Speaker 1: Making a film can feel like a miracle. This series demystifies the entire filmmaking process. In our previous episode, we looked at production. Today, we'll see where everything captured on set comes together, what goes into finishing a film, and who's involved in the process.

Speaker 2: And cut. We can fix this down in post.

Speaker 1: These are the stages of filmmaking. Post-production. Before we get started, remember to subscribe to StudioBinder and enable notifications to watch the future episodes in this series. Today, we're joined by editor Eddie Hamilton, sound designer Mark Mangini, and composer René Bochiot. Let's begin. Post-production is the creation of the final product once footage has been captured. The stage includes picture and sound editing and the creation of visual effects. Post-production can begin before production has concluded. An editor, for example, may start cutting footage as the film is still being shot. Or visual effects artists may start building out digital worlds. The length of the post-production stage varies widely, depending on the size of the team and budget. Post-production work for Avatar The Way of Water lasted years, whereas post-production for a smaller film may last just several months. But a lower budget can also lengthen the post-process if there are fewer people on the team. For example, Shane Carruth took two years after shooting to complete his micro-budget movie Primal. The post-production process may also be protracted with test screenings, where cuts of a film are shown to an audience to gauge their reactions and make further changes. Titanic, for example, was cut down after a test audience felt several scenes were unnecessary.

Speaker 3: Don't waste my mother-fucking time.

Speaker 1: For most films, the post-production stage is overseen by the post-production supervisor, who makes sure the process is within budget and on schedule.

Speaker 3: The post-supervisor is the person who will be communicating on a weekly basis. This is how far through we are through the director's cut, how long the composer's been working for, how much ADR we've recorded, how long the sound is going to take to mix, how long the foreign language versions are going to take to mix. Ultimately, their job is to make sure there is a movie to release by the release date.

Speaker 1: Post-production is much more than that. Post-production is much more than just placing together the shots captured during production. It is the stage where a film crystallizes, where massive changes can occur and new, unexpected meanings can be created. Typically, the first step in the process is picture editing. Without picture editing, a film doesn't get finished. This crucial step is completed by the editor.

Speaker 3: My job is to watch all the footage and read the script and work closely with the director of the film to make whatever the best story that exists within the footage is. It doesn't really matter what was on the page and it doesn't matter what the director thought they shot on set. What matters is what we actually have in terms of raw footage to make the film.

Speaker 1: It is also vital that the footage is secure. Many professional editors use a RAID, a data storage technology that combines multiple disk drives for data redundancy, performance improvement or both. Many post-production houses will use a centralized storage system that multiple people can access at once without compromising speed. This is crucial for large and complex projects with multiple moving elements at once. A popular system is called a SAN, a storage area network. Organization is also paramount. This is where an assistant editor comes in, helping take in files and inputting metadata such as shot numbers, take numbers and other details.

Speaker 3: My assistant editors are essential because I'm nothing without them. There's a lot of things that they do to prepare the footage for me to make sure that, you know, I can do my work of editing the movie.

Speaker 1: From here, the editor will begin to piece together the film, selecting takes based on performance, cinematography, narrative necessity and more. Editing systems differ based on the editor, but popular softwares include Avid and Adobe Premiere. This type of cutting is called non-linear digital editing. It is now the norm in the industry, even for movies shot on film. Before digital editing, editors would physically cut together a copy of the film negative called the work print. This process typically occurred on a flatbed. For most movies shot on film today, the film footage is scanned and a digital intermediate is created. So that the film itself is not physically spliced. The first cut is called the assembly, which is where the editor and director have reviewed footage, selected takes and placed them in their general order.

Speaker 3: Like anything, a first draft is usually pretty average. But that's the process. That's any creative process. You've just got to get something down on the timeline. Doesn't matter if it's good or bad, just get to the end. Then the fun starts because then you start refining it. And then you start improving it.

Speaker 1: The editor will then refine the footage, creating a more deliberate rhythm and mood in each scene. This results in the rough cut. Next is the fine cut, where editing decisions are much more precise, coming down to a matter of frames.

Speaker 3: Weeks and weeks and months and months and months and then years of going over the movie. Can it be better? Can it be better? Can it be better? That's all we're doing every day. Every hour, looking at every moment in the film. Is this perfect? Is this the best it can be? Is this the best line delivery? And let's go through the other 70 versions of the line and see if there's one which is slightly better emotionally for this moment.

Speaker 4: Do you see any of your code on Facebook? Do you see any of your code on Facebook? Do you see any of your code on Facebook?

Speaker 3: That's the kind of detail and the level of perfection and commitment that film editors have when they're working on a movie. You know, you live and breathe it.

Speaker 1: When the editor, director and producer are happy with a cut, they achieve picture lock. After a picture is locked, an editor may create an edit decision list, or EDL. This document is a list of time codes and shot numbers that allow a film to be re-edited and accessed across platforms if need be. For more on the creative decisions that go into editing, check out our shot list episodes on the subject.

Speaker 4: What do we do now?

Speaker 1: With the picture cut, it is time for additional visual work to be done. Today, it is very rare that the footage captured on set will look exactly like the footage that is shown as the final product to audiences. Several different post-production teams are dedicated to refining and perfecting the final image. One of the largest of these teams is the visual effects department. Visual effects refers to any imagery that is created or manipulated that wasn't captured during the live-action shoot. VFX supervisor Adam Valdez explains the wide variety of work this can pertain to.

Speaker 5: Visual effects, you know, ranges all over the place, right? We have some that are invisible and you don't really know we've done anything and we have really dramatic stuff. The visual effects department

Speaker 1: is led by the VFX supervisor. Imageworks visual effects supervisor Daniel Kramer describes the role.

Speaker 5: I'm in charge of the project as far as all the visual effects that we end up doing at Imageworks. I'm not necessarily a final say. Obviously, the director is and there's art directors and so on, but we're there to execute their vision.

Speaker 1: There are three primary areas of visual effects work. CGI, compositing, and motion capture. CGI stands for computer-generated imagery and refers to any visuals that are created completely by computer. Compositing, meanwhile, is combining multiple images in a single frame. This includes blue and green screen work, as well as separately recording special effects, miniatures, and more. Motion capture is similar to rotoscoping. Artists use live-action footage to create realistic CGI. This footage is typically recorded in the production stage and then built out in post. My claws are spears.

Speaker 4: My wings are a hurricane.

Speaker 1: Coloring is another crucial element in the post-production process. Before a colorist can begin their work, the data from the editing timeline has to undergo a process called conforming. Conforming looks different from project to project, but generally involves replacing the lower-quality proxies the editor has been cutting with the original, higher-quality footage. Most modern colorists color grade on DaVinci Resolve. The colorist will typically work closely with the director and the cinematographer, who both give notes on what they are looking for out of each shot or scene. Cinematographer John DeBorman explains the DP's role. There might be something very specific, a look that might not be there when everybody's cutting it. You know, there were rushes, and you haven't quite found the look that filters through the whole thing. You do it there. You do it there. You do it there. A colorist has a few tasks. The first is color correction, where the colorist strives to accurately represent colors and ensure there is visual continuity from shot to shot. This includes adjusting white balance, exposure, and skin tones. Then the colorist might apply a LUT, which stands for Look Up Table. This is a preset that transforms the color space of footage to achieve a desired look, typically designed by the colorist and DP. Sometimes a LUT will be created far before post-production in pre-production. This allows the cinematographer to see what footage will look like with the LUT while they're filming on set. After applying the LUT, the colorist will then color grade further. Color grading refers to the stylization of footage. These are the creative decisions that help build the mood of scenes. For movies shot on film, the coloring process can also involve different treatment processes and chemical baths when developing the reels, such as bleach bypass. Another subsection of additional visuals provided in the post-production process are motion graphics. These refer to titles and basic animation, typically conducted in After Effects. While the film is being polished by these various teams to reach its final look, a whole other collection of creatives are working on achieving a film's final sound. Sound is the other half of a movie and as such, it requires just as much attention as the visuals. The post-production sound process is typically overseen by the supervising sound editor, who ensures the film will have a cohesive and compelling soundscape that is completed on schedule.

Speaker 6: The supervising sound editor communicates with the filmmaker to understand the aural aesthetic. What do you want the sound of the movie to... What do you want the movie to feel like? And then it's my job to communicate that information to my team and say, here's how I interpret that. We're going to make these kinds of sounds this way because they fit that aesthetic.

Speaker 1: There are several stages within post-production sound. The first is sound editing. This is where the audio tracks for a film are cut together. The dialogue is arranged and cleaned up and the necessary sound effects are added. The dialogue is arranged and cleaned up Usually, additional sound will be necessary to record. This falls under the jurisdiction of the sound designer.

Speaker 6: Sound designers are supervising sound editors and vice versa, but often sound designers are only tasked with the creation of the sounds that don't actually exist in the real world, the sounds that you can't go out and immediately record or source from a sound effects library. or source from a sound effects library.

Speaker 1: Film will usually also require ADR or automated dialogue replacement, which is where actors will re-record their dialogue for a certain scene if the audio recorded on the day is unusable.

Speaker 6: We tend to, one, lean away from ADR where possible and therefore we try to save what we'll call dirty production, production that has too much ambient sound in it that's right for the scene and we try to save it electronically with various post-production tools and plug-ins and things like that.

Speaker 3: Anything that's not bolted down goes overboard.

Speaker 1: This process is overseen by the ADR editor. Additional voices may be created by a loop group, a collection of actors who will provide crowd noise for scenes with extras. Dubbing may also take place with actors recording over dialogue in another language for foreign distribution. Additional sound effects, meanwhile, will be created by foley artists who perform live to create specific effects that can't be found in a sound bank.

Speaker 2: "- One, two."

Speaker 1: For most films, the addition of music is another large task within post-production sound. The composer is in charge of both writing the score and overseeing its creation, typically working closely with the director to hear what their vision is. "- If it would be convenient

Speaker 2: to go into the call..."

Speaker 1: Rene Bocio explains.

Speaker 2: "- Composer, it is kind of like the head of department. Basically, when you're the composer, you're the one in charge of the original score. So it's like you'll have the conversations with the directors and the producers and whatever it takes, whoever you have to subcontract or whatever it is, but you're like the head of department, you're in charge of executing the filmmaker's vision from start to finish when it comes to the original score."

Speaker 1: Composers are often also the conductors who take the written music and guide the musicians through the recording process.

Speaker 2: This isn't always the case, however. "- A lot of the times, composers also prefer to just be in the booth and able to hear the recording in context with everything else from a producer perspective. So in that case, they'll probably hire somebody to do the conducting instead so that they can just then take a step back and be the ears and more of like the producer of the recording, if you will."

Speaker 1: The music supervisor, meanwhile, helps find and obtain pre-existing music for movies.

Speaker 2: "- They can be involved as early on as brainstorming phase and pitching songs to directors of being like, hey, what about this song? What about that song? What about X song for this scene? If a director already has the songs and they're already cut into the edit, they may just have to handle the clearances and licensing for those songs, the fees for the usage of the song and all that stuff."

Speaker 1: Randall Poster, for example, works closely with Wes Anderson, to find and clear the many iconic needle drops in his films. The music editor is the go-between for the director, composer, music supervisor and editor, making sure each party is on the same page, understanding what is needed and for how long.

Speaker 2: "- Typically they are hired through production because they are technically part of the editorial team and they are in the editor's skills, the field and everything. But more often than not, composers will try to bring on their own music editors into the job because it's such a tight-knit relationship."

Speaker 1: With all of the sound in its right place, it is time for mixing, where the re-recording mixer will adjust the levels

Speaker 6: and get the sound ready for distribution. "- On a complex project like a Dune or a Blade Runner there can be up to 2,000, 3,000 individual channels of source audio that the re-recording mixer has to find a way to build into a seamless and enjoyable and listenable soundtrack."

Speaker 1: This work is usually done in pro tools. The mixer will typically utilize EQs, where they can bring up or down specific frequencies so that the different sounds can all mesh together without getting muddied. The mixer will also be concerned with dynamic range, which refers to the difference between the loudest sounds and the quietest. A compressor will shrink this difference, while an expander will widen it. Mixing is a complex process with both scientific and creative considerations. The mixer will work with the director to make sure that the sound is sounding to their liking, while also making sure that the mix will sound good in different exhibition environments, such as a theater, a television, or a phone. This often means exporting a few different mixes with different settings, like stereo or surround sound.

Speaker 5: X. Piu...

Speaker 2: aí först.

Speaker 1: Post production can make or break a film. A great script, great performance, or great shot are all at the whim of the post team. And similarly, the right edit, coloring decision, or needle drop can elevate Post-production process has a lot of moving pieces, so planning and organization are vital. Make sure your project goes off without a hitch with StudioBinder's production software. Subscribe and click the bell to see our next entry in the Stages of Filmmaking series. Marketing, the key to getting an audience to watch your film. And check out the StudioBinder Academy channel for in-depth filmmaker interviews and step-by-step tutorials for creating call sheets and other production documents. That's all for now. Remember, sometimes you have to find your story in the cut.