Filming has finished; prepare for post production

So the cameras have stopped rolling. Now’s the time to edit your raw footage (known as rushes) and shape your short film.

Getting ready to edit
Cut it
Make some noise 

Getting ready to edit

If you've been shooting on film, the first step is to get your footage digitised in a lab. You'll get your footage back on Digibeta tapes. Take these to a post-production house to be conformed and the sound synchronized before you let the Editor loose on them.
 
For digital shoots, you won't need to digitize the footage, but you will need to get it conformed and synched up. 
 
On a tight budget? Provided you've got enough space on your computer, you can digitize/import/capture your footage simply by hooking your video camera up to a computer and getting stuck into it with some editing software, such as Final Cut Pro or Premier.
 
Got a bit more cash? Hire an editing kit – and an Editor if you don't already have one - or use an edit suite in a facilities house as an alternative to a home job.

Cut it

Even if you only shoot on one camera, the final footage you end up with will be a mixture of different shots and camera angles, including:

• wide shots
• mid shots
• close ups and extreme close ups
• cutaways: a shot used to bridge the gap between two different shots of the same subject
• cut ins: a shot showing a particular detail of an actor eg. a hand wearing a wedding ring
• point of view shots: showing something from the actor's perspective

The rough cut or assembly edit comes first – the part when the Editor gets the scenes in a logical order.
 
The next phase is the famous Director's cut when Editor and Director will be joined at the hip in front of the editing desk, polishing the rough cut into something beautiful. At this stage, any missing scenes or gaps in the plot will be obvious and extra footage can be shot to fill in the holes if you’ve got the time and the budget, of course! 
 
The Director's cut is about adding the creative signature to the film. Any cuts that follow are the work of the Producer with one eye on the requirements of those with a financial interest in the film. It's not unheard of for the Director to take their name off a film if they feel those final edits don’t fit with their creative vision.

Make some noise

Dialogue, music, Foley (sound effects), voiceover, wind, rain, noises off – these are the responsibility of the post-production sound department.

During filming, sound is recorded in the form of dialogue and atmospheric ‘wild tracks’ - the sound effects. All this audio is reviewed and sections of the actors’ dialogue that aren’t clear enough can be re-recorded.

Whoever’s working on the sound will need to know have a chat with the Editor and/or Director to get a feel for what the film is about and the story it’s telling before they get stuck into tweaking, polishing and mixing the different audio tracks.

It’s the sound designer’s job to make sure that sound syncs up with the images on screen, effects appear where they’re supposed to and the balance of sound is right. Scenes will probably have been filmed at different times, but the volume and quality of audio needs to be consistent between them and the different elements kept at the right levels – the last thing you want is a poignant moment between your main characters drowned out by noises that are supposed to be in the background.

Are you legal?

Before you rush your short out into the world, make absolutely sure you won't get into trouble over it. The Law section will give you the necessary heads up.