Post Houses

Z

Zed

Member
Hi Everybody,

Ive been interviewing post houses to do final color correction and HD uprez for my documentary film. The cost and process seem to be very different with everyone I talk too. Final Cut, DaVinci, Avid, all seem to get the job done, but what is best for a project that is shot on mini-dv, and edited on Avid Express Pro? Does anyone have any experience they'd like to share?

Thanks,
Don
 
Bro, I am completely lost as you are. Some houses charge 100 bucks all the way to 700 an hour. It all depends on their equipments and rates. If you shot on Dvx100, I suggest you go and visit the website www.iraqinfragments.com. The doc was shot on a dvx100 and was nominated for an academy. If you like the CC and quality then read this article http://digitalcontentproducer.com/desktoppost/video_oneman_pipeline/ where the the director tells where he went to get his CC'ing done. Call the company up. Again it depends on your needs, your budget and the service the post house provides. But for mini dv you will get the best results, in my opinion, from a DaVinci. Some post houses will do a 30 sec test run for you.
Best of luck
 
Zed & Many Moosh -

Whlie it depends on what your format your master is, I strongly urge you to avoid a post house and instead find a skilled freelancer.

Post houses are dying. The value of a post house was obvious in the 80's and 90's when post production equipment cost millions of dollars. Who wouldn't want to spend $300.00 an hour to have access to a multi-million dollar facility? But now, the gear is quite affordable...therefore, what matters is the skill of the digital artisan operating the equipment.

And there are TONS of freelancers who have the skills you need. Just do a Craig's List posting. Heck, they don't need to live in your city! They can live anywhere in the world! You can send them your work and they can FTP you low resolution versions of your work for approval.

When you hire a post house, you are paying for ALL their overhead...and they have tons of overhead. When you hire a freelancer they have far less overhead.

Many of the digital artisans working at a post facility do freelance work as well. Contact them. I've found their paid about 1/4th the hourly rate you pay the post facillity.

You'll need to interview the freelancers carefully. You'll need to do a proper reference check. You'll need to check their portfolio...but you'd need to do all that for the post house as well!

Lastly, let me explain how I color grade a project. I don't know Final Cut Pro as well as I'd like and I haven't used any of the color grading plug-in tools yet. However, I have a freelance editor (at $20.00 per hour) who knows the tools quite well. He doesn't have my eye for color, but he can match whatever I give him.

He sends me stills. I open them in Photoshop (which I know very well) and adjust them until I get the look I want. This often means doing far more than simple color grading. I'll apply a variety of filters as well as adjust the hue, brightness, saturation and contrast of any given frame.

When I've finished I send the stills back to my editor. He quickly matches the frames to the shots in Final Cut Pro. We did this for my current project, Saturday Night Special, which is a 12 minute long narrative. We color graded the entire project in 1 day.

If you're interested, I'd happily give you his contact information. Email me privately if you'd like it. And do consider searching for a freelancer. You'll find an extremely competent individual for 50 dollars an hour.
 
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