{"id":106,"date":"2010-03-02T13:04:43","date_gmt":"2010-03-02T18:04:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/?p=106"},"modified":"2010-03-02T13:04:43","modified_gmt":"2010-03-02T18:04:43","slug":"save-some-of-your-budget-for-post","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/2010\/save-some-of-your-budget-for-post\/","title":{"rendered":"Save Some of Your Budget for Post"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sounds obvious, right? Of course you\u2019ll save some money for post! You need a rough cut. You need a fine cut. You need color correction<\/strong>, motion graphics<\/strong>, effects <\/strong>and titles<\/strong>. You need audio cleaning and mixing<\/strong>. Then, when the show is all done, everything looks and sounds great; you are thrilled to see your script has leapt off the page. Your directorial vision has been fulfilled beyond your wildest expectations, but you\u2019re still not done. Now you need a way to present your film to festivals<\/a> and distributors and nothing less than a kick ass DVD design and package will do. That\u2019s a lot of work to be done, and people like to get paid when they work, so of course you\u2019ll have money to pay them.
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Don't let your project fall apart on the final step!<\/p><\/div>\n

Well it sounds obvious, but a lot of times it isn\u2019t. At all. I can\u2019t even begin to tell you how many people come to me hoping I will post their project for a lower than a super ultra low budget cut rate because they are broke.<\/p>\n

Making a film is a massive undertaking and investment. Getting from point A to point Z takes a lot of time, energy and resources. Unless you are working in full on guerilla style<\/strong>, you can\u2019t do everything yourself. You probably don\u2019t have all the skills<\/strong>, and even if you do, there are not nearly enough hours in the day, week, month or year. You need help. Lots of it. Unfortunately, a vast majority of the time you need to pay people <\/strong>to work for you.<\/p>\n

Most writer\/director types will do a lot of the preproduction<\/strong>. The good thing is that you can do it over a long period of time, so there\u2019s not usually a million details to deal with in any given week. Then as production nears, maybe you will bring on a producer or line producer to wrangle some of the more difficult details and pick up some of the workload. But most preproduction isn\u2019t rocket science. You need to make phone calls and send emails and nail down simple details about crew, gear and locations. There\u2019s not much you need to know\u2014even as a first time director\u2014to make most of it happen. Doing as much preproduction as you can is good. You save lots of money<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

However, when production <\/strong>rolls around, forget it. All that money you saved by doing the prepro doesn\u2019t matter. Take a deep breath, be honest with yourself and admit it\u2014you\u2019re going to be over budget. Something always goes wrong or something gets left out. You forget that the weekly rate doesn\u2019t apply to a piece of gear, or you can\u2019t find cheap meals at a certain location on the day when your cast just happens to be triple the regular size, or you simply forget to include something in the budget that is so obvious you want to beat yourself senseless. No matter what, your money is going to disappear<\/strong> with amazing speed.<\/p>\n

But here\u2019s the thing\u2014no matter how much of your budget you spend in production, you still need to do post. Post <\/strong>is intense and time consuming and as much as you want to believe it isn\u2019t the case, good editors, sound mixers and colorists are going to cost money. They are keys, as vital to the project as a good DP.<\/p>\n

Here is a story I love to tell, not because it makes me look good, but because it really shows how vital a good editor is to any project. Recently, I recut a feature that a first time director had edited. It looked okay. It sounded okay. He knew how to use the software. He understood the basic principals of editing. What he didn\u2019t know how to do was to add finesse, style and rhythm to the show. He didn\u2019t know how powerful a cutaway or a pause could be when presented at the right time, or how much speeding up or slowing down a scene could add to the drama and tension.<\/p>\n

He tried to get his in-laws to watch the film a few times. At ten minutes in, they always came up with an excuse to stop watching\u2014dinner needed to get started or the lawn needed watering. They never said it and probably didn\u2019t even understand it themselves, but the movie just didn\u2019t grab them, even if it looked \u201cokay.\u201d Fast forward a few months later \u2013 I was done recutting it, the in-laws sat down, watched the film and really enjoyed it.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t do \u201cmuch.\u201d I didn\u2019t reinvent the film or change the story or gut the script. I tweaked the cuts a few frames here or there, changed out some takes for better ones, made some split edits, added some cutaways, shortened a few scenes that had repetitive material, removed one scene that had no real payoff and moved another scene earlier in the show where it had more dramatic impact. The director who did the original cut understood the software and could easily have accomplished all of these tasks, had he been aware enough to see that they needed doing. And this, simply, is the difference between an editor and someone who knows how to edit<\/strong>\u2014not only putting shots one after the next, but assembling them in a way that adds power, energy, tension and drama.<\/p>\n

So save some money for post. A great edit, sound mix, graphics package, DVD, etc. are going to give your project the pro shine that it needs. A good DP is only going to get you so far<\/strong>. If the audience doesn\u2019t sit down and get grabbed by the film because the pace is off, the sound is muddy or the color is whacked out, all the money, time and effort expended will be for nothing. Don\u2019t be afraid to invest a little more money<\/strong> to make sure that every part of your vision is fulfilled, not just the production.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Sounds obvious, right? Of course you\u2019ll save some money for post! You need a rough cut. You need a fine cut. You need color correction, motion graphics, effects and titles. You need audio cleaning and mixing. Then, when the show is all done, everything looks and sounds great; you are thrilled to see your script […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[140,141,37,142,139],"class_list":["post-106","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","tag-budget","tag-editing","tag-filmmaking","tag-mixing","tag-post-production"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=106"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":110,"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/106\/revisions\/110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=106"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=106"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.acefest.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=106"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}