Marketing

5 Tips To Becoming an Expert in Video Post Production

If you are familiar with video production, you may already know that post-production is the final and most important stage of the whole process. By the time you reach this stage, you would have already completed pre-production and have likely just wrapped up the production of your epic film or video.

Want to make sure your video post-production is done perfectly too? Are you interested in learning how professional video production companies do it? Here are five tips that you should pay attention to before publishing your video online or sharing it with your audience.

Tip #1: Choose the Right Video Editing Software

Choosing the right video editing software is one of the most crucial decisions you will ever make for pulling this off. Depending on your preferences, prior experience, and budget, you will need to pick from a bunch of top video editing software like Adobe Premiere Pro, Final Cut Pro, Avid Media Composer, or DaVinci Resolve.

But the list doesn’t end here, and we advise that you speak to other video editors around you who might be able to give you a better insight, depending on your circumstances.

Tip #2: Keep the clips short

Try not to go above 7 seconds per clip unless you really need to. What’s the reason behind this? The average attention span of humans is now shrinking at a great pace, thanks to social media and smartphones [SOURCE].

Also, if there’s a lot of variance in the clip lengths, it may change the overall mood of your film. Keep in mind the effect you want to have on your audience and highlight only those clips that are actually important for the message you are looking to convey.

Tip #3: Define the storyline and do the “Picture Lock”

Remember that as a video editor you are also a storyteller! Post production is so much more than just cutting footage and putting clips together. It’s an opportunity to embark with your audience on a visual journey that tells them an influential story.

So, once you have put together a rough cut of your video, you should proceed to prepare a picture lock that follows the flow of the story. What’s meant by picture lock? It’s the stage in the video post-production process where all of the clips have been locked properly into the right order.
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tocUK7CNA2Y]

Tip #4: Choosing the right kind of music means everything

When editing video, it’s easy to focus way too much on the visuals and not on the audio. Of course, this could be a major mistake. If we are to believe one of the most innovative and creative directors in the world, David Lynch: “Films are 50% visual and 50% sound.” In fact, if you want to tell the difference between a Hollywood blockbuster and an indie film, just close your eyes and listen to the background tracks.

If you are just starting out with video production, try to find good royalty-free music online. Needless to say, you need to spend some money in order to get the best quality background audio tracks for your movie, but for film0-makers on a budget there are also lots of other options.

Tip #5: Use high-end Graphics and add titles

Once you have cut and edited your clips and added the right kind of music in the background, it’s time to add the necessary graphics and titles. Once again, this will depend hugely on the type of video you are producing and for what reason.

High-quality graphics are slightly tricky to create all by yourself. This is why it makes sense to look for them online and purchase them from reliable vendors such as GraphicRiver or VideoHive, especially if you have a limited budget and there are not many video editors on your team.

The last step is usually adding the title or end cards. Just like filmmakers use these towards the end of their movies to give credit to everyone who has worked on creating it, similarly, you can place end cards in digital videos too. Having said this, they’re not “necessary”, but are always a nice addition if want your viewers to be aware of your brand’s presence.

Here is usually where you will add any video animations too, but this is a very project specific task, and usually requires a separate animator as video animation are not easy nor cheap.

Bonus Tip: Export the video in commonly used web video formats

Have you considered the fact that your videos will be viewed on mobile devices, computers, or even smart TVs? It’s important to know that you need to export the video in the right formats for the web. As a thumb rule, try exporting a video in the highest quality possible while having the smallest possible file size.

Final Thoughts

With these tips in mind, you can ensure that your video is well-received and much-appreciated by your audience – since that’s the final goal, anyways.

If this part of the video production phase still seems overly complicated to you, that’s because it actually is! In case you don’t have the required skills or expert team members to take care of it all, try looking to look for external help.

It’s always a nice idea to hire local video production companies, instead of churning out a low-quality video just because you didn’t have all the required resources. However, not everyone’s budget will stretch that far, so we hope that this guide has given you enough of an idea to go out and post-produce your own videos and films.

As a UK based company, we have always held a preference to use post-production companies from London or Brighton as these are the creative hubs within the UK. But if you are looking for the best video production companies in your area the best place to start your search is usually YouTube. This way you can find the style of video that suits your brand’s messages.

If you have any questions, please ask below!