Post Production
by Sam Mestman
There is a lot of money riding on the fact that you don’t have a clue as to what you’re doing in post production. How do I know this? Because post production, workflow, and color are how I make my living. If there is one thing I can legitimately call myself an expert on, it is the post-production side of the indie film experience. In fact, I wish I could unlearn half the things I know, if for no other reason than the fact somewhere along the line I became a total fucking nerd who actually cares about Gamma settings, color spaces, hard drive speeds, video cards, and broadcast standards. I literally make myself nauseous when I hear myself talking sometimes. Anyway, It is my belief that somewhere there is a Wizard of OZ of Post Production that sits around all day and comes up with new annoying formats for people to learn, bugs that will totally screw you if you’re not aware of them, and ways for film festivals to completely butcher the projection and sound of your movie. The Wizard of Post runs a post house somewhere and wants to convince you to spend $40,000 to do a 4k digital master of your new RED movie that you will then find out can’t actually be projected at 99% of all theaters and film festivals in the country. He wants to bill you at $400/hour to color correct your movie using Scratch, Lustre, Pablo, or any of the other setups that don’t have much better functionality than Apple Color (which comes with Final Cut Pro). He will talk at length about calibrated projectors, video scopes, and most importantly, he will talk about why the setup that YOU had planned on using will not work. He might even be right…. but usually, he just has overhead to maintain. WARNING: do not continue reading any of this if you don’t want to become a total nerd.
Seriously. Stop reading now.
Okay… you’ve been warned.
POST PRODUCTION Resources
Okay,here are the places I go to find Post information on a regular basis. Some of these will be obvious, and some are books that are hard to find. However, each of these have taught me a lot of stuff. At the end of the day, there’s too much annoying post crap out there to list all the specific places and articles I’ve found over the years to solve my various problems… look at these as your go-to’s. if something really gets in your way… start googling. Eventually, you’ll figure it out.
- www.indiepostLA.com – I’ll just come right out and say it, this is a bit of shameless self promoting. On the other hand, if you hire me (www.indiepostLA.com is my personal site) to do your post, you’ll be glad you found out about me. At the very least, even if you don’t have a lot of money for post, get in touch with me and I’ll do my best to point you in the right direction and help you out any way I can. And if you want to save thousands and have your movie still look awesome, you should definitely give me call. There isn’t much I haven’t seen and not much I haven’t done when it comes to post, and you’ll be in good hands.
- www.fcp.co – This is the best, most frequently updated Final Cut site I’ve ever found. Great site, great forum, great layout. Best FCP site on the internet, and the only one you really need to know about.
- www.taoofcolor.com - This is Patrick Inhofer’s site. It’s a site for PAID color correction tutorials (I’d highly recommend them if you’re serious about color, though). However, he also has an amazing FREE newsletter you should sign up for if you’re into color. It’s weekly, it’s awesome, and has tons of useful links. He’s one of the good guys. I’d really recommend purchasing his tutorials if you’re interested in learning how to do Color work.
- www.philiphodgetts.com - One of the smartest guys in post who has a great blog. He’s also got a really good podcast you can check out here.
- www.kenstone.net - Pretty much an encyclopedia of useful FCP articles.
- www.provideocoalition.com – This site used to be great but is starting to suck now, as they pretty much are owned by Adobe, and run WAY too many “sponsored” articles.
- www.reduser.net – I’m sure most of you know about this place, but I’m listing it anyway. Bottom line is that despite all the rampant fanboyism, it’s still the best place to get your basic RED questions answered. I can almost always find answers to obscure workflow questions (for example, what are the best Compressor settings for a 2:1 dvd) by searching around on here.
- www.lafcpug.org – This is the Los Angeles Final Cut Pro user group. They have a monthly meetup where they have demos, tutorials, and presentations from the various players in the Post Production realm. Also, their website is pretty helpful and informative with a bunch of reviews and features on various post related things. You should also sign up for their newsletter as there’s all kinds of great tutorials to go through.
- www.applemotion.net - This is Mark Spencer from Ripple training’s site. There’s some cool stuff here for the Motion centric editor. Also, highly recommend his Apple Motion tutorials from Peachpit and Ripple training.
- www.editorsguild.com – If you want to join the Los Angeles editors guild… go here. It’s kind of an annoying, beaurocratic process… but, well, if you want that union money… you gotta do it.
- www.creativecow.com – This is the default pro video forum and message board. Chances are, if you’ve had some sort of video related problem, there’s a post about it on here. Only problem with these guys is that many of the answers tend to be very unhelpful… as in “spend more money on better gear”… and also, like most every forum, half the posters on there have absolutely no fucking clue what they’re talking about but like to sound like they do. On the other hand, you can learn a lot of stuff here as well… just take all forums with a grain of salt.
- www.hdforindies.com – This used to be number one… but Mike Curtis mostly retired this blog, and now only occasionally writes for provideocoalition and macworld and then updates this periodically with those articles. I only really list this here because I wish he’d start writing it again. However, I learned more DIY post stuff from this blog than anywhere else. If you’re a nerd, and want to kill a day, spend it reading his old posts. You’ll learn a ton, but most importantly, you’ll get an idea of how much there is out there that you don’t know. When I first found his site a few years ago, it all read like gibberish to me. Now I understand it all. This is somewhat sad.
- www.apple.com – yes, this is sort of a joke, but the forums here are pretty good too as long as you’re working in an apple (Final cut based) platform… just click on support, then software, then whatever pro program you’re looking for more info on, and there’ll be a forum for it which will usually have the answer you’re looking for.
- www.digitalcinemasociety.com – Some good articles and videos in the “tech tips” and “new streaming” sections.
- Color and Mastering for Digital Cinema by Glenn Kennel – Do you really want to understand what all these color space and gamma settings are all about? Buy this book. It will make you angry, it will make you sleepy, and parts of it will not make any sense (unless you reread them a few times), and not only that, it’s a really fucking expensive book…. BUT, I can say that after six aggravating months of googling and trying to understand all this crap… this book more or less finally spelled it all out for me. And while I think most of these standards are ridiculous and inaccessible to the common man… well, at least I know what they are now and why they exist.
Recommended Paid Books/Video Tutorials
- www.peachpit.com – Here’s how I mostly learned how to do EVERYTHING. Their final cut studio training series was perfect for me. Apple doesn’t give you printed manuals anymore, and the peachpit tutorials became my manuals for Motion, Color, Soundtrack Pro, Compressor, and DVD studio pro, etc. They also sell a whole bunch of Advanced editing and workflow books (news and sports, etc.). They release fewer books than they used to, but I used to buy them all, and between everything, I’ve pretty much developed as complete a post skill set as you can have these days. Supposedly, the Ripple training series is really good as well, but I like these guys, mostly because their books are so complete, and you get dvd lessons along with the books. QUICK RECOMMENDATION: The Amazon price is WAY lower than the prices on their website… so, find the book you want, then go buy it on Amazon.
- Ripple Training – Tons of great video tutorials (if you’re more of a visual learner) that’ll teach you the ins and outs of just about all the post software the indie filmmaker tends to use. A little pricier than book versions, but one cool thing about them is you can download them as podcasts and play them on your Ipad which you can bring to freelance gigs and remind yourself how to do things quickly.
- www.taoofcolor.com - If you want to learn DaVinci Resolve, go here and take his master class. He also has an amazing FREE newsletter you should sign up for if you’re into color. It’s weekly, it’s awesome, and has tons of useful links. Also, he’s got some great tutorials, and, in general, is one of the good guys. I’d really recommend purchasing his tutorials if you’re interested in learning how to do real Color work.
- Steve Hullfish – Want to be a good colorist? Buy these two books by Steve Hullfish “The art and technique of color Correction” and “Color Correction for Video, Second Edition”. Between these books, you will understand the how’s and why’s of everything color related, and will demystify the process for you. It’s all you need to know… well, that and some practice.
- www.fxphd.com - They have tutorials/classes on just about any piece of software that anyone is actually using in the industry.
- Reducation - go here for official info on how to take Red’s class at Red Studios in Hollywood.
Some Free Tutorials worth checking out
- How to build a Pro Edit Suite by Walter Biscardi - I can’t recommend this article highly enough.
- The WMM free tutorials page - we’ve been gradually collecting ones we like on the website, and many are post related.
- macbreak studio - This is where the free stuff from the ripple training guys goes to. All kinds of good stuff here.
- 3 hour long Davinci Resolve workshop - This is long… but very cool.
- free 15 part FCPX color grading tutorial
Now here are some pages covering a few other post-productions topics:
