Video Post Production Editing Terms Explained

The first thing our Film Professor told us when I took up my course in animation was this:
“You’ll look at movies and movies differently once you learn the process.”
Well, and he was right…

I never looked at how the results were made until I saw the movies. How these 3D models were produced or whether or not they are sufficiently realistic. I’m not really sure that movie colors are being changed. All I cared about was the plot. Ok, I can tell you now, like all movies, there’s still more to it than what meets the eye.

Do you remember The Shining movie from the 80’s and it’s an eerie bloody elevator scene? That was done by dumping thousands of gallons of Actual red blood, and oh my god, after that they’re going to do A LOT of washing. But now, if what was done in the movie Ready Player One was to be recreated, CGI has you covered.

There’s this thing called the Output Pipeline when making a film: Pre-Production-Production-Post-Production

The preparation period is pre-Production. Determining and planning the venue before the shoot, actors, scripts, equipment, and anything you may need. Production is the process of shooting, when everything for recording is put in motion. Post-Production is where all the compositing and editing takes place. There are Visual Effects, Motion Graphics, CGI, Video Editing, Special Effects, Matt Painting and so much more.

Editing Footage

Video Editing is the method of assembling and organizing all the raw material in order to create the film/film/video narrative. This is where you do the clipping, paint changes, time lapse, and all other minor upgrades.

Compositing Footage

Image Compositing is incorporating additional components that are not part of the scene, from various sources. It may be a picture, effects like an earthquake, a meteor shower, a ray of light coming in from a window, a dinosaur modeled in 3D, birds flying in the distance, OR totally deleting elements that are not needed from your scene. To create an illusion that all of these are components of the same scene, Video Compositing takes in all these pieces.

Visual influences

Movie San Andreas
Digital modified pictures or animations, Visual Effects often referred to as VFX, could be CGI (Computer Generated Imagery), could be a mixture of both CGI and live footage. There are items incorporated that were not originally on film, such as smoke, flames, a 3D feature, a human being fired, vehicles falling on each other, turning the backdrop of the green screen into a mountain view, buildings crumbling due to an earthquake, or something that can not be achieved on set as it would create danger or in real life it would be too costly, too difficult, or just literally impossible.

Particular impact

Gorilla’s arms for the 1976 movie King Kong
Visual effects vary from special effects. The effects performed on set are special effects or SFX. There are actual consequences of life. There are 2 types of special effects: electronic and visual.

Working on the monitor and lights on the stage produces visual effects. This are changed to make the scene look different, as it usually does. It works on multiple lighting, camera lenses, camera gestures, location, light angles, and other configurations in the area that could affect the scene’s appearance.

Mechanical effects are mechanized props added to the action, or physical effects. Prosthetic makeup to change the appearance of the actor, creating atmospheric effects using clouds, rain machines, like animatronics (animated robots). The use of pyrotechnics, versions of size, bombs.

CGI

The Apes’ World
Digitally generated 3D elements that are inserted into the scene are CGI or Computer Generated Imagery. Can be either still or animated, such as Godzilla, the dinosaurs of the Jurassic World, The Tiger on Pi’s Life, Avatar, which was 70% CGI, Animals, which made the actors look like felines, storms, UFO’s, Aliens, or complete 3D movies, such as Toy Story, which was the first 3D animated movie ever.

Painting Matte

The Hobbit
Matte painting, known as a photographic technique, has been introduced and used in films since the 19th century. It is constructing a landscape digitally, or a package to be used for a film as a setting or context. Typically done to represent remote locations that are not present on the shooting site, or to create an atmosphere that appears out of this dimension.

Graphics & Animation Motion
Catch Me If You Can Sequence the Movie Title
Imagine bringing life to certain items and letting them move if you have seen a graphic design for a flyer or brochure. Motion graphics are that. Motion Graphics are animations carried out on shapes, documents, objects, usually placing abstract objects, and other aspects of graphic design in motion, including logo animations.

It is called Animation, not motion graphics, to make a computer character turn, or an object move. There are several types of animation: 2D, 3D, stop motion, conventional, and motion graphics. Motion graphics are commonly used in videos to create an intro to the channel, sequences of movie titles, end credits, advertisements, or music videos.

To describe the entire post-production process, the term “Video Editing” appears to be used, but it’s not. It is just part of the post-production phase, and just some of the elements involved are those processes mentioned above.