The Making of Amal: An award winning short. Post Production.
Editing:
We had a peculiar situation. Amal is in Arabic, so we needed someone who could understand even just a little bit of Arabic. We got someone who did an amazing job (Rose Sutton) and she worked with what she had. If you are like us and your file sizes are huge, invest in a big hard drive that holds up a lot of space. Hand it off to the editor, and they will turn it into something called a proxy. Now. After the files are in proxy form they can then be edited into a story line. We used premiere. You can use anything. Its just what we wanted to use. My Editor and I set up two days to meet in the Editing Suite and we just hammered through it one by one. I made comments on certain things and Rose would just work with it. The amount of detail and effort you have to put into editing is insane to me. You have to understand the directors vision and then structure it from that. All very cool things. Just because you finish the edit though, it doesnt mean that it is done. Next? Sound Design.
Sound Design:
Sound is one of the most important things in a film. In fact it is the film. So you need to make sure that your sound design is good and that your visions can intercept. My sound designer was my friend and he did a really great job. Along with the score, which to its own merit was incredible.
VFX (optional);
Make sure you get someone good, even if you have to pay extra. Good VFX is better than bad VFX. Quality is the most important because it will pay off in the long run.
Color Grading:
Find a Color Grader or your DP will do it for you (this is my preferred option).
DONE.
There you have it.
Reflections and set backs:
Post production there was a lot of set backs and part of that was because I was kind of going with it as we were going down the line. I thought I knew how everything worked but the truth is I didnt. This was a huge learning experience and now I know what to do and what not to do. But I hope that every single time I do this. I learn.
