Assembly Phase
Also known as postproduction, this phase occurs not after the movie has been finished, but during shooting behind the scenes. Before the shooting phase, the director will most likely hire an editor to make creative decisions about how the footage should be cut in the best possible way. This becomes a daunting task. A 100-minute feature, which amounts to about 9,000 feet of 35mm film, may have been carved out of 500,000 feet of raw footage. Sometimes more than one editor and assistant are brought in because this can take up to seven months.
The editor receives film as quickly as possible and this footage is called the dailies or the rushes. The assistant editor then synchronizes the images and the sounds and sorts the takes by scene. As the footage starts to build up, it gets assembled into rough cuts. These are shots loosely strung together without sound effects or music. Rough cuts are really long and they need to be built up to the final cut. Unused shots are outtakes and while the final cut is being prepared, another unit shoots inserts to fill in certain spots in the film.
When the editing team puts the footage in order, some members of the team manipulate the look of the shots on a computer to create a digital intermediate, if it was shot on film. The DI is manipulated to mainly change lighting levels and alter colors. This task is done by digital color grading by a colorist.
For those fantastic special effects, filmmakers turn to computer-generated imagery, or CGI. Their tasks may be to delete distracting background elements or building a large multitude of people out of just a few. CGI creates images that would be impossible with photographic film. Computers can create anything from characters, to digitally enhanced locations, to CGI being substituted for make-up.
Once all of this is complete, the sound editor takes the lead for building the sound track. The director, the composer, the picture editor, and the sound editor get together to determine where music and effects will be placed, a process called spotting. Most of the sound recorded in the filming phase is not used and it is rerecorded in postproduction, using a process called automated dialogue replacement. This yields better quality than location sound does. Nonsynchronized dialogue is also added by ADR.
Modes of Production
Large-scale production is the fine-grained division of filmmaking known as studio filmmaking. A studio is a company in the business of creating films. These companies owned, distributed, and controlled everything. These companies created a tradition of of tracking the entire process through paper records. This has remained as a huge part of large-scale production, even though it is now mostly done on computer.
Exploitation, Independent Production and DIY are types of movies that were not funded or backed by large production companies and they often had small budgets. These small productions usually saw people working double jobs. Exploitation most likely won't find themselves in the theater market, but independent films might. These are made for the theatrical market, but usually lack a major distributor financing them.
Small-Scale Production usually has a single person taking on many of the roles integral to the filmmaking process. Finances will most likely come from the person making the movie. The filmmaker himself oversees every production task and performs many of them. Some people may help out, but the rest of the creative decisions lie with the filmmaker. There are some rare cases where the production can gain some extra help from other people that might share the same goals. These productions allow the filmmaker to to retain a tight control on the project.
Also known as postproduction, this phase occurs not after the movie has been finished, but during shooting behind the scenes. Before the shooting phase, the director will most likely hire an editor to make creative decisions about how the footage should be cut in the best possible way. This becomes a daunting task. A 100-minute feature, which amounts to about 9,000 feet of 35mm film, may have been carved out of 500,000 feet of raw footage. Sometimes more than one editor and assistant are brought in because this can take up to seven months.
The editor receives film as quickly as possible and this footage is called the dailies or the rushes. The assistant editor then synchronizes the images and the sounds and sorts the takes by scene. As the footage starts to build up, it gets assembled into rough cuts. These are shots loosely strung together without sound effects or music. Rough cuts are really long and they need to be built up to the final cut. Unused shots are outtakes and while the final cut is being prepared, another unit shoots inserts to fill in certain spots in the film.
When the editing team puts the footage in order, some members of the team manipulate the look of the shots on a computer to create a digital intermediate, if it was shot on film. The DI is manipulated to mainly change lighting levels and alter colors. This task is done by digital color grading by a colorist.
For those fantastic special effects, filmmakers turn to computer-generated imagery, or CGI. Their tasks may be to delete distracting background elements or building a large multitude of people out of just a few. CGI creates images that would be impossible with photographic film. Computers can create anything from characters, to digitally enhanced locations, to CGI being substituted for make-up.
Once all of this is complete, the sound editor takes the lead for building the sound track. The director, the composer, the picture editor, and the sound editor get together to determine where music and effects will be placed, a process called spotting. Most of the sound recorded in the filming phase is not used and it is rerecorded in postproduction, using a process called automated dialogue replacement. This yields better quality than location sound does. Nonsynchronized dialogue is also added by ADR.
Modes of Production
Large-scale production is the fine-grained division of filmmaking known as studio filmmaking. A studio is a company in the business of creating films. These companies owned, distributed, and controlled everything. These companies created a tradition of of tracking the entire process through paper records. This has remained as a huge part of large-scale production, even though it is now mostly done on computer.
Exploitation, Independent Production and DIY are types of movies that were not funded or backed by large production companies and they often had small budgets. These small productions usually saw people working double jobs. Exploitation most likely won't find themselves in the theater market, but independent films might. These are made for the theatrical market, but usually lack a major distributor financing them.
Small-Scale Production usually has a single person taking on many of the roles integral to the filmmaking process. Finances will most likely come from the person making the movie. The filmmaker himself oversees every production task and performs many of them. Some people may help out, but the rest of the creative decisions lie with the filmmaker. There are some rare cases where the production can gain some extra help from other people that might share the same goals. These productions allow the filmmaker to to retain a tight control on the project.