By Justin Joseph Hall

I have been working as a professional editor for ten years on commercial, documentary, and narrative films, and this is for producers deciding what to include in video post-production. Many companies skip about three of the steps listed below, so I will explain what each step is, and why completing each one will make your video more professional.

1. Editing

Editing is sequencing clips that are provided to increase the effectiveness of the video. Commercial videos pull a viewer towards an action or a specific emotional response to a product. A great editor knows this and uses timing and visuals to capture the viewer’s emotional and mental attention.

Modern editing tends to go towards getting the highest emotional response with the shortest amount of time. Often ads and commercials are limited to exact seconds. An editor will use their given assets to pace the film to climax emotionally towards the end of the ad, where there’s usually a reveal of a brand, product, or call to action. This leaves the viewer with the greatest emotional impact towards the end of the piece. If the climax happens before this, the edit still needs work.

An editor uses every edit to either seamlessly hide edits so viewers can concentrate on the story or visuals, or they may call attention to a cut to make the viewer pay attention to a certain moment. Editors think about when not to cut just as much as when to cut to the next shot. Too many cuts can distract from the story, or they can help tell the story more effectively to the target audience. MTV style editing from the 2000’s is an example of a style with a lot of cuts that worked well for their generally younger audience.

Editing is about controlling the emotional response with the tools given and knowing how each clip relates to one another. Think of an edited video as an emotional roller coaster for the audience.

2. Placing Music

Placing music is one of the most difficult things to do in post-production because everyone has an opinion about it, and people can have a wide range of emotional reactions to the same song. One of the goals in creating a video in post-production is making sure it will affect the majority of the target audience. Think about who you’re creating the video for, and choose music that will give the emotional reaction you want from them.

For example if you’re creating an ad that is for a Spanish speaking audience, playing Bachata music (or music that sounds like that genre) may remind listeners of times and places they listened to that music. It’s your job to understand what type of feelings or memories this type of music will evoke for the majority of your audience. For myself, when I hear music that has an AC/DC like guitar sound, it reminds me of listening to AC/DC on the radio in my friend’s garage as a teenager, which evokes a certain feeling of nostalgia for me, and might do the same for many people my age who also grew up in the Midwest. Sometimes there are certain associations with instrument choices. For example, if an ad uses ukulele music like in that Apple ad, you may be reminded of this Apple iPad Christmas ad, which could add or detract from your storytelling.

If you do choose a song with lyrics, make sure they don’t conflict with dialogue, voiceovers, or any audio in the video. Also, only choose music in a foreign language if you know what is being said.

Music is not always needed, but when you match the right music to the right scene, it will enhance whatever emotional impact you want to leave with your audience. It can help with the difficult job of keeping the audience’s attention and making them feel something at the same time.

3. Sound Design

Sit and stop reading. Listen to all the sounds you hear in the room. Most likely a heater or air conditioner, noise from people around you, maybe a computer fan. We are rarely listening to silence even if the room is quiet. So in order to make a video a full experience, we need to re-create the world we are watching. We do this by placing Sound Effects to replicate our experience in the real world. This is sound design.

When humans see something move, there is almost always a sound involved in this. Move around and your clothes rustle. Scratching your skin makes sound. Lightning is always followed by thunder. When a plane flies, we hear the propulsion. When we see something move with motion graphics or animation, we expect to hear something.

If you don’t hear something when it moves, it can feel creepy or otherworldly. Horror films use this for ghosts. Things are eerily silent and then they scare you by breaking that silence or isolating sounds. If that’s not an effect you are going for, then not hearing sound can seem cheap and inorganic. Putting in sound effects like footsteps, clothing moving, and doors closing is a way to make your video come alive.

Sound Design can be a fairly cheap process as long as you have access to a Sound Effects library. Editors or Sound Mixers can usually do it. Keep in mind that you want to have isolated sound effects to make it easier for the Sound Mix. What is a Sound Mix? Well, let’s move on.

4. Sound Mixing

Much of the audio recorded and placed in video has been recorded in a lot of different places. It is being brought into a video that may have motion graphics, multiple days of shooting, or any number of things. In order to unify the sound, we hire a sound mixer.

In addition to unifying the sound, Sound Mixers also prepare the sound to perform best for the platform on which you are showing it. A theater often has great speakers and a high dynamic range. That is a very different environment from viewing a seven second Facebook ad on a phone.

Sound Mixers may also be called Sound Re-Recordists. These days we “Bounce” the file in a computer, or “Export” the final delivery, but the old wording sticks around. Some effects Sound Mixers can add include EQ (Equalization), Compression, Limiting, and Reverb or Echo.

An editor can mix sound, but being a great editor and a great sound mixer are two very different skills. Clients often don’t want to work with multiple people, but if your editor doesn’t have the technical expertise needed to mix sound, hiring a separate sound mixer may help you get the best final product. As an editor I prefer to have professional Sound Mixers finish the audio. They are more efficient with the tools needed to mix audio properly, as it’s often done with separate software from editing software. Sound Mixers often charge the same rate I do, but can improve the audio more in less time.

Sound Mixing can make a huge impact on your end product. The beloved resonance of a voice-over actor or podcast host’s voice are often aided by the sound mixer bringing out their best qualities.

5. Color Correction

You may think, my video looks fine, why would I need to color correct it? Isn’t correction only for when you have problems?

Yes, originally color correction was done when there were problems with film and editors had to match shots that looked a bit different. That still exists, but in addition there is often amazing details that make your image pop or enhance the feeling and goal of the video. It’s the final touch on the visual medium of a movie. Besides not mixing sound, not applying color correction is the first indication that a video is not done professionally. Here are some examples of video before and after it is colored.

Often you’ll hear an editor respond to the request of color correction with “I’ll throw a LUT on it.” What is a LUT? LUT stands for “Look Up Table,” which is is a preset like an Instagram filter but applied to video images. This is a cheap way to complete this process, but it can be problematic if the video contains clips from various parts of the day. Color Correction evenly matches the images to the time of day as well as to the style and mood of the video. This step fully immerses the viewer in the world of the video while also enhancing the visual aspects.

You can do many fun things in color correction like enhance sunsets, make people’s eyes crisper, and blur out backgrounds. Colorists know tricks to make sure the viewer is focused on what the colorist wants them to be focused on in every frame.

Color correction in process for Silent Forests, a documentary by Mariah Wilson. Photo by Author.

Color Correction can be expensive because it is a highly technical art form. However, it doesn’t take long for a Colorist to color a short video. A professional colorist can do up to fifteen minutes of video in one day. Color Correction is a great thing to be able to order in bulk, so finishing more videos at once can help with these costs. A half day (four hours) can be charged for something quick like a three-minute video, and usually that’s the minimum rate a professional will settle on to take a project.

6. Deliverables

Finally, your video is completed. Your colored video is matched with your mixed sound. How should you receive your video?

Many clients only want a video ready for YouTube or Facebook. However, these are very low quality files, and it’s important to obtain the highest quality possible. If you’re not sure what that is consult your editor, but a safe bet is getting a ProRes HQ file at the highest resolution. The main reason you want a high quality file is if you ever have to deliver it to something else or make changes, it saves you or the editor the headache of finding all the old files. For example, in the future you might want to request that longer ads be made shorter for a different platform, like YouTube. An editor can shorten the video easily with a high quality file.

One other option is to request the project files used to create the video. Project files are very small and most editors will deliver these, but it’s great to request them ahead of time as some editors feel their editing work is proprietary and may be wary about another editor re-editing the video in the future.

In addition to the high quality video file and project files, you should request high quality audio with “splits.” “Splits” or “stems” are different audio files the length of your video that contain:

1. Dialogue

2. Sound Effects (Most of Sound Design)

3. Ambient Sounds (part of sound design sometimes)

4. Music

This way if your video is used for a T.V. spot in the future but needs new music, you can replace it without losing your wonderful sound mix. It allows your video to have a long shelf life in the future. You invested time and money, it’s important to keep good records.

If you do these six steps properly, video professionals and clients will experience the difference, and you’ll see the effectiveness of your video increase.

If you have any more questions about specifics or other options when creating a video, please contact Fourwind Films at info@fourwindfilms.com