Foreword

So you need to make a movie. Or a documentary. Or a corporate communications video. Or an episodic web-delivered serial adventure show, for that matter.

You've done a very good thing by picking up this book.

Video and film programs have always been made or broken by the amount of preparation that was done before even a single frame was recorded. At every step of preproduction, production, and postproduction, choices that affect both time and money (and usually both) assail you from every direction. Some are purely a matter of aesthetic preference, while others might be life or death decisions for your budget—and by extension your project. However, it can be difficult to know which pennies saved today will turn into pounds spent tomorrow.

Veterans of the postproduction process themselves, Robbie Carman and Jason Osder have navigated this minefield for various professional clients for years. In this book, they've undertaken the herculean task of cataloging and organizing just about every workflow you might reasonably undertake as you work your way from choosing which format to shoot your project in, through figuring out how best to put the finishing touches on the audio and color of your soon-to-be-complete masterpiece.

Production and postproduction aren't easy, and the technologies that we all rely on to do our work are constantly evolving, making possible new and creative solutions to the corners that we're constantly backed into. If you want my advice, take a slow morning off, sit down in a comfortable chair with a nice cup of coffee, and read this book from cover to cover. Dog-ear the pages that might apply to your particular project, and take plenty of notes. The project you save will likely be your own.

Alexis Van Hurkman
Writer, Director, Colorist