Welcome to the third and final part of the Video Production Process Unpacked series. In Part 1 of the series, Video Pre-Production, I chatted about how to find inspiration for your video, brainstorm ideas, decide on an audience and how to write a script and design a storyboard.
Check out Part 1 here: Video Pre-Production. Part 2 is all about the video shoot, lighting, cameras, lenses and more! Check out Part 2 here: Video Production.
In this post, I delve into the Post-Production Stage of the Video Production Process.
The Post-Production Stage of the Video Production Process:
So, you’ve done all the hard work, you planned your video, shot all your footage and now it’s time to put it all together.
The post-production stage of the video production process takes place after you have done your filming and it is where you arrange and edit all your footage in a video editing program to produce your envisioned final video masterpiece.
Sweet! Let’s jump into the actionable nitty-gritty!
Editing computers.
Before we begin though I just want to talk about computers; professional video editing software requires hardware that can handle large video files. You can totally get away with editing simple videos on a smartphone or a basic laptop but if you’re serious about video production you should really invest in something a bit more powerful, especially if you are thinking about working with 4K footage.
Try to buy the best machine that you can afford. For video editing your machine should have at least 16GB RAM, a 480GB SSD Hard Drive and either an NVIDIA or AMD Graphics card with 4GB memory. For the processor, invest in a multi-core Intel i7 or i9 processor, or an AMD Ryzen 7 or AMD Ryzen 9 processor. Gaming laptops are great options for video editing, especially if you need to be mobile.
Editing software.
To edit your videos, you need specialised video editing software. Professional video editing software includes Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro X and DaVinci Resolve. The program you ultimately decide to use will depend on your operating system and budget.
Premiere Pro has become the industry standard and works on both Mac and PC, this is premium software and is bundled with an Adobe Creative Cloud subscription that includes other applications like After Effects for motion graphics and Audition for audio editing.
Final Cut Pro X is only available on Mac, it is a standalone application and includes powerful motion graphics and audio editing functionality.
DaVinci Resolve has a free version that is available for both Mac and PC, the app is known for its powerful colour grading functionality and includes built-in motion graphics and audio editing functionality. For more advanced features you can upgrade to DaVinci Resolve Studio, the paid app also includes lifetime updates.
Other video editing programs include Filmora, Blender, Kdenlive, iMovie and Windows Movie Maker. I use Adobe Premiere Pro and After Effects as part of Adobe Creative Cloud for all my video projects.
Video production folder structure.
Cool! So now that we have the technical stuff out the way lets get to the meat of post-production. As with every major project or anything worth doing for that matter, it is always good to have a system.
Having a system will greatly speed up your workflow as you don’t have to scramble around to get organised every time you create a video. I use the following simple folder structure for every video project to keep everything organised:
VIDEO PROJECT:
- PREMIERE PROJECT
- AFTER FX PROJECT
- FOOTAGE
- Camera 1 Footage
- Camera 2 Footage
- Camera 3 Footage
- Photos and Images
- Motion Elements
- AUDIO
- Voice Over
- Shoot Audio
- Music
- SFX
- Audio Mixing
- SCRIPT
- STORYBOARD
- RESOURCES
I save my main edit in the PREMIERE PROJECT folder and my motion graphics project file in the AFTER FX PROJECT folder. If you use different software, you can just rename these folders to the weapons of your choice.
All the footage from the shoot gets saved in sub-folders in the FOOTAGE folder (if I shoot on different types of cameras, I will use the camera names to sort the footage, for example, ‘Canon 7D Footage’, ‘GoPro Footage’, ‘Sony Footage’ etc).
I usually save layered Photoshop and Illustrator files to be used in my After Effects Project in the Motion Elements sub-folder and save photos and images like logos in the Photos and Images sub-folder.
I save all my audio-related files AUDIO folder. The Voice Over sub-folder contains audio files recorded specifically for narration. Audio recorded to an external audio recorder during the shoot gets saved in the Shoot Audio sub-folder. Music and Sound Effects gets saved in the Music and SFX sub-folders, respectively. Edited and mixed audio files get saved in the Audio Mixing sub-folder.
The script goes into the SCRIPT folder and the storyboard goes into the STORYBOARD folder. The RESOURCES folder is for anything else that relates to the project like project briefs and other useful information.
Editing your video.
Excellent! The logical next step now is to copy your footage onto your hard drive and import it into your editing program.
You can follow the same folder structure above to organise your footage into bins inside your video project file. In your editing program, you will create sequences or timelines that you will use to arrange and edit your footage into your final video.
I like to start editing by creating rough edits or rough cuts of all my footage. I will create a timeline for B-roll footage (cut-away shots used for context and visual storytelling) and trim out useless bits like shaky shots or blurred footage. For interview edits, I start by syncing all audio and video files from the shoot on another timeline and cut out everything that I don’t need. By creating rough cuts, you immerse yourself in the project and start getting a sense of how shots can flow together.
Next, I will grab my script, storyboard and shot list and use them as guides to help weave my edit together.
This is a great time to start thinking about music, there are many audio libraries available on the internet where you can licence music for your videos. Audio libraries to consider include Artlist, PremiumBeat, Audio Jungle, Music Bed and Epidemic Sound, all with varying degrees of affordability, YouTube also has an extensive free audio library.
Once I’m happy with my edit I will add opening and closing motion graphics and titles, do some colour grading, add the music, adjust the audio levels and finally, hit render.
And there you have it, the Video Production Process in a nutshell. We have covered quite a bit and this should be enough to get you started, that said there is also still a lot more to learn, which is awesome!
