10 Step Post-Production Workflow
Surprise! Editing is only one step.
Premium work is built atop a solid big picture view of the entire post-production workflow and how each stage affects the final product.
Each stage of post requires time and/or money...by that we mean a set of buns in the chair doing the work.
1. Ingest: Footage and audio can come from a variety of cameras, devices, or online sources. Organize everything in your primary hard drive or server storage and label in a way that makes sense for the project, creating folders and subfolders for the different elements. Ask about our recommended EditorBurger Post-Production Folder Structure.
2. Prep: This is the process of bringing footage, audio, music, archival, or other material into the editing system and organizing within the project by syncing audio or multi-cam sequences, in addition to pulling selects or even assembling rough cuts.
3. Edit: Now we're composing the footage and audio elements into a final product. The editor will use a non-linear editing system such as Adobe Premiere, Final Cut Pro, DaVinci Resolve or Avid to accomplish this. (EditorBurger editors work exclusively in Adobe suite.)
4. Sound Design: After the footage has been edited, a sound designer will add additional music, sound effects, and pieces of dialogue to enhance the story. They may also clean up any background noise and adjust the levels to ensure everything is balanced.
5. Color Correction: This process involves adjusting the color of the footage to ensure that everything looks consistent, deliberate and visually appealing. This may include adjusting brightness, saturation, and contrast.
6. Visual Effects: This stage involves adding motion graphics and/or special effects to the footage to enhance the visual storytelling. This could include adding fire, explosions, text or other elements. Other times a visual effects artist may remove objects from the frame or do other beauty work.
7. Audio Mix: After sound design and color correction, the audio mix engineer will balance the levels of all the audio elements, including dialogue, music, and sound effects.
8. Review: Collaborators provide creative and technical notes throughout each stage of post-production, ensuring early cuts and final deliverables are on spec and on time for approval by key stakeholders.
9. Delivery: The final stage is to deliver the finished product to the client, distributor or broadcaster for presentation to an audience. This may involve encoding the video into different formats for different platforms, streaming services, and broadcast networks.
10. Quality Control: Not so fast! Upon delivery, some publishers and broadcasters may employ a rigorous QC process before files are approved for distribution. Issues could range from incorrect frame rates to typos.
Finally, archive everything so it's secure and future-proof if you ever need to go back and re-edit something or license your original footage! That's #11. It never ends!!!
Have a budget (we're talkin' time and/or money) and a plan for each stage to help ensure your film or podcast meets the highest creative and technical standards for distribution.
Happy Creating!
