So, you’ve finished shooting your movie and now it’s time to start cutting. This of course is the obvious next step in the natural progression of filmmaking—everyone knows this. But what about all that other post-production stuff that is looming surrounding the edit. What are all the different stages? How do prepare footage for color? What are codecs and what do they mean?
If you’ve ever wondered any or all of these questions regarding post-production, No Film School is here to help. As a season posty for over a decade (ick) I hope to pass as much wisdom as possible.
Not everyone needs to know all the nitty gritties of post, necessarily. Ideally you have a dedicated, knowledgeable team that will take care of all of this technical fare for you without you needing to be entirely in the know. However, the more you know as a producer, director, or anyone sticking with and seeing the project through the post-production process, the better equipped you’ll be to communicate with your post team, allocate the appropriate amount of time and money for post, and keep everyone sane along the way.
Check out our step-by-step breakdown below, for the greater good of filmmaking.
Table of Contents
Assistant Editor: Ingest, Sync, and Organize
Editor: Assembly and Story Craft
Delivery: QC and File Management
Assistant Editor: Ingest, Sync, and Organize
An Assistant Editor takes on many roles depending on the nature of the project at hand, but at the end of the day is a gun for hire for their editor—their best friend in the trenches for whatever their needs may be.
The assistant editor’s role typically starts at the helm of media ingest (barring their isn’t a media manager in the budget), taking over from the DIT who’s intercepting and organizing the media shot during production. The DIT is something of a bridge between production and post, the last line of defense before the media is handed off.
Once the media is handed off, the assistant editor typically will start syncing and organizing stringouts per their editor’s preferences. This can be as simply as a sequence of best takes, or as involved as an early assembly cut of the project at hand. The specific nature of the project also could mean more involved organization—narrative will typically be less involved than documentary, for instance, considering docs shoot so much more footage than a contained narrative short or feature.
Although film and TV are more of our bag here at NFS, that doesn’t mean assistant editors aren’t active or important for other mediums. In fact, I’ve worked as an assistant editor for everything from Call of Duty trailers, shoe commercials, to space launch social media videos for Blue Origin. It’s an important role for any edit in any context, and is essential to keeping the gears of post moving smoothly under tight deadlines.
Then, finally, once the editor is all done with their edit they will typically send back to you for finishing deliverables.
Various Assistant Editing Tasks
- Transcode RAW media to proxies
- Syncing production audio
- ingesting and organizing production and acquired media
- Downloading and uploading media upon request
- Project setup and maintenance
- File delivery (cuts, dailies, etc.)
- Shot numbering
- Searching for temp music
- Rough assembly cuts
- Final delivery (more on this below)
- Sending AAFs, EDLs, etc. out for final color and mix, and managing this process
- Online the production video from proxies back to RAW media
Editor: Assembly and Story Craft
What is often considered the end-all, be-all of post-production, the Editor is centerpiece of any post team. They’re the creative talent behind the team responsible for putting the movie itself together—and, on small projects, can sometimes take up many or all of the titles on this list.
On a professional, big budget production, however, the editor is simply the creative working with directors and producers to make the best movie (or episode or trailer or etc.) possible. They’re cutting on their NLE of choice to make the project flow and tell the best story the footage they have at their disposal allows.
Something to keep in mind for editing that is often overlooked is the order in which cuts are put our, each getting finer and finer as they go. The order is:
Assembly Cut
The assembly cut is pretty much how it sounds: putting together the project exactly by the script, assembling (if you will) the backbone of the cut to build from later. This can be tedious, but the more work you put in here the easier your life will be later.
Rough Cut
A more refined cut where you’re refining what works in the assembly, and reworking what doesn’t. This doesn’t have to be a perfect finished product, but this is where you start playing around and bringing your project closer to where it will ultimately live forever as your lil baby. In fact, think of this as the formative teenage years of the cut. It’ll be grumpy, but it’s essential to becoming the grown up we all believe it can be.
Fine Cut
This is where we’re going to college! Or trade school, or the workforce, as you will. The fine cut is when the project is nearing the finish line and we have the cut in a spiffy place, and where producers and directors will often come in hard and fast with all of their (sometimes differing, yikes) opinions.
Lock Cut
This is when we’re finally finished, and we ship off to sound and mix. Don’t get your hopes up, though, as “lock” is a term that is sometimes used loosely in this industry…
Once this is approved, you’ll typically send off to
Editor’s Checklist
- Watch down all footage—you never know what you’ll miss
- Leave your ego at the door. While many collaborators will give you room for creative freedom, at the end of the day, directors and producers get final say.
- Be one with your NLE. The better you know your software, the easier your life will be.
- Take care of yourself. Editing is a grueling process, and it’s easy to overwork and get burnt out. Take a break every once in awhile, and don’t be afraid to speak up and ask for a break if you need one.
Finishing: Color, Sound, VFX
You’ve done it. You have a movie edited that everyone is happy with, and you want it to look and sound extra pretty. This is when Finishing enters the mix.
The players here come in many shapes and talents, from the composer, to sound editors, to VFX artists putting the final touches on your project. We’ve broken these stages down as best we can below for your eyes and brain to learn up.
Color
As is mostly self-explanatory, a colorist—either a singular agent or small team—will come in and make the picture of the project look the way it was intended. A colorist is often given a look book or general direction by the producers or director, and then will adjust overtime via a notes process.
Sound
These is a bigger process to unpack, with several different teams working on several different aspects of sound. The bare essentials however are the sound editor and the composer. The sound editor will take the audio integrated into the edit—SFX, music, and production audio—and clean up the mix so that it sounds level and clean as can be.
The composer of course will compose original score to the picture with direction from the creatives they’re working with. Sometimes they’re working off of temp used in the edit, sometimes they’re creating something entirely from scratch to fit the vision of the final project. It’s one of my favorite aspects of filmmaking.
VFX
These are of course all the fancy effects added to the final project to really send your project to the next level. While often times we assume this means big explosions or monsters or something, in many cases a VFX artist will do something as simple as touch up the blood in a shot, or add in a set piece with a continuity error, such as a poster or lamp or something. It all depends on how it has shot and the intention of the director.
A VFX artist is typically delivered a clean, Hi-Rez picture plate (similar to what you would deliver to color), that the VFX team will work their magic on, and then send back to add to final picture.
Asset Marriage
Once all these assets are approved through various rounds of notes, the various color, mix, and VFX houses/artists will deliver the final versions of each back and an AE (or sometimes editor or finishing editor depending on the size of the team) will merge all of the assets for the final product.
Now, your baby is a real-life human, and they must deal with the woes of life and taxes as we all do. But before all is said in done, there’s one last step…
Delivery: QC and File Management
Now, finally, once color, mix, and VFX are all approved, and the AE the final step: final Exports and QC.
Depending on the nature of the project the delivery specs could vary extensively, some changing over time. Here are some some common examples below that you’ll likely come across in your post-production career.
Delivery Asset Examples
- ProRes 422: The standard in high resolution exports for larger file sizes
- Social Spec: Typically an H.264 with a smaller bit rate that is compression friendly.
- Textless DME: This is a high resolution (typically ProRes 422 or 4444) with the audio split into dialogue, music, and effects tracks, used for editable files later on.
- DCP: The trickier industry standard for delivering movies to festivals and distribution companies. There are many services online you can use, but if you have a buddy that works in an established post house I always consult with them.
- SRT: This is a file used for closed captioning that clients and distributors can use to apply captions to various formats.
- EDL: The edit decision list, often times used earlier in the post stage for colorists and sound editors but sometimes required upon delivery, formatting the edits and file names to a readable text format.
In conclusion, post-production is a duanting, all-encompassing process with a myriad of steps and facets. It can be scary in confusing, but the longer you’re in it, the easier it comes. There are all kinds of things we could explore deeper, and we’re happy to! If there’s anything you’d like a deeper dive on, or any specific niche questions, feel free to comment with any and all.
Happy post-ing, soldiers.
Author: Grant Vance
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
