What I mean by “Production” is the part of the project where you are actually out shooting, or taking stills. What I mean by “Post-Production” is simply editing, whether it be video-editing or graphic editing. Personally, I think it all depends on the project, and what you are best at. It you are a good shooter or director, and have a good eye for lighting and composition then I’d say production. If you are a good editor, and have the gift of “polishing turds”, then I’d say “Post-Production.”
Graphics shoot for Ruth project | Canon 7D | JAG35 Gear | Ikan V5600
Many times throughout the year Unblind collaborates with graphic designers. This is sort of a blessing because sometimes that gives us room to let someone else design the look for a video, and we just animate it. A very talented designer we collaborate with often is Drew Rodgers. For our latest project, “Ruth,” a DVD series, I wanted to shoot the some of the graphics with video, not just still images from a website. Drew and I talked about the idea, found a location, got some actors, and went out and shot.
I would say that on this particular project the post production was the easiest. And even the production part of it wasn’t that hard that either, but it did take the most time. For the post production we took advantage of Red Giant’s Magic Bullet Looks. Since Red Giant released Stu Maschwitz’s Magic Bullets Photolooks, life has been easier in collaborating with graphic designers.
Ruth project, graphic shoot.
For this project, we shot video and still while on location. Drew took the stills home, I took the video home, after some debating Drew landed on the “look,” and told me what Magic Bullet look he went with, and bam! We’re done. That is the beauty with Magic Bullet. Magic Bullet’s Looks for Final Cut Pro/Motion and Photolooks for Photoshop are the same. They have the same presets and tools. If you enjoy color correcting, go for it. But for this particular project, we had one simple look that we needed. We did not need to white balance, color match, or do any color balancing in post. What we were aiming to do is simply art. We were not shooting a scene for a movie where the rest of the film needs to look the same. Below is a video that shows the before and after look of our project. In the video is one of 20 or more takes that we shot.
Magic Bullet Looks on “Ruth” Project, Canon 7D from Unblind Productions on Vimeo.