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Moving into Post Production

Lesson 21 from: From Photo to Film

Andrew Scrivani

Moving into Post Production

Lesson 21 from: From Photo to Film

Andrew Scrivani

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Lesson Info

21. Moving into Post Production

The post-production process should both support the story and cover up the inevitable mistakes. But successful post-production starts before the final shooting is shot. Here, Andrew discusses how to set yourself up for post-production success in the early stages of filmmaking.

Lesson Info

Moving into Post Production

There was a couple of things I want to talk about in terms off getting ourselves to this net into this next section. The ah available tools that we have. And I prefaced this before we left. The last section is to support story and to cover up any mistakes we might have made along the way. Because in a very complex situation, there's always going to be mistakes. We're gonna talk later about mistakes called continuity issues, but and these some of these things can help with that. Ah, but ah, lot of times they're unavoidable. And even some of the most famous movies you've ever seen have continuity issues in them. Uh, but we're gonna talk about one other thing before we get into this, and it's it's it's it's relevant when we're talking about preparing ourselves to get to post production. But it also we're gonna harken back all the way to pre production and the Assad establishment off crew. So when we're establishing the crew, each department that we're talking about whether it's camera, co...

stume, art, art and design could be could be considered one that could be separate anything. Post production, production. All of these things have department heads, so each each section has ahead of it, and that has has all the people that are behind it. So, for example, your director of photography would be the head of the camera department, and under the camera department would be the grips in the electric and the assistant camera people. So that's a big department. There's a lot of people. And then if you're talking about art, you may be talking about production design, graphic art any of the other elements that are going into it, and then costume would be part of wardrobe and wardrobe and costume would have their own department head. So all of those people, when Julia was talking about you know, we bring everybody into the meeting and we sit there and we give everybody their assignment and say, OK, this is the mood board for what I'm thinking about in terms of graphics lighting whatever. Then those people go off and they assembled their teams, put together the things that they're going to need to execute the plan it director is putting forth. So you I neglected to mention department heads before, but I think it's appropriate now because It does lead us into the idea off the kinds of things that we need to do in pre production and in production to get ourselves to a good place in post production and talking about all the available tools that we have. So in preproduction, we're talking about casting right. We talked about a little bit about casting and understanding how casting something well will help you along the way. So in terms of someone's acting ability, if you have somebody who's super skilled and we've had experiences with some people who are at a very different level than other people. We had some non actors as well in our last project, people who are on their first set ever. And then we had people who were super duper skilled and really, really hit their mark. So this little tape mark on the floor. I was watching a playback of what we were doing yesterday, and I wasn't aware of my mark, and I missed it because I was standing in the shadows. And if you have a professional actor or somebody who's used to being on screen and they made aware of their marks and they know that they're gonna hit them. This is something that works so much better in post production because you've casted Well, you've casted somebody who understands the process who will get themselves on their marks, who don't who don't miss their marks. They know their lines. All of those things are akin to post production problems, too. Because if you have somebody who is constantly needs retakes missing their marks because there and then with they missed their marks or out of focus, and that throws everything off. So it limits the editor if you're if you end up casting people who are not as professional as some other people. So those things, really I mean, in television, actors are usually just super skilled at that because they work so much. Everything is just there, there, like they're like machines. Also in preproduction, when you have a good costumer and somebody that you feel really comfortable with, it was super organized, right, because organization in costume is going to lead to post production issues of continuity. If something's out of sequence or something is made incorrectly or done incorrectly, it's gonna show in the final product and it's gonna limit your editor as to what he could do. And the phrase that we use in these situations is, then you have to cut around something. So, like in the in essence, think about a picture and there's something wrong in the picture. You take out a pair of scissors and cut around it. This is similar to what we do in editing is that if we have a performance or take some things out of focus, something's continuity issue, whatever it might be. We need to take that into account ing editing and figure out how we're gonna cut around it. And sometimes that is very limiting in the final product. And then things like set design as well in pre production is really executing good set design and understanding what you're going to be looking at through the camera gives you senses off place and continuity and gives you options that you will have later on because it was done well. So hiring good department heads, hiring good actors, hiring people who are super professional and really organized is all part of the pre production process that will lead you to better results on set and particularly in post production and then, of course, all the tools that we have in post production. Um, we're not there yet, Okay, We're not a continuity yet. We're still imposed talking about postproduction. Um, I want to talk about some of the stuff that we have, all of the tools we have in post production and then clearly open up any questions that we have about any of those roles. So then, in postproduction way, we have film editing, and we all understand what film editing is and what the film editor does and how hard that job can be beyond film editing than their sound editing, which the, ah, the film editor will do as part of his job initially on. And then there's sound engineering, which is different because then, once the editor has cut all the sound to match the video footage than the sound engineer has to organize an engineer that sound to sound better. So that's mixing sound mixing. Ah, and then we have sound design, which is sort of the Foley artists, the person who's making all the sounds in the footsteps and the door opening and the cigarette lighting and all of those things that is part of the sound team, but it could be another person. And then so who specifically trained and skilled at doing those things? And then that layer is layered into the edit. Ah, and then finally, for sound, we're talking about a TR which we saw yesterday, which is automatic dialogue replacement, which is when we need to read we record lines or add additional lines to kind of fill something out. So when you're doing something like what we did recently, there were a lot of spaces where we felt there could be additional dialogue added, because we had a lot of people on set, and it was in a sports environment where people shouting and yelling and offering encouragement and we don't really capture all of that on was not everybody was miked during that scene because it would have been something like 30 people Mike at the same time, and we weren't really prepared for something like that. So what we did was we knew going in in pre production that we were gonna be able to add those things later so that when you cut away from a character and there's all these other people that are there conceivably in the scene. You can hear them. They're shouting. They're calling out encouragement, whatever. So we bring into the 80 our booth, and every character that was in that scene was in the booth yelling, Come on, let's go, let's go! That's a great shot, whatever it might be. And then all of a sudden, you layer that in with all of the other stuff. Then it sounds great. And then we had, Of course, Bochy is part of the part of this. So we had, Ah, whole day of body balls, rolling into one another and crashing into one another and capturing sound of that so that could be added in. So you know the idea that it just all happens there while you're actually doing it like the dialogue happens and the sound design it. No, you don't have to capture all of that at once. That's all stuff that could be layered and later and really add to the story and create all kinds of different emotions and feelings and advanced this story

Ratings and Reviews

Nev Steer
 

A very well explained class on starting in film production from the viewpoint of a person with a successful photography background. Thanks Andrew.

Nutmeg
 

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