Cinema appeared in people's lives a little over a hundred years ago and almost instantly became the most popular type of cultural recreation of the population. Over these hundred years, cinema has come a long way: from simple taping of theatrical scenes to unimaginable Hollywood 3D films with a huge amount of graphic effects. And they are created at a stage called "post-production". This will be discussed later in our article.
Post-production - what is it?
The word "post-production" itself can be translated literally as "post-processing", that is, work with the video sequence after the end of filming. It is easy to guess that the final product will greatly depend on the quality of post-processing, because no matter how hard the operators try, poor editing will ruin everything anyway. But a good and thoughtful - on the contrary. More specifically, the concept of post-production is a complex process thatincludes the following stages:
- editing (gluing) the video sequence;
- correction of color shades in the video;
- working with layers in video (compositing);
- 3D effects;
- working with audio.
Who does post-production?
Only highly qualified specialists work at the video post-production stage, because the software for the implementation of the film post-production stage is very difficult to operate and requires several years of careful study. Of course, such specialists will not work for free, which is why video post-processing is so expensive - in direct proportion to the complexity of the effects you require.
Dynamic transitions between scenes and a juicy saturated picture in the frame have become things that we are already very accustomed to in modern cinema. And we are so used to it that we don’t think about how much painstaking work it costs. It often happens that post-production takes up to five times longer than the shooting of the video itself. People who are professionally engaged in video editing should fully devote themselves to their favorite work. Otherwise, they will simply stop keeping up with the increasing complexity of ever-evolving technologies and will no longer be in demand.
How is post-production done?
At the video editing stage, experts select the best fragments of video material with the highest quality frames, and it is from them that they begin to create a consistent time-line of video. The task of a post-production specialist is not only to give logical coherence to the scenes of the film, but also to create dynamic transitions that would not make the viewer bored.
After building a sequential video sequence, people who make color correction of frames are taken to work. This work is as important as the others, because the color scheme of the film creates an atmosphere for viewing. With the help of colors, the film affects the mood of the viewer - in sad moments, the colors fade, and in order to convey positive and drive, the colors are made saturated and bright. In addition, the color correction eliminates some shortcomings of operators and illuminators.
Many people make the mistake of thinking that post-production is editing and color grading. It is also an incredibly popular 3D visualization today. But high-quality 3D animation is expensive, so if you don't have a big filming budget, it's better to focus on the story and acting, rather than computer 3D effects.
The final part of post-production is the voice acting and selection of background music. Here the situation is not much different from the previous points in terms of finances - with a large budget, the studio hires a separate composer and / or performer of music, and with small budgets, they use stock audio recordings that are distributed under a free license, or the license for which costs little money.
What is photo post-production
When a program like Adobe's Photoshop hit the market, taking photos has changed just as much as videowhen the first editing programs appeared. Now it is enough to take a photo with a good camera in sufficient light, and all the flaws in the composition can be eliminated through post-production. This is a revolutionary tool that has revolutionized the industry.
Photoshop and similar programs easily allow you to perform, for example, photo retouching. That is, eliminate scuffs or add them, hide defects in the skin of the model, and much more. Photo post-production allows you to completely replace the background or create a bokeh effect for it. In a word, the possibilities of graphic editors today are limited only by human imagination.
Let's draw conclusions
If you plan to create videos, then be prepared that shooting will take only a small part of the time of the overall process. Post-production is something without which there would be no beloved masterpieces of the world film industry.
The cost of the described process is growing every year, along with the complexity of editing systems and growing expectations of viewers. So think about it: maybe you should start learning this business yourself and learn the intricacies of mastery in editing.
