Independent filmmaking is all fun and games until you hit post-production.
The cut corners and in-the-moment decision-making of everything leading up to that (including writing, fundraising, pre-prod, and the crazy circus act of DIY production) cannot be sustained in post-production due to the cost in both time and money of wrong turns.
The only way to do cheap DIY post is to do it smart the first time -- and have plenty of time to do it all right. And the only way to do that is to plan out your post-production workflow before you start work.
Be prepared to bring foresight, diligence, experience and a deep attention to details. In the age of non-destructive digital editing, it's not that you can permanently ruin your film, but you can mess up in a way that only more time and money will solve.
The worse case scenarios go something like this: you've sent a DVD screener to a festival and they accepted your film. Now, you just need to get them the film on HDCAM SR tape to digitally project. As you scramble to get this delivery completed, you discover a major issue that requires fixing before you can output to HDCAM -- an issue that resulted from a bad decision early in your post-production workflow (perhaps the media is no longer connected correctly to your offline edit). You end up having to do a bunch of work (or pay rush fees for it) prior to the festival.
Can you afford it? Will you make it in time?
Sounds like the plot of a movie. In storytelling, you always want the audience asking "what happens next?" But in post that's pretty much the kiss of death. Instead, it's vital to plan it all out before you begin and give yourself plenty of time for problems to emerge and then get fixed.
My top suggestion: do not start submitting to festivals until you have a 100% finished film. You wouldn't go out on a first date wearing dirty, half-finished clothes and tell your date "don't worry, I'll look good someday, I promise."
First impressions matter. And from a post-production perspective, you want to know that you can deliver the full film tomorrow if need be, since you can't afford the money to pay if there's something unforeseen between now and the first festival screening.
So don't start submitting to festivals until you have the HDCAM SR tape in your hands.
That means you need to build in more time before you start submitting to festivals. Don't assume you can finish it up in-between the time you get accepted and the premiere. That's the time you need to be working on marketing and publicity prep for the festival anyway.
The last couple months I've been stressing about post-production on our film In-World War. We completed principal photography this summer and two months later we finished most of our 2nd unit, so we were ready to start an assembly edit.
Since I'm no post-production expert, I didn't know where to start, except I didn't want to start any work until we had a plan. On our last feature, Quality of Life, we got accepted into the Berlin Int'l Film Festival based on our rough cut and had to scramble to get the film finished and ready to premiere (on 35mm no less).
We almost missed the festival due to a number of key errors along the way. It was grueling and extremely painful. I wasn't about to go through that again, but also didn't have the technical knowledge to do it right.
I had to reach out to a number of experienced post-production people. Thanks to the help and guidance from these experts, we're finally on our way with In-World War.
My advice on planning out your post-production: if you're not an expert already, find a small handful of experienced post-production supervisors and digital workflow experts. Get them to develop your plan and then start the work with your eyes open. If they disagree, bring them together to work it out (that's what we did and they quickly came to a unified plan).
If you're interested in seeing the specific post-production workflow we came up with, visit the step-by-step list on the In-World War site:
Post-production workflow step-by-step
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