The #1 Post-Production Secret (Stress-Free Workflow)

0:00 Here's some post-production secrets you probably never considered. Last time we spoke, we talked a little bit about how to have a stress-free experience during production by doing a lot of pre-production planning. That pre-production planning included location scouting, storyboarding, getting the storyboard to your client, getting scripts to your client, all those kinds of things. And even if you don't have a client, let's say you're doing a film for yourself, you should still do the same thing.

1:03 Because post-production seems to be this big, scary, and unknown component that many people who transition from, say, social media marketing to full marketing, or people who, you know, see commercials and see how they're filmed and see how that sound looks and see how that lighting is, and they try to transition, and they don't get a great experience. Other than I use the stupid phrase, I call it stupid, we'll fix it in post. Here's a post-production secret that no one has ever told you about.

2:03 One of the big concerns about someone who's jumping into production is they might just jump into the production part and skip the whole pre-production. It's not unheard of for a movie to be in pre-production for years, even after it's been greenlit. That means that even after a producer has been trying to sell it on Hollywood, they still have years of pre-production work. Ron Howard would spend years trying to make those great movies that we've experienced, and all of that is all about curating the story, building the story, preparing the story for when you enter in what Ron Howard says is war.

3:04 you're doing a lot of analysis, you're doing a lot of quick, rapid, creative decisions, you're seeing what works, and a lot of stuff that you've tried may not work when it actually gets to the cutting floor, and it kind of, you have to review footage every night, and do a lot of stuff, and most cases, if you're the director, or the producer, or the, we'll say, the client's primary person to communicate with, like a product manager or whomever, you should really be staying on the ball.

4:05 and discussing things, and being in preliminary meetings, and spending a lot more time trying to do that research, and trying to glean a little bit more information. If I don't do any of that, then chances are you're not going to have a great production, or a component's going to fail somewhere, like audio's going to fail, and these kinds of things. And to be honest, you pay a lot of money, and if you're not getting a good audio source, then, well, you howl, you have a security footage.

5:06 So if you're talking to someone, and you're communicating with them, and you can't see your eyes, and they can't see your mouth, and subconsciously they can't facial recognize your face, then a giant, huge podcast mic just makes no sense. And it's one of those things that I thought you had to do, because everyone else is doing it, and it makes sense for everyone else. But there's a reason why it makes sense for everyone else. Sometimes it's because, you know, they did it because other people do it, and it's what's successful.

6:06 The number one production secret that I can tell you, and stay tuned a little bit, because we're still trying to map out that post-production process. We talked pre-production, you do all this kind of stuff, and you go into production, and you're working for about three days, and that you should always stay on top of things. You should be checking reels, you should be checking audio. The only reason I can say, when I do say, we can fix it in post, is because I've done tests, and I've sampled a few things, and the pre-production and the production process going smoothly, checking everything, staying up those long hours during production, getting up early in the morning and going to sleep with like two hours to turn around is completely normal.

7:08 special effects cost lots of money. The number one secret to post-production is having solid production. That's executing, getting the roll footage the best way possible. That's doing tests, that's recording footage, looking at the colors you're getting, testing, using a light meter, using all those kinds of things that most people who run and gun or do social media aren't very experienced with. If you're not checking with a color meter, if you're not doing a sample test recording and pulling it into editing software, in my case, I pulled it into DaVinci Resolve and so on that could do and see what the log could help, and I tested the fog, we tested the fog machine, we tested everything we could test, and during production, as the day was closing, we would check all the footage, we'd check the gate, you know, they don't call it that anymore because it's just an SD card, but you check everything, literally check everything, just run it back, play it back, hear samples, and that way you're not as surprised. And also when you have good people behind the camera,

8:09 good people, assist in the camera operator, good key grips, good lighting professionals, good audio professionals on set, you have far less to worry about. Of course, if you don't have any of that, you have a lot to worry about because the number one problem that you're going to have in post-production is getting a piece of junk from your production and not wanting to record it. I can't tell you, just as a content creator, if we just move away all the times I've recorded things and had to use post-production magic, podcast in itself, every time I would self-record, you know, ears, I thought it'd be perfect and then my interface is having issues and the XLR cable is having feedback and all these things and you don't know and you get down and you're like, I'm in the edit bay and now I have to do post-processing and artificial intelligence processing and what should take an hour edit takes six to eight hour edits, which is why podcasts to me are like pulling teeth. Not that I shouldn't do them, but the experience I have with them

9:10 has been based off of what I knew from production and honestly limited to the technology that I had at hand. I was using an iPhone and then I spent a lot of money on the mic because I thought the mic would do it with voice and it did sound cool, but I exchanged that a little bit upgrade the equipment right here. I'm using a Sony Alpha series that has log recording even though I've chosen to go away with that because I'm not going to do additional post-processing and sticking to DaVinci Resolve and spend all this additional time when I could do some of that lifting in Premiere because it's about speed.

10:10 you know, one in the morning, I'll go edit and I'll go look at things and, you know, okay, you know, I have time now. It's literally 1.28 in the morning. I'm recording this podcast and usually I release on Wednesdays but I'm choosing to release hopefully today because it shouldn't take too long to edit this because Spotify had some content licensing issues and now I can't do any music in Spotify because they block it or whatever and they took forever to get back to me. They didn't actually get back to me.

11:12 you know, do the best you can possibly do reshoot where possible. If you have the time, balance people's emotions because clients don't want to sit there for hours saying the same word over and over and over and over and over and over again. I get it. There's a lot that you have to balance but it's okay to redo something in production you think personally isn't going to work and especially when you think it is going to work. It's never a bad idea to do another one for safety and yes, Al calls me Swayze because every time I'm like let's redo this, let's redo this, let's do one more time for safety, one more time for safety, one more time.

12:13 based off of that. Why? Not based off of anything else except why is an emotion-based feeling. It's a spirit communicating to a spirit. It's not about what you do, it's not about how you do it, it's about why you do it and that's an emotional connection and you can't make that emotional connection when something just doesn't feel right. Another thing is that a sales thing when I talked about why it's a TED Talk from time Simon Zarnack whatever his name is it's a TED Talk Google it.

13:14 and so if you don't feel right on the shot it's okay to go back and reshoot it. Take your time and get it done right. You only have so many hours in a day 10 hours max for most unions I do push things to 12 hours I'm not supposed to for my well-being and other people's well-being and then I get home and then I attack on another 10-12 hours or a hotel or whatever have you. Have not yet been able to sit in a film trailer that would be the epitome of accomplishing myself as a producer or director being able to sit on a movie set and walk to my trailer only to be walked back out because someone did something wrong.

14:14 I've been there that intern definitely messed me up last time I've been in a scenario where we're recording an interview it's the first time we got the principal on set and the principal's family member came on set and we recorded intros and we broke tape we checked everything we recorded the interview you know we did the interview and it was great we recorded the outro it was great and then I asked him okay just go back to the tape just for me and double check yeah we got that interview we got that intro we got that outro great go back to NFPA we had no interview I ran disc recovery software I ran and pulled every disc I could possibly find pulled everything I could possibly find and had to make that a very long long long walk to one of the executive producers and be like hey so you know I want to apologize apparently I didn't walk over and check myself so we don't have this interview good news is they never blamed me for it even though technically it's my fault and I should probably have been fired by then

15:14 bad news is the other person well let's just say they weren't allowed to help us anymore things happen and computers crash technology fails you exports go wrong if you saw my last export podcast you saw this little wavy thing because I was using artificial intelligence to process stuff and because of the shutter speed I had chosen which I still think I didn't fix that this time one in the morning what do you expect you know because if you're doing if you're doing everything and one of the things that I need to let everyone know when you're doing a production and you're sitting in the studio if you can hire more people to do things it's better on you because if you have to wear multiple hats on a studio day and a production day where you're not going to have redos you're not going to be able to sit there and see a brand new show or see a brand new something that you're going to literally only have one time to get that forgive my crassness

16:15 crazy Uncle Eric used to call this he was one of my mentors and he would say you know you gotta get that money shot and if you're in a certain industry you know what that is but anyway it's an industry term filmmakers use it all the time you gotta get that money shot but you can't if you can't record it you can't get the audio right and the lighting is wrong and you go back in and you see shadows where you shouldn't see shadows like I do here it really does hurt it does and people make mistakes and it happens so if you execute production flawlessly I recommend that you remove as many hats as possible the more people focused on executing one job right when you're spending thousands and thousands of dollars one person focused on doing one job right is going to execute that job flawlessly as long as they're trained as long as they're alert as long as you feed them Red Bull monsters and energy drinks and espressos galore and feed

17:15 them lunch and feed them dinner and provide craft services all the stuff that you think why is the studio providing craft services you know we're not going to pay for food and you're going to sit because people who are hungry make mistakes people are hungry and get hangry and to be honest I don't want any of that on my set I want you to walk on set energized ready to go not too energized so you're shaking a boom mic all over the camera set but enough so that you're walking on set you're paying attention you're on your cues and all you have to worry about is your little cue sheet all you have to worry about is holding a boom mic and listening and hearing when someone in the background decides to turn on their cell phone or sneeze or trip over the craft services set and let all the granola bars kick all over the place I'd rather have a cinematographer a dedicated professional behind the camera who has the lenses who knows the storyboard in and out and we've talked about and we've gone through the locations great I'd rather give them an assistant so they don't have to worry about nothing and that assistant is going to double as an LD because it's smaller single shot commercials

18:16 we're not doing multiple camera angles and we're only moving in minimum lighting here and there because we have a great sensor because we chose a great sensor we chose a great lens because we did tests and it works well that's okay now of course I wish I could you know have more people in pre-production or in post-production but then that also kind of gets a expensive for the client but b creative control is a whole problem and some people execute things weirdly, differently and there's actually a whole learning curve that a lot of people just don't have and so if you execute production well when an edit bay crashes when DaVinci Resolve crashes when Premiere crashes which happens more frequently than I wish it didn't when you're losing your files and you've backed them up online you've backed them off at NASA that stuff happens it's completely part of the process everyone everywhere has experienced edit bay crashing a software crashing having to do late nights having to do and I've experienced multiple times

19:17 where I had to literally rebuild my operating system from scratch all the time like I'm not telling you like I literally have 18 hours get a program out the door so it airs in 19 hours and I can't do that because right now I have to sit here wait 10 hours for computer to rebuild itself because it had a complete utter hard drive failure or whatever failure and once I rebuilt it I was able to reinstall the software and be able to do a successful export God's not the author of confusion God is the prince of peace he's the awfully omega he knows the beginning of the end I can't tell him anytime the Holy Spirit will intervene and tell me to do something and if I choose not to do it I'm up a creek without a pal but when I listen and I pay attention and when I it's all about mitigating chaos I used to call myself a professional mitigator of chaos I'm not sure if people laughed at that but what I was telling myself more than anyone else is that it's my job to make sure that the chaos of technology failing equipment failures

20:17 people failures talent failures failures across the board if you plan properly you can prevent it from happening if you execute full listening production prevent it from happening anytime you take a shortcut like I take shortcuts on this podcast you can tell the lighting's not right you can tell and I take shortcuts on this podcast because 1 30 in the morning when you make shortcuts when you decide this is the best way to do it but I'm going to do something else you get a subpar experience and I know that to everyone who's doing this anything creative anything creative if you make shortcuts if you say I'm going to do it in post I'm going to do it in post that is not an experience that A you want to have B your client wants to have and C you don't want to live in a world where you're banging your head against a keyboard or smashing keyboard letters because you're so frustrated with yourself or the cinematographer or this

21:17 not that not working because you chose to make shortcuts shortcuts will destroy you director Alfredo Battle also my cinematographer I brought him on for a commercial comes in he comes with some stuff we talk about cameras we talk about lenses we talk about lights we got all that stuff he comes in he's rolling in with his stuff and he's taking it apart very systematically and you know we're helping him we're you know building the set those kinds of things it's all systematic and then on the reverse it's all systematic everything goes back in its place everything has a component it lives in a box it goes in a thing and he's like very OCD about it at least you think it's OCD I think it's just brilliant so you don't lose anything you still lose a lens cap I guess they're like socks they just walk away randomly and you've no idea what happened to them but everything else has a place has a moment why because then you're ready for the next shoot when I make shortcuts in code it hurts like

22:17 I knew I had to make my entire code asynchronous and those of you who don't know what that is it's great I chose not to do it and it hurt me and then in the middle of the year I had to redo my entire framework last year not this year last year and then it was asynchronous and it was great it was powerful more experience more efficiency and no one knew it was better until I pushed the play button and it was like oh my god my websites are loading in nanoseconds I was like yes because this guy had to fix a whole lot of stuff and clients were happy everyone was happy but I knew I had to do that I could follow the voice of the Holy Spirit telling me I heard the voice of the Spirit telling me to do so did not do it or in that instance I was unaware of how to use promise chains and all those kinds of things and I figured out I sync away it's a wonderful wonderful thing did some tests and I realized oh you know what I should take this to the entire framework and then I did where needed and then of course you had to learn okay a function should stay a function unless it requires processing time if it doesn't require processing time then it stays a function and that's not a shortcut

23:18 there are things that you'll want to add extra fluff steps too for instance reshooting stuff over and over and over again even though you've got it great limit yourself getting someone who sits on interview chair and having them restate restate restate restate if someone's not working it's okay you can just move on to the next thing as long as you have a backup plan not having backup plans that's a shortcut killer so if I can give you so I kind of give you one secret that's kind of wrapped around you know if you have a great production great execution that you have peaceful and don't be stressed it's kind of the same thing it's just don't be stressed I can tell you anything else today as I close and wrap up don't be stressed about your production when you go into post-production execute your production right execute pre-production right spend the extra time in pre-production spend the extra time in production spend the extra time in post-production do the organization go through and go through

24:19 your steps check all footage link media with its audio do if you're doing proxy workflow do your proxy workflow if you have to do that if you have to process things and do pre-LUTs do pre-LUTs if you have to organize your bins organize your bins don't just start slamming things in a timeline unless you know you're already pre-organized if you're not organized don't just slam things on a timeline because you think it's a good idea you're going to be so stressed if you're not organized 100% if a client wants a change you're going to be up in arms you're going to be fighting that client because you know you're going to have to dig through the bowels of your bins and try to figure out which clip is which when you're organized you don't have to do any of that because you can be at peace and you can be less stressed when you organize your flipping timeline that being said I understand the people layers and last minute changes and blah blah blah blah but you'll note if you look at any filmmaker's timeline they have sections

25:19 and it looks like kind of like this crinkled dot timeline layers upon layers and then there's huge outline layers upon layers and huge outline yeah those are render moments and they keep the entire track from top to bottom because you never know when you need to go back always save always backup two layer backups turn autosave on always let autosave happen and good news the technology has come so much further Apple Silicon has really helped there are a lot of new stuff coming out all this new technology it's stabilization and Premiere stabilization DaVinci Resolve things are more stable now of course when the Mac updates their operating system sometimes some things don't work as they should but the point is you're in a great opportunity to learn how to do it right and to not take shortcuts and now all that being said if you're delivering content and you're getting used to and you're just starting great take all the shortcuts you need because you're just getting started you just gotta learn

26:20 to create the content but as you mature as you grow as you begin to execute as you begin to learn how to do things right when you learn to do something right do it right execute it well now there's I'm a Christian and there's a big talk out there about sin which is missing the mark right if you think of a target when we talk about sin we're talking about here's the perfect will of God in your life and here's the perfect possible choice that you can make every time and when you sin you're missing that mark okay you're pitting around the target or hitting outside the target like most of us do and I won't lie we all fall short of the glory of God of the wages as soon as death but the gift of God is eternal life and one of the gifts of God or fruits of the spirit we'll go to fruits of the spirit is love joy peace and the big reason I'm you know I'm a Christian I fully believe that we aren't supposed to live life alone and that God the creator can partner with us not just friends and family

27:20 but God the creator can partner with us we can have a conversation a two-way relationship with him through what was bought by the blood of Jesus Christ and one of the cheat codes in life is having that relationship because one of the cheat codes so to speak you know play Sonic the Hedgehog right you do I know it's old you do little things or if you're you know cheating on a famous MMORPG you hit the tilde key and you type in a cheat code okay great great so number one cheat code in life is getting filled with the Holy Spirit why because if you're stressed and you find yourself spiraling out of control you're angry or you're or you get into depression or you get concerned or these things happen you can just call the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and pick up one of those fruits of the Spirit it's literally that easy just saying Lord provide me peace and allow his peace to enter the room and you're pretty much good now you have to continuously check yourself

28:21 continuously that peace is a continuous you know it's like it's like eating an apple you have to continuously kind of remind yourself you know when you get frustrated God's got me this isn't going to be stressful one of the biggest things when you start your own business is finances and the ab and flow of things and the worry about things and if you're saved and God said do this and you have Holy Spirit confirmation and you got two two or three people accountable accountability partners I've told you yes this is a good move in my case I did 11 and I got confirmations from everyone around me great then I know God's got me and when someone's got a little skinny they got a little terrified but right in the nick of time God provided and then I started praying Lord provide before the nick of time and then start early and then I start building faith and it was a big huge faith adventure but if I didn't have Jesus I would be off a bridge somewhere or in the middle side of the road or whatever but peace

29:22 that passes all understanding can be a part of your pre-production can be a part of your production can be a part of your post-production Christian hat aside but Christian hat still connected if you will give me my license if you take perfect peace into your pre-production the Holy Spirit will open up ideas you'll feel creative thoughts coming in and you'll be able to reorganize sit down with your team if you have a team great sit down with them bounce ideas off people I have a bunch of people that I bounce off ideas for I send things send emails and they can review it sometimes I have to call them two or three times to get an overview but that's just because people live life and you know those kinds of things and it's kind of part of the job but you don't get frustrated when something doesn't go right or when they make changes and you just get opinions and it's all about that collaboration Paul says we see in part and we know in part we see in a mirror darkly and the biggest component I can tell anyone is if you want to wear a crown which you really shouldn't that's not what life is about life is not about

30:23 wearing a crown life is about leaving a mark life is about leaving a legacy in fact I go in so far Christian side is life is about making sure that no one comes to hell which is a real place and I know oh my god it's turned off all my podcast viewers no no no think of it this way if I have a secret to solving your problem life and creativity and I hoard it it's the equivalent of me talking into the middle of darkness and no one knows it exists and me I'll tell you this way if I held this in all this light all this these ideas all these things that God's given me I'm not doing my job and I won't make it past the pearly gates I won't but I do because I know A it'll improve your life B I know that not a lot of people will choose it but those who do are going to experience better and C when you begin to learn when you begin to understand when you begin to read when you begin to have that personal relationship then everyone else is you know

31:23 whatever they put in your head is going to go out the window because you'll have a personal relationship you'll have a personal understanding of who the Holy Spirit is in your life verified through scripture and through your accountability and maybe someday I'll walk through the ministry steps of things but this is a create podcast and more importantly I want you to take the time to execute your production right and that includes pre-production production and post-production now post-production is on my mind because I'm going back to editing I'm going back to organizing these bins and going through all of this footage it's so long and it takes a lot of time to make sure it's done right so that when I finally sit down and do the creative process I can just fly through it and nail it in eight hours but I can't do that if I haven't ingested my footage if I haven't labeled things if I haven't organized things if I haven't collected and conformed the media to the right standards and those kinds of things that I'm A. I'm not doing my job right and B. I'm going to be you know three hours in to something realizing it's going to take me 32 hours

32:23 versus 32 hours in realizing I'm almost halfway out the door you know a lot of people when they build stuff they start at the most visible thing like if I'm building a website this is what my website looks like this is what I want it to look like here's my Photoshop mock-up this is what I design I have to write the code and they have to write the JavaScript and they have to reconnect the server and they have to learn all these things and they kind of build the pyramid from the most visible thing to the least visible thing and that's how you get you know rewrites and people never make it in a way the slowest but best way to build anything from an engineering standpoint is to build from the bottom the most complicated or if you're doing abstraction the most abstract concept and work your way up in this pyramid so that you finally get to display like I have an editor that works great server side works great and then it's still going to be improved and then you know that's JSON but then I have to build the interface for that editor and without doing so that's a little bit more of a process most people just start there

33:25 and then have all these issues really really hurts because then you can't you know when you do upgrades you make mistakes and you're not thinking about things and you make compromises just don't compromise in fact that I would say if I was to label you know have a stress-free production don't compromise stress-free post-production don't compromise stress-free pre-production don't compromise that's all it is I know it's tough trust me we've all been there we've all had these intense deadlines I mean if you're talking about life components we've all had areas where we compromised in life but if I can give you any advice don't compromise you got this of that I can guarantee I'm the JumpCutKing this has been the Create Podcast and if you haven't already snagged a moment go ahead and hit like comment and share and share this with everyone I'm probably going to

34:25 transition a little bit more to production because it's a little bit more easier to understand and I know I kind of hop over AI and hop over and do a lot of things so I'm working on an experience for you without cutting corners because I compromised when I first started and I knew I should have done it right so I'm moving more to do it right and an experience where you'll be able to go to a website be able to see categories that will help you in those kinds of things so you get more of this podcast and more experience and I'm also working on replacing some of the sounds and all those kinds of things so it's a process I hate copyright infringement things even though I have a license and yet Spotify's automatic system automatic systems don't care about you so create creative alternatives I know you paid money for your license I get it but hey you can't let things stress you it literally killed an entire day of mine because Spotify had an issue and I was literally stressed the entire day hey don't let small things stress you don't let them stress you okay let me pray for you right now I pray right now

35:25 in the name of Jesus Christ that you get a Sophia Phonesis and Synesis anointing those are the three wisdoms of God I'm not going to get into details but I pray that God imparts wisdom into you and understanding into you and peace perfect peace that passes all understanding so that you can live as light in your industry and you can live as a creative professional without stress without fear without hurt without fear of failure that you can live confident knowing that you're executing what God has destined in your heart to do and you can be at peace while executing that I pray that for you if you're saved or even if you're not Jesus a kind gesture I pray that you be blessed in everything you do and everything you do you prosper pray in Jesus mighty name amen amen amen what for you I pray to

36:39 I pray