22 Jun How Post-Production Makes Your Business’ Video Effective
Post-production involves everything that happens after video, and time-lapse images are captured. It’s the process that turns raw footage and images into finished results.
When you think about making a video or time-lapse sequence, most people imagine camera operators, sound recordists and lighting technicians working to capture images. While this part of the process is vital to the composition and storytelling of a compelling video production, it’s only part of the story.
Post-production involves a whole range of skills that refine the raw images into high-quality, polished results that have the level of impact on your audience that you demand. You may be surprised to know that post-production is often the most time-consuming part of a completed video production.
For business, no matter the type of video being created, the quality of post-production is critical to how your content is communicated.
Editing
The first stage of post-production is the edit. It involves selecting the scenes that best tell the story. It’s in with the good and out with the bad. It also consists of the assembly of the scenes chosen to maximise the storyline’s continuity, coherence, and impact.
Image Grading
Image grading is the process of adjusting the brightness, contrast, and colour balance of the images to create a consistent look and maximise the finished images’ quality. Grading has a significant impact on the feeling created. For business, grading is often done to create a consistent look and feel that is the right fit for the brand.
Sound Mix – Editing, Music and Effects
Sound is a more critical aspect of video than many people realise. Because we ‘watch’ video, we think most about how it looks. Still, the audio track carries much weight in the way an audience reacts to a video storyline.
The sound mix stage of post-production involves adjusting the quality and feel that’s communicated audibly. It also includes the addition of music and sound effects to create the final audio track.
Visual Effects and Titles
The rise of 3D animation and other computer-generated effects have transformed the art of motion pictures and video storytelling. Films like Star Wars and the Music Video industry drove the development of CGI that continues today.
To a lesser or greater extent, almost all video today includes some level of video effects. At its most simple, it involves the integration of titles into the finished video. Stepping up from titles is graphical effects that control how titles enter and exit the video, to graphic elements that draw the eye to particular aspects of the footage.
The most complex of all is computer-generated animation that is indistinguishable from ‘real’ footage. It is used to create illusions or generate images that are too complex or expensive to capture in camera.
In the End
For business, the quality of post-production makes a big difference to the final result. Whether a short explainer video, an interview, or a time-lapse video of an important project – quality post-production brings your brand and its stories to life in the most compelling way.
Case Study
The video below is a time-lapse sequence of the St Peters Interchange for Westconnex. Post-production involved:
- Producing the raw time-lapse video footage from over 70,000 frames and 1.8GB of image data captured
- The use of proprietary techniques and industry-leading software to filter images into a sequence that provide a balanced appearance and best communicated the action, based on luminance (brightness) level, site activity, rainy images, and night-time images
- Software that stabilised and ‘de-flickered’ the video
- The application of professional colour grading, image corrections, and pan and zoom effects
