that he or she is not even aware of the editor's work. In fact, many people refer to the editing room as 'where the magic happens', and it’s true. You can have the most awful footage and make a good film (if you’re a good editor) and in the same way, you can have beautiful raw material and make a bad one.
Editing is in the rhythm. Everything concerning film is rhythm, but the place where this comes really true is in the editing room. The succession of shots is what captivates or bores the audience. Someone said once that an audiovisual piece is written three times: on the script, on the filming and on the editing.
Film editing exists from the beginning of the moving image but it took a while until people started to realize and assume certain conventions which are now in our collective minds. And one of the people responsible for this change of mentality was a Russian fellow called Sergei Eisenstein, who developed a system of editing that was unconcerned with the rules of the continuity system of classical Hollywood that he called Intellectual montage.
Back on those days and up until recent times the editing of all films was done with a positive copy of the film negative called a film workprint by physically cutting and pasting together pieces of film, using a splicer and threading the film on a machine with a viewer called a Moviola.
These days, we use a system called NLE (non-linear editing) which means being able to access any frame in a digital video clip with the same ease as any other. So you can edit on any direction and on any order that you fancy.
There are lots of different systems and pieces of software that you can use to achieve this but here at viva la zoom! we use Adobe Production Premium.
Also, when we refer to editing, there’s another part of the process which is audio editing. Often neglected, audio is as important as image and even though sometimes people don’t give it the credit that it deserves, a correct audio editing might mean the success or failure of a film or video production.
Post-production (or what happens after the editing)
Once all the pieces of the film have been put together in the editing stage, it starts what we call post-production.
A variety of things happen at this stage like the inclusion of special effects. These effects can come on any shape or form like entire CGI (computer generated imagery) scenes or just modification of certain shots from the edit that need retouching. An example of the latest would be adding the dinosaurs to specific shots in Jurassic Park or most commonly in the field of video production, adding motion graphics to a certain part of the video.
Another very important part of this process is colour correction. Once all the pieces have been assembled together, the director of the production retouches the general look of the production by correcting tones in the colours of the separate shots that compose the piece. This is very often the last process as you only colour correct those shots and scenes which have been included in the edit.
After this, the only thing that needs doing is the rendering (the processing of a computer algorithm which might take hours or days) which puts everything together as one file ready to be delivered on your media of choice. more about filming
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