Post Production

For my Post Production I have decided to pick Vegas Pro 13.00 as my editing software of choice as it's my personal favourite to use and is more than good enough for this kind of video.

I have a wide range of pro plug in tools installed which I don't have access to when I use premier at college with backs up my decision further.

First Step:

I start the post production by organizing all acquired footage and placing them in their respective folders. I like organizing footage into different folders for the different shooting locations.

I then watch all the footage I have several times over and evaluate how good my footage is and also to get a sense of what i have to play with during editing.

Second Step:

I then import all the footage into my project file on sony vegas and start dragging the first clips I want to edit on my timeline.

Third Step:

I start cutting the footage and building up the film. I do not add any colour correction or other visual effects at this stage. This step is strictly putting all shots in sequence. I might change the velocity of shots at this stage.

I also add a black bar overlay on the top layer of the timeline. I want to use a cinematic black bar for my film because my film is focused on providing a cinematic experience.

I will also add the sound at this stage and start reducing noise when necessary. I also add sound effects and music which means that I can preview the sequences of the film and see how well the story telling works without having spent time on visual effects which allows me to make adjustments without having regrets about wasting an hour on one effect that doesn't fit in with the video.

Fourth Step:

I start colour correcting my footage once all the footage is sequenced accordingly. I use the Red Giant Magic Bullet Looks plug in for my colour correction because it offers a wide range of tools to help me enhance the narrative and visual aspect of the film.

I start the colour correcting by increasing the saturation to give the scene more vibrant colour and add RGB curves to correct the footage if necessary. I make the footage either warm or cool coloured depending on the narrative. Finally, I use the 3-way Colorista to edit the highlights, midtones and shadows of the footage. After using Magic Bullet looks I will apply several other effects to enhance the colours of a scene and add flares or glow.

Fifth step:

I add remaining special effects such as overlays, anamorphic flares, motion blur, chroma distortions, morphing effects and many more. Keyframing the effects is essential during this step.

For this shot here I panned far into the footage and panned out as the shot progresses. I added a kaleidoscope effect and added blur and chroma distortions around the outer parts of the screen to enhance the scene.

Sixth Step:

Once I edited all my film and I'm happy with the way the film plays out. I will pre-render the footage, use the optimal codec to export the file which would be an MP4 in this case and start fully rendering which took 3 hours.

I then re-watch the film several times over to spot any mistakes with the sound or image and correct them live inside the program as I'm watching the film.