Post PRoduction / Editting
Where Everything Comes Together
When pre-production and production are done well, then post-production is where the magic comes alive with creative editing focus on storytelling. The goal is to not only make sure the video looks and sounds good, but it also must keep the audience entertained to reduce abandonment. Our speciality is is creating memorable moments through heart, humor, and/or storytelling.
There are a lot of “rules” conventionally followed in the film industry both during shooting and in the editing room to maintain spatial sense in the 2D medium of video. Breaking these rules can be artistic, but in a fairly straightforward advertisement, it’s easy to confuse viewers or make them feel unsettled if you don’t stick to these standards. You may have heard of the 180-degree rule, in which two characters in a scene should maintain the same left/right relationship to each other. When using shot/reverse shot to show close-ups of their faces, you must stay to one side of an imaginary line running from one character to another, or your audience won’t feel a sense of orientation within the space. TikTok is a great place to see this rule unknowingly violated. Kubrick films are a great place to see this rule violated deliberately in order to create a strategic unsettled feeling.
Quality sound design instantly gives any production an aura of professionality and therefore legitimacy, but it is one of the most neglected areas of post-production. Neurologists have found that when audio closely matches video, the brain registers a higher level of memory encoding. For example—is there a busy highway in the background of your shot? Good microphones will filter out that noise during shooting, but if you don’t add highway noise of some kind back in, it’s going to be subconsciously incongruous to your viewers. Same with an actor’s footsteps down a hallway, the creak of an opening door, and other ambient noise filtered out during a shoot. Many productions benefit from background music, especially if it’s on-brand, or even part of a brand’s specific sonic branding.
Like sound, coloring is a mostly subconscious indicator of quality to the average viewer that makes a huge difference but is often overlooked. Once somebody points out a poorly color-matched production, you can’t “unsee” it. We start with color correction, making sure each shot matches one another, which can be a huge challenge if your production contains different settings or scenes. Recurring elements like hair color, color of a car, etc., must stay consistent from scene to scene, even if you have to make other changes to brightness, white balance or contrast. We can attest to the fact that this is a delicate balance and takes a trained eye! After individual scenes are color corrected, we use color grading on the work as a whole to achieve the desired stylistic end result determined by your campaign goals and brand imaging as a whole.
Arguably the most important part of post-production is encoding, because incorrectly formatted video may play poorly or not at all. Potential customers draw all sorts of conclusions about your abilities as a business if your ad won’t even play right. With new social media platforms popping up all the time and the existing platforms constantly changing their specifications, this can be difficult territory to navigate if you’re not constantly staying up-to-date like we are. Message us now to find out how professional editing can elevate your content to the next level.