The Simple 10 Step guide to Post Production

So now you’ve got your film “in the can” as they say in Hollywood.  What do you do next?  Going into post production is often quite fun in the beginning but quickly becomes overwhelming.  It seems like there is always something that cant be fixed that needs desperately to be fixed.

One of the old jokes in film making is “Don’t worry, we’ll fix it in post!”.  I have some good news and some bad news.  The good news is nearly everything actually can be fixed in post.   The bad news is fixing things in post is expensive.  The even worse news is that with an inefficient workflow you can waste a ton of money fixing things  that don’t even need to be fixed, only to find you’ve wasted your entire post production budget on a set of shots you ultimately end up cutting out of the film anyways.

I can’t save you from having to spend time and money fixing things that truly need to be fixed.  It’s going to happen.  You are going to have a key scene where you don’t have a single take where the dialog came out clear.  More than likely you’ll find some edit that just doesn’t make sense.  There are probably at least a few shots that are way over or under exposed.  There is no getting around it…you have to fix it.

However, you absolutely must avoid doing work on footage that you don’t need.  You could spend a month color correcting a scene, adding ADR and foley, only to find that you don’t need the scene in the first place.  That is a waste of time and money.  To avoid this, you’re post production schedule needs to follow a logical work flow.

1. Sync Sound - The fist step in any post production workflow is to syncronize the sound if you didn’t capture the audio directly into the camera.
2. Assembly Edit - Put together a rough edit of the film.  This edit should actually be reasonably close to how the actual film will play out.  However, do not add any fades or transitions!  The reason you don’t want any fades or transitions is that inevitably the two clips you fade into one another will ultimately need two different color correction treatments.  It will be nearly impossible to adjust the color correction over the portion where one scene fades into the next.
3. Color Correction - Export the various clips and color correct each as necessary.
4. FX - Any visual effects that are necessary should be done at this stage.  After this you should have film that is entirely complete except for the sound.
5. ADR - Do the dialog replacement on any scene that needs it.  It’s best to have a professional do this, even if its just a guy with a home studio.
6. Foley and Sound Design - Your film should now have a complete dialog track, and  fit together as an almost complete film.    It’s now time to add atmosphere and feeling by putting in some sound design elements.  These are things like footsteps, dogs barking in the distance, crickets chirping, etc.
7. Score - Add music where necessary to highlight and enchance the mood of each scene.
8. Mixing - Have a professional mix all of the audio tracks.  I only recommend you do this yourself if you have a very in depth knowledge of EQ and audio compression.  Adjusting the volume on tracks is not enough.
9. The Final Edit - Go back and refine your edit adding transitions, fades, and more intricate cuts.  You should not be making large editorial decisions at this point, but rather just refining the pacing of the film.
10. Titles and Credits - Add the above the line credits at the beginning of the film, and build the rear title credits.

You are now beyond post production and into the marketing phase.  What comes next after this various quite a bit on your planned distribution medium.  You may want to have a 35mm blow up for festivals, or create a digital master.  You may want to begin designing the DVD menus.   Regardless of where you go next, congratulations, you now have a finished film.

A tip to improve your fight scenes

You can’t make an action movie without a few fight scenes. However, fight scenes come in all flavors…there’s the stylish martial arts type, the american bar fight style, weapons fights, and the two people who don’t know how to fight beating the crap out of each other style. But regardless of the style, there is one often overlooked technique that can turn a snooze fest into an edge of your seat thriller: Sound Design…

Sound design is basically building the sound of a scene largely, or sometimes entirely, from scratch during post production. A fight scene is typically shot without capturing any field audio…so the sound must be built entirely in editing. Many independent filmmakers put little effort into sound design, and that is a huge mistake. I’m not sure where I first heard it, but I really believe the old saying, “Sound is 80% of what you see”.

To prove the point, how many times have you seen a scene where two people are fighting and one has a baseball bat or other similar weapon. The other person falls behind some object, and the person with the bat pummels them. You aren’t actually seeing anyone get hit (and probably a slyly placed cut means that no one is even near where the actor is hitting). But even without seeing it you instantly get an impression of the beating…is it vividly painful…or is it commical? This impression is based entirely on the choices made in sound design.

So lets cover some essential sounds and their impact on a fight scene. Remember some of these sounds may only be barely audible, but still have a huge impact.

• Hits Obviously you must make careful consideration of what sort of sound to use for any actual body to body impact. A broad mixture of high and low frequencies is usually best. The low frequency is the power, the high frequency is the sting. For this reason its good to layer several different sounds to produce one powerful hit. Try to mix deep sounds like the sound of punching a table or wall, with higher pitch “whip-like” sounds when doing foley for this type of sound.
• Foot Steps In real fights on footwork is a major part of determining who comes out the victor. By the same token, the sound of feet moving adds depth and realism to the fight. Pay special attention to the surface and environment. Should the steps echo because they are in an large empty room with solid floors? Or maybe the surface isn’t so solid. I remember seeing an excellent sound design test online where a fight scene took place in the snow. The footsteps in snow sounds were made using a light sand bag. For comedy: Minimize the presence of footsteps.
• Breathing The exhausted pants of two actors gripped in battle adds a sense of urgency to any battle scene.
• Grunts By the same token, grunts and screams add alot of emotional impact to the fight. Grunting doesn’t have to be perfectly in sync with the actors face because grunting is guttural. Big grunts should occur before punches, or when one fighter over powers another while wrestling. Smaller grunts should occur when both are struggling but neither is over powering the other.
• Clothes Rustling Barely audible, but adds a great deal of realism. Clothes rustling is especially important for martial arts to help give the impression of unbelievable speed to punches and kicks.
• Enviroment Sounds Depending on the setting, very distant sounds of the environment are an important addition to the overall sound design. These could be birds, trains, or a refrigerator humming. These don’t add any particular emotional impact to the fight scene, but they help to make the sound design feel less like a sound design. In other words, adding these environmental sounds makes it seem like the audio is the real audio of the scene.
• Casual Impacts You absolutely have to add the sounds of minor impacts as well. This is particularly true of weapons. For example, the sound of a bat hitting the floor when its knocked out of the actors hand….even if you don’t cut to a shot of the bat hitting the floor and the bats landing is completely offscreen, there should still be a sound at the approximate moment of impact. Other types of casual impacts are if the actor his a wall, or when the actor hits the ground. Remember that each limb hitting the ground should have its own impact sound.
• WrestlingIf the fight scene involves the actors wrestling on the ground, then sounds should be added of skin to skin, and clothes to clothes rubbing. If at any point one actor gets the other in some sort of submission hold the sounds need to be exaggerated greatly. Rubbing a balloon is a good foley for this type of sound

The next time you’re editing together a fight scene, be sure to experiment with these subtle sounds to enhance the mood and impact of the scene.