Post Production

Once the filming has completed its time to put all of the individual elements together into a finished film.

Digitizing/Logging

Ok, your production schedule is over, the crew has gone home and you now have your film in the can. You are now ready to start putting your pieces together into a completed film. The first step you have is to log your footage. If your crew has taken accurate logs on the set marking good and bad takes then this step is a lot easier. Logging is categorically going through your shots and labeling shots in a Non Linear Editing system so that you can capture your footage and keep it organized.

Digitizing footage is converting it into a digital format that allows you to edit the footage. Digitizing is sometimes done before logging, as is the case with tapeless formats. Fade 2 Black Productions, Inc. films everything with P2 tapeless memory cards, which are then inserted into our Avid and the footage is simply moved over instead of spending hours capturing a live tape playback.

Our use of tapeless media is especially valuable when on set, as footage can be played back and previewed instantly and can even be edited into rough sequences before the production day ends. This also prevents glitches and drops from appearing in your footage.

Offline and Online Editing

Computers and video storage are continuously getting easier these days, however even with the current level of editing technology, full quality high definition video can take up a lot of resources and lengthen the editing time. Offline editing is the process of converting all of the footage into a lower resolution “draft” quality video that you can use to edit the film with and not eat up all of the system’s resources. This will cut down on render times and allow more video to be handled at one time.

Online editing is the process of taking your now completed edit and converting the footage back to full quality. Imagine if your film had 20 hours of raw footage. Can you imagine how much storage that will take up at full quality 1080 high definition video? A rough tally would be over a terabyte just for the raw footage alone (this does not include any rendered files, graphics, animations, music, or audio files).

The best procedure is to offline edit the footage at a lower resolution, and then reconvert only the 90 minutes you are going to keep in the high resolution files.

Visual Effects (titles, graphics, compositing)

Visual effects are the icing on the cinematic cake. This is the stage when you add all non filmed elements to your film. Most common effects are blue/green screen, CGI animated elements, color correction, explosions/fire elements, layer compositing for matte shots and motion tracking, garbage mattes and wire removal, and texturing.

There are many effects that may be dangerous, impractical or just downright impossible to film live but that doesn’t mean that you can’t have them in your film. There are also many ways to do convincing visual effects without costing the big bucks that Hollywood films often dish out. Our team excels at coming up with creative and cost effects ways to pull off visual effects without compromising the quality of the effect.

There are too many variations and options to list here, so if your film needs a particular effect(s) then contact us and we will be happy to sit down with you and work out the best option to achieve the visual effects that you need.

ADR, Foley, Sound Effects

ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) is the process of re recording dialogue that was unusable during the filming session. There could be a variety of reasons for needing this such as a lot of background noise on set that was unavoidable, technical issues with a microphone, a sick actor’s affected voice, or if you want to replace an actor’s voice with another (such as Darth Vader and Darth Maul in the Star Wars films). It is also known as “looping”. Once the film is edited, the actor needing to do ADR work will come into the studio and listening to the original dialogue through headsets will repeat his or her lines only now into a studio microphone. Almost every film uses ADR in some fashion.

Foley and Sound Effects are very close related in that they both are used to replace or add sound elements into a film. Just like ADR, many times sounds recorded on set are unusable due to background noise or poor recording. Sound effects are added and mixed to replace sounds and to add a richer audio environment to your picture. Usually sound effects are layered in a mixing session to add more dimension and sometimes personality to sounds. For example, in the movie Twister sound editors could have just used a wind tunnel sound or a whooshing sound for the tornados, but they wanted to give them more ferocity. The sound of a camel moaning in slow motion was mixed in to give it some depth. At the end of Jaws, when the dead shark was sinking there is a subtle mixture of a dinosaur roar to give more representation of the death of the beast.

Foley recording (named after the Universal Studios sound editor, Jack Donovan Foley) is the process of recording replacement sounds to specific elements on screen. Foley is like ADR but for sound effects. Foley artists will watch a playback of the film and using props will mimic the sounds of footsteps, clothes moving, and object interaction with the actor.

Films will almost never use sound effects recorded live during production, usually due to the lack of quality or a clear recording. However, a major benefit to have a soundtrack comprised of ADR, Foley and sound effects is that every audio track is separate and can be edited individually. This gives a very precise control over editing of your soundtrack. If you have sounds that are recorded together, changes to one sound will affect another, so it is ideal to have individual sound elements separate.

· Fun fact, Twister was reportedly the first film released on DVD and the last on HD-DVD.

Mastering

Film mastering is the final step of Post Production. Is it the process in which the finished film is prepared for delivery and distribution. There are several requirements to meet, but you must know exactly where your intended distribution will be because those requirements can change. If your film is going straight to DVD then it has very different specifications required than a film being mastered for playback in a movie theater.

Mastering a film takes into consideration several elements such as final color correction (which must be within legal broadcast settings if going to television or cable distribution), balanced sound mixing (which may include surround sound recording and licensing), audio track separation (some distributors want dialogue recorded to separate channels than music so that dialogue can be easily replaced for overseas release), and final delivery formats (some distributors want films on Sony HDCAM SR tapes, Hard Drives, or other formats). It is a very important process and we will work with you to get a proper master for your film according to the chosen distribution outlet.