Every video production company should have a check list that ensures they don’t forget anything after a shoot. Some tasks are simple but if forgotten they can prove disastrous. Check out our list below and comment with any post-production must-do’s of your own!
Here at Waves Media we’ve found that following a few simple steps can really help your post-production workflow. Take a look and tell us what you think.
1. Upload footage to multiple drives
This is the first thing you should do once you’ve finished filming. Uploading your footage to multiple drives lets you have access to it from multiple places. You can go ahead and work with footage from one drive, and have a backup incase anything happens to it on another. Speaking of backups…
2. Backup your backups, and back that backup up too.
Having redundancies may seem like overkill, but there’s no getting your footage back once it gets lost. The more backups you have the safer off you’ll be just incase something happens.
3. Review the footage
You might have been the one to do all the filming, but there is a big difference between watching footage on a monitor and watching it on a larger screen away from the busy atmosphere of a shoot. You catch new details you might have missed before and as you become more familiar with what you have you’ll be able to make better use out of your footage both in your current project, and maybe more to come. And of course, you want to make sure it all came out ok!
4. Don’t format memory cards, yet
Just like with making backups, this is about redundancies. Just because you have all your footage on your drives and backed up doesn’t mean you might not need to upload it if things get corrupted, or maybe not everything did import. Hold onto those memory cards until you’re sure that everything in the transfer process went smoothly, maybe even until you need to use them again for another shoot.
5. Thank the actors and everyone else involved
They’re the reason any of your footage exists. Whether they’re the actors, your crew, or even the owners of the location, they’re responsible for helping create your video. In the spirit of keeping a good working relationship with them, thank them and let them know how much you appreciate their help. And when ready… send them the final product. Nothing is quite as satisfying as that for everyone who gave of themselves towards that end!