Post-Production Considerations

Post-production is part of the film making process. It can be found in the making of motion pictures, television programs, radio programs, audio recordings, photography, and digital art. It is a term for all stages of production occurring after the actual end of shooting and/or recording the completed work.
Post-production is many different processes grouped under the same name. These include:
*Video editing
*Writing, (re)recording, and editing the soundtrack.
*Adding visual special effects - mainly CGI and digital copy from which release prints will be made.
*Sound design or sound effects a process known as sound re-recording or mixing with professional audio equipment.
In the case project, throughout the post-production process, I will have to undergo editing a promotional video for the PE department of Bluecoat Academy, using the program called Adobe Premiere pro cs6. Throughout the course of post-production course we learn the ways of editing, such as video effects, trimming, importing, rolling and ripple, transitions, file storage, colour correction, continuity etc.

File Storage:
Before you start any stage of post production, it is vital that a proper file storage system is implemented. Otherwise, files may become lost or simply become too hard to find in larger projects. Therefore, it is necessary to give each media file a relevant name and sort each piece of data into separate folders for each scenes. Despite not always being necessary for smaller projects, it is good practice to use such systems to avoid confusion when conducting larger projects.
Since doing this is to save time during post production, personally I feel that some of these practices waste more time than they save. Since all the scenes in my project have eight or more clips each, it is perfectly all right to arrange files into individual folders and look at their thumbnails instead of their file names. This will also save time and be much more convenient when editing, so instead of having to read the file name you can just see what shot it is. However, I do realise that in larger projects, naming files as well as organising them is absolutely necessary and would save a lot of time.

Creating a new project:

To create my promotional video for the PE department of Bluecoat Academy, I first had to know the basics of the software I used which was called Adobe Premiere pro cs6. Firstly you'll have to open a new project, when creating a new project, the "New project" window appears, which you click on, which is easy enough to do, you then make a new sequence were you can import you clips into. To set a new sequence you would need to click on sequence then window and you then have a good selection of what to choose. Once you have got a sequence you can then see the timeline at the bottom, within the timeline there is a yellow icon, this is the player head, it shows you what you are playing. The timeline can hold several sequences, it shows five slots of videos, but it can add more video slots if you need the. There are three slots for the audio but you can add more if needed.

Workspace:
The workspace is the area in which the user will edit their footage. It is basically the layout of the editing software such as the timeline, effects panel, project bin and preview window. You are also able to drag the separate windows around the program to layout the program however you would like to position it.
*The Timeline is where the edited footage appears. It is were you cut your footage, add your audio and effects and basically were you put all your video together.
*The audio Mixer in a tab, there are adjustable levels which match to the different audio tracks found on the timeline, you can adjust the audio to your preference.
*The effect control is where the specific effects can be set or changed. For example, if a colour effect was dragged to the timeline, the effect controls tab can be  used to vary the level of intensity of colour on the clip at a specific level.
*The video/audio effects and transitions are found by going through all the files but you can search for them in the search toolbar were all the effects are. Once you have got the effect you want you can simply drag them into the timeline.

Importing:
Importing footage into the timeline is easy - Simply drag the audio/video items into the bin in order to start editing them.

Editing Clips:
Next to the timeline there is a toolbar containing different ways to trim and edit pieces of footage. I prefer to use the razor tool when editing. Another tool that I really like, has the ability to delete empty spaces, this deletes gaps between footage that can be removed easily. Other tools include the ripple edit, rolling edit, track select, slide tool, pen tool and slip tool. The ripple and rolling editing tools are more useful when editing larger projects. For example, if two pieces of footage are placed together, ripple edit tool can be used to shorten one whilst lengthening the other but maintaining the same total duration of both clips. This is great as it does not interrupt subsequent footage and makes editing quicker.
*The rate stretch tool: The rate stretch tool is ideal for shortening and lengthening clips by their       speeds. So, if a clip needs to be lengthened to fit a larger space on the timeline, the frame rate can be reduced, making the clip last longer but being in slow motion.
*The razor Function: In my opinion, the razor is the most useful tool available. This lets you cut any point along the timeline and can split one clip into two shorter clips. They can then be moved around , clipped, changed to a different track or have effects added to them.
*The roll edit function: This tool shortens one clip and lengthens the other without changing their overall length so the rest of the timeline is not effected by this  editing technique.


Editing to match audio:
It is necessary to fit footage to audio. For example if you have a scene were there is music playing and the actors in the scene suddenly starts speaking, the audio of their voice should match when they move their mouths. It would look very wired if the actors mouth moves first then their voice comes after. Hopefully, in my project, the audio will match the video. In one of the scenes, there is a netball being shot into the basket. For that shot I had to make sure the audio of the ball going into the basket was right on point. I also had to make sure the background audio of the students doing PE was in place properly.


Colour Correction:
When you finally have your video to the right length, you might then realise that the colouring of the footage is wrong and is not to a near professional standard. Ranging from brightness and contrast to the three way colour corrector, all of these can be used to tweak the mood, change the look and alter the feeling of your video. There is a way to fix that, as there are many different colour correction tools in Adobe premiere. The 3-way colour corrector, is a tool that allows you to change the colouring of the footage. Each one of the circles represents different sections of the footage; shadows, midtones and highlights. With this, you can change the shadow colours whilst keeping the rest of the footage at the the default colour. In addition to this, you are able to select them all, by ticking the master box, which will allow you to move all three in the same direction at the same time. You can fix up all the colour on you video with this tool and make it look professional. As well as the three colour wheel corrector, there is also paint bucket, this like the three colour wheel corrector changed the colour of the video, but unlike it, it does not colour the entire clip, just the parts you have selected, if used properly, the effect can be very resourceful. Using video effects within adobe premiere is very effective, and the effects vary to all sorts of themed videos. Within my video I used basic effects, as I did not want my video to look too over-the-top, I used the three-way colour corrector, this was to make my video look more colourful and less dull.



Continuity:
The purpose of continuity editing is to smooth over the basic discontinuity of the editing process and to establish a logical coherence between shots. In order for the footage to look professional, continuity must me considered. Continuity helps the overall video to look professional, friendly and easy to watch for the viewers  Continuity errors can occur when cutting between any two pieces of footage. For example, if the subject in the shot was holding a mug of coffee with their right hand and then in the next shot it was in their left hand and then again in the final shit it was in their right hand again, that would be a continuity error. To avoid such errors, the editor should always watch which hand the mug in the most and only use the footage that the mug is always in one of the hands and cut the rest of it out. It is not easy to watch the movie/video for the audience, as they can pick out the mistakes made by the film-makers, it ruin the illusion of the film.

In my video, I had to conciser continuity a lot. For example, in the first shot of the video, there is a establishing shot of the whole school and it is snowing. This was a bit of a problem for use, as we had already shot the outdoor shots that were all point of view shots, going into and out of school. Because we shot these before the establishing shot, we had no snow then, taking this into consideration  I suggested that we re-shoot all of the outdoor POV shots. This would be so we would have show in all of the shots and there wouldn't be any continuity errors. Through out the production I had to take into account the continuity of everything.  


Narrative Flow:
Narrative flow in film making and story telling is especially important when trying to maintain and clear story. The definition of a narrative is "A chain of events in a cause-effect relationship, occurring in time and space. A narrative is not a random string of events." There are many aspects while filming that can have an negative impact on the narrative flow of the project. A continuity error like the ones mentioned above could confuse the audience. Or, also mentioned above simply noticing continuity errors could bring the audience out of the story and make the story less believable. But as well as all of that, the lack of explanation in a story could have a very strong impact on narrative flow; the audience may not understand what is going on or simply just get confused  But sometimes in films/videos to get a narrative flow, there is sometimes a narrator. The narrator is a specific subject who's purpose is to be telling us the story. The narrator may also be a character in the story (or a character who is a child in the story, but an adult narrator). A non-character narrator is the anonymous “voice of God.” This type is a matter of fact commentator who may be objective or subjective. Sometimes the narrator is not revealed until the end.
As I was making a promotional video, I didn't really need to think about the narrative flow of my video much, as it didn't really have a storyline, just a lot of different shots and interviews with people.



Effects:
Adding effects can contribute to the effectiveness of the overall video, they could make you video look much more  professional  You could do this with colour correction, cropping or special effects, but it is clear that there are a wide range of different effects to use on your project. Effects can be found under the "effects" tab and are categorised. Effects can come in many different forms and in many different ways. Despite that, not all effects are good, some can completely ruin the footage and the whole video as a result of that, so some should be avoided. Most effects can be dragged into the timeline from the effects tab. In the same way, they can be removed by simply selecting the effect and hitting delete on the keyboard.
In My project, our effects will mainly consist of colour correction. However, I may use certain effects to speed up some of my footage in order to make the footage to look more interesting. However special effects like CGI can be used in much larger projects like feature films, these can completely change the look of a film and whole, sets can be added by using effects.



Transitions: 
When editing, it can be beneficial to use transitions, this makes the cuts seem smoother or more interesting. In Adobe transitions can be found in the effects tap of the tool bar. Transitions include, cross fade, random bars, barn doors and many more. But in the industry now, using most of these transitions would considered
unprofessional as most of these are, old fashions and cheesy. As a result of this, a cross fade or straight cut is all that is necessary for cutting scenes.However at the beginning or end of a scene, it would be effective to  use the fade in our out from black or white in order to show that the section of film has ended. These can be useful to avoid abrupt endings or to gently ease the audience away from a particular theme into another. I would also advise to use the cross fade in or out in the audio as to avoid abrupt ending in interviews or a piece of music. The transitions can be dragged into the timeline from the effects tab. If you would need to remove the transition, you would just need to simply selecting the transition and hitting delete on the keyboard.
Through out my project I have used the cross fade transitions to end scenes and the fade in/out from black.



Titles:
There are two main types of titles: static titles and rolling titles. As the name suggests, static titles remain on the same position on the screen without changing position. As my project was in a documentary style video, I used static titles to display the names of those that were interviewed. They are effective since they do not change position and therefore, are easy to read.

Rolling titles don't remain in the same position. They can scroll vertically or horizontally on the screen. They are usually used at the end of a movie for the film credits. Rolling titles can be seen scrolling from the bottom to the top of a screen displaying a lot of names. But the downside of the rolling titles are that you can't usually read most of the names as they are going too fast. In my project, I used rolling titles for the credits at the end of my video, to name all the people that have helped make this project possible.

After doing all that, I then exported my video. I planed to do this using high quality settings to export my video, in order for my video to look professional.