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Post-Production - The next step in the production process is to produce a rough edit. Whether you decide to supervise the edit or not, your production company should provide you with a visual rough cut of the video on DVD. Take some time to watch this preview and share it with others involved in the project. The purpose of this first draft is to make choices on timing, content, and shot selection. You should be allowed to make several changes to the rough edit without additional cost. Most production companies make use of digital non-linear editing facilities.

This allows you to make rapid choices and selection without having to re-edit the whole program from the beginning, as was required in technologies of the past. The non-linear editing systems of today could be compared to word processors. Moving a sequence on the video is as simple as cutting and pasting in a word processor.

Click image to watch a video about Post Production!

The key questions that you will want to ask about post-production facilities are:

• Do you have a High Definition, Industry Standard facility. In our case, we use AVID Media Composers, and can output in both High Definition or Standard Definition formats.
  
• Can you output in web, DVD, Blu-ray, and other formats? This should be included in your time and not charged as an “extra”.
  
• Are you able to offer a tapeless solution? This allows you to take footage shot in the field, directly into the editing process, without “digitizing”; This allows a direct transfer from the record media to the editing system without loss, tape dropouts, or additional transfer billing.
  
• What is the experience of your editor? You’ll want to make sure the editor is familiar with your type of video material. Ask to see examples of the editor’s work.
  
• Do you supply copyright-cleared music and sound effects at no additional charge? A process called "audio sweetening" greatly adds to the overall impact of your video. Music and sound effects can add impact and emotion.
  
• Do you have in-house 3D computer animation? Many situations in the field cannot be shot with a traditional video camera. Animation allows you to take viewers to places that only exist in the imagination, or show hidden processes that you wouldn’t otherwise see. An example may be the internal workings of a machine, a chemical process, work flow of a procedure, etc.

Once you are satisfied with your rough cut, your video production company should complete the finished video and output it to Betacam SP tape, DVD, or Blu-ray for duplication. You will want to make sure that the original music is copyright cleared, that all release forms for participants have been signed, and approval from all of those involved at your organization has been obtained.

Post-Production - One of the most exciting developments in the last few years has been the rapid progression of 3D computer animation. With the power, speed, and relative ease of today's computers, animation that was once only accessible to "high end" Hollywood movies, is now available at a reasonable price point.

The possibilities are endless; logo animation, talking characters, process or work flow demonstrations, or even the inside workings of machinery or the human body.

It all begins with an experienced Computer Animator. Since this is a relatively new field, you'll want someone who has been in the industry for a while, and has proven, tangible abilities. Ask to see numerous examples of animation that they have done that is related to your requirements.

The process of animation can be relatively time consuming, but like all aspects of the production process, you can save yourself a lot of grief if you plan things out ahead of time, and if you work with the best folks available.

Normally, any animation "plan" begins with a storyboard. This is a frame by frame breakdown of what you would like to see. Don't worry if you're not an artist. Even if you can only draw stick figures, it's important to pass on your vision to the Animator. An experienced animator can do much to help you at this stage: suggesting textures, camera moves, reflectivity, or lighting placement are only a few examples.

Once you have the idea worked out on paper, the Animator will model out the objects to be used in the scene. This could be compared to sculpting the objects out of clay. The animator will then place the objects into the scene, add lights or lighting effects, and plan out motion or camera moves.

When the scene has been designed to demonstrate what you want to show in the best possible way, the scene will then be rendered. This basically builds each part of the motion frame by frame and stores it on a computer hard drive. Your experienced Animator will be concerned with things like anti-aliasing (the smoothness of the objects), ray tracing (subtle reflection like those on glass), and field rendering versus frame rendering (dependent on whether the animation is going to be used in video or on computer media only).

You'll also want to make sure your Animator has the use of a "rendering farm". Many of the animation packages available allow complex animation projects to send frames of the scene out over a network so that hundreds, or even thousands of computers can quickly render out your completed scene.

Finally, your computer animation should be transferred digitally from an animation computer to the timeline of your non-linear edit session without generational loss.

This "loss" is usually incurred when animation is captured to tape and then "re-digitized" to be used in editing.

These are some steps taken to create an animation:

1: Modeling

2: Animation

3: Texturing

4: Scene Creation

Of course, animation is also available in HD.

Here are a few examples of animation possibilities.

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