Things to know about Video Post-Production

In an age where videos are getting more and more popular, the demand for video production is increasing here in Singapore. There are more and more video production companies here opening to cater to this demand. Making a video is not as simple as it seems as it still requires a certain skillset and flair to create a video that people will actually watch. There are many different stages of video production and all are equally important. Some agencies may only specialise in certain aspects of the production but most will cover all aspects.

The final stage of any video production process is called the post-production. At this stage you will have already captured all the essential scenes for your final video. The most basic way to describe what post production is, is basically putting together everything you have shot into a final video. There are quite a few things to pay attention to during this final phase as it can make or break your video.

Rough Cut

This step is called the rough cut and it is essentially putting together a visual of all the content which you have filmed. You will need to go through all the footage, categorise them and select which ones to use for your final video. There are many different softwares which you can use for your editing from Adobe Premiere to Final Cut Pro. By having a rough version of your video you can visualise how it will turn out at the end. This will just be the beginning of the post video production step and the main focus will just be arrangement of the visuals.

Picture Lock

Once the selection of the footage scenes are finalise it will be locked in place and therefore this process is called picture lock. This means that all the visuals are already selected and the process is ready to be moved into the next stage. The best practice during this stage is to watch the video with voice over and music you want with it to see whether if they fit. At his time you also have the flexibility to adjust the films to make sure you achieve the look and feel and sync together with the sound mix.

Sound Mixing

At this stage of the post video production, you can start with the sound mixing. This is where you will edit all the different audio tracks into your video. The few audio track elements which you can play around with are dialogues, sound effects, music, and voice overs. Each of these different sound elements will give a different feel towards your final video. For voice overs and sound effects, you may want to record them separately. There may also be different versions of audio tracks you should record during the shooting day for your dialogues so that you can minimise the unwanted background noises.

Visual Effects

Depending on the type of video you are going for, this step of the post video production process may be skipped. But essentially, visual effects are additional effects you want to add to your video to give it a certain feel towards it. When done correctly, you would have already included the kind of visual effects to include during which shots. A common type of visual effects that most would use are animations. Most of the time however, many people just use simple basic animations like fades and filters which are commonly found in most of the video editing software.

While also working on the visual effects you can also make sure that the colour of the videos are correct to the type of video that you are creating. For example, if you creating a flashback scene most of the time it will be black and white and people understand that. Another way to do that is a transition frame where the flashback is mentioned on screen.

Ending

Finally, once everything is completed you may also want to decide whether there should be an end card at the end of your video. It is a concept similar to end credits which you find in all movies. The end cards found on digital or social videos are similar although it could be made much simpler. The more common end cards are for promoting the brand or purpose of the video.

With all these elements completed properly you will have a video that is ready for posting and viewing. Although this process can seem quite complicated. If you follow this process, the composition of your video will be much better. The best way is to make sure that you start on the right step at the early stage of your video production and if everything is done right, you will have very little to no problems on your video.