Post-Production Decisions 1A

1a) Describe the most important post-production decisions you made for your different media productions and explain why these decisions were significant. Refer to a range of your examples in your answer to show how your skills in post-production developed over time.

Post-production refers to the work carried out on a project after the filming and recording has taken place, and is arguably one of the most important aspects in the production. This generally consists of the editing process of the recorded content. This could include, sound editing/creation, sequencing and selection, colour grading and general effects. My skill set in these areas has developed extensively in my transition from my Foundation to my Advanced Portfolio. 

Firstly, the project that i produced during my AS year was a short horror film opening. This was based around the kidnapping of an adolescent, after he was found by an entity trespassing on private property.  My advanced portfolio project however, was a narrative and performance-based music video for the song 'Festival' by icelandic band Sigur Ros. This was based around a drummer in a post-apocalyptic wilderness, who discovers a drum kit and uses is it as a form of release and escape from the monotony of his everyday life. Throughout the post-production stage of both projects, there were various decisions made within our editing platform, Premiere Pro CC. 

In order to show continuity and to create a sombre tone throughout our film opening, we attempted to colour grade our resultant footage. When doing this we applied an adjustment layer, which is a filter that can be applied to the film as a whole, rather than each individual clip. We used the three-way colour wheel, which allowed us to adjust the tone of the shadows, mid-tones, and highlights. In contrast , when editing our music video we paid much more attention to our colour grading process. Rather than using an adjustment layer in order to adjust the colours of the project as a whole, we graded each clip individually. This allowed us to adapt to the different lighting present in each clip, and gave us more accuracy and consistency when correcting the colours in order for them to match seamlessly with one another. To further enhance this specificity, as well as using the three-way colour wheel, we used the Colour Balance tool, which gave us more precision when editing the highlights, mid-tones and shadows. In addition, the brightness and contrast facility was used in our second project to correct exposure and further aid continuity between clips. When using this tool, the mask device allowed us to highlight particular areas within the frame that needed to be altered.

Additionally, both of our projects incorporated movement that was implemented after production. I believe that the movement used in my first year project was rather forced due to the fact that we hadn't included any camera movement during production. Through feeling that the product was too static as well as getting audience feedback, we decided to included artificial movement in post-production which allowed us to gain a sense of fluidity. In order to achieve a natural movement at the speed that we required, we utilised key framing which allowed us to alter the position, direction and speed the movement took place. In contrast, in our second year we felt that it would be more effective to introduce movement such as tilts, pans and tracks during the production stage. After seeing the success of the acquired zooms in post-production during the first year we felt that it would be beneficial to implement this facility in our second year music video. Also, in the second year we developed a further knowledge on artificial movement through exploring the Warp Stabiliser which allowed us to maintain a steady transition of movement during a shot. When applying this, the tool analysed the background and foreground of each frame, slightly warping the footage and removing any movement anomalies. This shows that we have amended the mistakes that we made in the first year.

Furthermore, we also implemented a variety of post-production effects to change the aesthetic of the footage. Due to the genre and narrative of our first production, we utilised and experimented with grain in order to give the CCTV segment an authentic look. In order to implement this affect we applied noise to the clip. We also split the screen into 4 different segments 

Captive

Experimented with grain

4-way split

timecode

FX e.g. cut out

Sound/volume editing

Cutting - pace

Ident - After Effects

Titles

Festival

Slow motion
Colours
Warp Stabilisation
Timing/Pacing
Matching footage on each camera

wide screen

Sound editing - louder as the helicopter gets closer