Film Production

8th June 2015

How do you make a film?

Lights, camera, action and possibly some actors, a director and a cinematographer, have I forgotten anyone? Possibly, but it’s not important, what happens next is six weeks on location or maybe months. The Director shouts ‘that’s a wrap’ and then you hand over your popcorn money. Isn’t that what happens? Not quite, as the post production of films can take the same length of time or even longer than the actual filming before the film is released and shown in cinemas.

As much as the magnificent scenery in The Lord of Rings was breathtaking, your favourite bit of the film was when Frodo slipped on the ring and disappeared, am I right? Anyway, why are even discussing this: Hobbits are real! We all remember Professor X in the brilliant X Men movies traveling through time and space, or for that matter Magneto bending famous monuments with his bare hands; impressive and, of course, real… Although sadly they aren’t, the magic is all down to computer wizardry.

There are several post productions elements that are used individually or in certain films all of them are used:

Automated Dialogue Replacement or dubbing to you and I. Darth Vader sounds very different in French.

Transfer of colour to film is self-explanatory, or is it? It’s sort of like the Instagram part of post-production. Essentially what happens is when a feature film is shot the camera negatives are first, transferred onto videotape or digital video format before the editing can begin. The transfer, depending on the format chosen, is then transferred using a telecine or datacine machine. Once this has happened then the colourist will start to correct the colour.

Video editing:

The re-recording of dialogue or even scenes. This decision is taken once the editing process is started and is frequently used if scenes are filmed outside and the sound quality is a little patchy.

CGI – computer generated imagery. This is the fun part and if you choose to see any blockbuster film with superheroes or magic etc, you will see an example of this. Although strictly speaking, for the big budget films such as the Hobbit the CGI magic starts in the pre-production stage.

After all wizards and witches floating in the air does not come cheap, therefore producers need to know how much of their budget will be used up by the CGI company. Every film has a budget and so sometimes, when the director says we’re going to recreate ancient Greece and have all the gods flying around the producer will say there’s no you’ll have to get the storyteller to describe that as we’ve no money left for any more CGI!

All of this couldn’t do without a computer and as we are well aware computers vary in quality and processing capability. So, if you’ve filmed your epic to rival the likes of Ridley Scott and Peter Jackson but, even great works need tweaking, and that sound quality could be improved then why not consider one of these Dell computers to get you on the right track.

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