In the video production world, the line: “we’ll fix it in post,” is a common utterance for field crews.
Make a mistake shooting out in the field and it’s no big deal, right? After all, we’ll just fix it in post.
Post-production is where mistakes are corrected, right?
Wrong.
Well, ok, I’ll be a little more generous. You CAN fix a lot of mistakes in post, but doing so is not cost-efficient or time productive. So for quality video production, you do not want to lean on post-production as the crutch phase where mistakes are cleaned up.
Post-production should be a planned, organized procedure that integrates all of your video pieces into a video whole.
Think of it this way. To white balance out in the field before shooting takes about two minutes. But if you forget that two-minute task, then get green video you try and fix in post, you might spend an hour fiddling with it and still end up with crummy looking video. In other words, lots of mistakes are not as easily fixable as you might like.
Even if you can fix it, chances are it will be time-consuming to do so. Time is money. So relying on post-production as a mistake-fixing-crutch is an incredibly inefficient and poor way to produce video. In a professional environment, this attitude is considered unacceptable, but it is still common.
Ideally, post-production is time spent enhancing your video, not time wasted scrambling to fix mistakes made in production. Shame on those lazy field crews! Trust me when I say that attitude will not be tolerated from any professional production employer.
Post-production is a sloooow process. It can easily take 4-5 hours to edit a 2-3 minute video if that video is at all complicated. Anything that time-consuming can get expensive. The last thing you want to deal with in post is a bunch of easily avoidable production mistakes.
I have seen lots of production folks get complacent about this issue. They take it for granted that a mistake in the field is no biggie, since good video editing software can correct most mistakes. OK, call me an old curmudgeon if you must, but that is a poor attitude. Do your best to shoot it right in the first place. If, for whatever reason, that is impossible, then you can be grateful that video editing software is available to cover your butt. But a poorly lit shot will never look good, no matter how much you tweak it in post. So please do not rely on video editing magic to cover up for poor shooting.
Thanks for reading Video Production Tips.
Lorraine Grula
FOOD FOR THOUGHT
- In your own words, describe why this article discourages the attitude “we’ll fix it in post?”
- How do you feel about the advice given in this article?
