With more people and businesses making the switch to digital AV equipment, it only makes sense that anyone seeking a job or wanting to grow their own company into the video production industry should have an appreciation of how the entire process works. While this field is very broad, this article will provide you with a general overview of the digital video production process.
An important thing to remember about the digital video production process is that just because a person can do it, it doesn’t mean that they can do it well. For example, it seems many people tend to overlook the pre-production preparation of the process and want to jump directly to the production aspects. The pre-production process allows time for all of the potential problems to be worked out by the people working on the video, as well as the video design and layout.
Once all of the pre-production planning and preparations are finished, the next step is production. There are actually two parts to this section of production; the audio and the video. If you film something and need a narrator to guide the story, you will have to invest more time in recording the audio that will later be laid over the video to make the whole story flow seamlessly.
Although the video side of the process is quite self-explanatory, this is also the time when many filmmakers neglect to take advantage of are the actors and work on only a single take. As a rule, if a scene is not how you envisaged, it should be reshot as a priority. This will not only save time and effort, but it will also reduce the amount of money that is spent.
When all of the fun stuff is completed, the dirty work begins. Editing the film is the toughest part of the production process, as the editors have to lay out scene after scene in order to make sure the film appears in the correct order. For example, if one scene was shot before anything else in the video but it’s the fifteenth out of thirty-fifth scene in the script, it has to be worked in in such a way that it appears natural. This is also the part where any audio that shouldn’t be in the video is cut out, as well as adding any extra effects and cutting down scenes in order to maintain an ideal runtime (some of which may be mandatory). This is all done using advanced computer programs to help simplify the process.
Finally, once all of the editing is finished and the filmmakers agree on the look of the video, a final cut is made that is known as the master copy from which all the duplicate copies will be made. The reason for copying from the master is that with each generation of copies, the quality reduces. There is also generally a duplicate master that is created to protect against any unexpected mishaps. This duplicate is a direct copy from the master, and will be the highest quality copy that is possible to make.
Tags: basics of video production, digital video production, production process, video design, video production industry