An Overview of the different Stages of Post Production

(Part One)
By Sareesh Sudhakaran

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In What is Post Production? we dealt with the premise that good post production should be an extension of
your pre-production and production.

In this article we’ll deal with each aspect of post production one by one.

Post-production is the collection, organization and coherent unification of all the elements of an audiovisual
project. The end result is called a Master. From this master, you create Deliverables.

Don’t worry if you don’t understand some of these terms. All will be explained.

Post production has only five categories of media

Post production can be broken down into two major halves, both equally important:

Visuals
Audio
 
They might be tackled separately (movies) or together (small videos), but they are never tackled at the
same time. They need their own time, attention and expertise.

Both of these can be broken down into two further simple classifications:

What you have

What you don’t have
 
What you have is what you’ve accomplished through production. What you don’t have is what you need to
find or create in post production.

So, you have visuals that you’ve shot, and visuals that need to be found, shot or made. You have audio
that you have recorded on location, and audio that needs to be created. That’s a total of four ‘categories’ of
media. The fifth category is music. Here they are:

Visuals you have already shot

Visuals that have to be created
Audio that has been recorded on location
Audio that has to be created
Music
 
The four stages of post production
Whereas pre-production is chaotic, and doesn’t really have a linear or step-by-step structure, post
production is thankfully quite linear (unless you want to make it hard on yourself). You can’t get too far
ahead of yourself, or you’ll end up waiting for the rest to catch up.

I like to break post production down into four major stages:

The Assembly Stage

The Mixing Stage
The Mastering Stage
Creating the Deliverables
 
Before we go ahead, here’s a full overview for reference (click to enlarge):
The Assembly Stage
Let’s tackle visuals and audio separately:
Visuals

Hopefully you’ve shot everything you need during the production (principle photography) stage. You might
also have had a second (or more) unit shooting additional footage. If you have had a production stills
photographer on set, he or she would have shot production stills that you will need. Even if you’re shooting
boring videos for the internet, you can ask someone to photograph yourself doing it for your website,
business or blog.

If you have screwed up big-time on any shot, you might need to re-shoot those. Re-shoots are usually
known prior to post-production, which is why it belongs in the first column.

In post production you might realize you need a few more shots to tell your story. Since the budget usually
doesn’t allow for a full crew, you might be able to get away with a few important close-ups, reaction shots
and takeaway shots. These are called pick-ups.

What you haven’t shot will need to be created. This includes CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) of all
kinds – 2D or 3D. You might also need to license stock footage from libraries, individuals or governmental
organizations.

Finally, you’ll need to key footage whose backgrounds need to be replaced. Any other preparatory work for
the next stage will be done now. This includes creating masks, mattes, rotoscoping, tracking, motion
compensation, transcoding, syncing, ingesting, entering metadata, logging and everything else you might
need.

What you’re doing is ensuring you have all the pieces of the puzzle before you start putting it together.

Audio

You do the same for audio. If your project has sync sound, you might have recorded dialogue on set. If
your production sound mixer is a professional, he or she would have recorded location pick-ups – these are
audio samples (sound effects) of objects, events, ‘space’, noise, and anything else of value that the location
provided.

ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement), a.k.a ‘Dubbing’, is the process of recording dialogue in a studio.
Some movies do wall-to-wall ADR, while others only need to cover up for poorly recorded audio. Voice
overs are also recorded this way.

Foley is the process of creating sound effects that haven’t been recorded as pick-ups. These could include
anything you need to tell the story or create an effect. People who specialize in this are called Foley artists.
They usually need bigger audio studios because of the physical nature of creating audio.

Finally, there are sounds that cannot be created through any physical recording, and have to be created
electronically. It could be for any number of reasons, both artistic and functional. These are created using a
synthesizer.

Music has a special place in any production. You either purchase a license for music (or get one ‘royalty-
free’), or create your own. The person who does this is the Music Composer.

Music involves its own recording – instruments, vocals, effects, and so on. These might be done together
(orchestra) or separately.

All said and done, if you’ve carried out the Assembly Stage correctly, you’ll have all the raw material you
need to produce your movie. Sometimes, due to various reasons, you cannot proceed so systematically.
After all, even filmmakers cannot focus on too many things at the same time. The person who controls the
post production schedule and budget is the Post Production Supervisor.