With IDN Pictures, Understanding the Post Production Stage of a Film
The shooting process of Balada Si Roy, the initial project of IDN Pictures, has now been completed, approximately 40 days after it first began. Now, it’s getting into a post-production stage, a stage that usually takes longer than the actual shooting process. Some of us may not yet know much about the post-production stage. Therefore, Supra Yogi, Film Director at IDN Pictures, shared some critical points about the post-production stage of a film. To understand that more deeply, keep on scrolling!
1. A long way to go
The completion of a shooting process has just marked 50% of the whole process. Right after that, editors, directors, and producers will check on all the clips and consider several key details, such as shot size, type, camera movement, lens, and gear requirements. They, then, will select clips that best tell the story, before “stitching” them into a single joint. “Clips are fragmented in the first place, so we’ve got to combine them to turn them into a single film. This one is called offline editing. If all parties have agreed upon the raw details, it means we’ve arrived at the pitch lock stage,” said Yogi.
To continue the whole process, now online editing plays its turn. “What is online editing? Well, it may include video editing and the addition of sound, music, and optical effects. We’ll also add external elements, such as graphics, color grading, CGI (Computer-Generated Imagery) visual effects, music scoring, theme songs, and others. Who will be in charge? There are visual effect stylists, music stylists, colorists, directors, and producers,” he added.
2. Indonesia can improve
On this occasion, there is one interesting fact revealed by Yogi. “Do you know that we usually do color grading in Bangkok? It’s interesting, really, given that Indonesia and Thailand are not standing on two different extremes in terms of the ability of the resources. However, Thailand has more strict and effective scheduling. They are proactively giving previews of the films they are working on. Our people don’t have the same mindset and energy yet, but it should never stop us from becoming any better than this,” said Yogi.
Yogi is positive that Indonesia can optimize both its ability and discipline. “Frankly speaking, there’s nothing more soothing than talking in your own language. If we can get the same quality and service in Indonesia already, why should we go all the way to Bangkok? Improve ourselves, that’s the only main card we can play here. Let’s capture the foundation for our national formulation — democratic culture is ‘of the people, by the people, and for the people’,” he said.
3. Printing DCP, what does it mean?
Later on, the responsibility for the final preview will be handed over to the Post Production Manager. Only after that, “The next step we’ve got to do is to print DCP. If we’re planning on showing our film on a large cinema screen, chances are we’ll need a DCP to get the absolute best digital quality. It’s a standard format for exhibiting films that contains a compilation of digital files to store and deliver images, digital cinema sounds, and stream data. It’s becoming a common practice and a major player for delivery to the big screen, including ones across Indonesia,” Yogi explained.
4. Things to be done on D-day
When everything is done, Yogi said, “Just wait for ‘the doomsday’, which falls on the day when the film is in theaters already. In the early days of screening, we must intensively evaluate the promotion. Is our promotional strategy really impacting our targeted market? Which campaign works? Which one doesn’t? In this stage, we’ll communicate a lot with the digital screens to which we’ve distributed our project. They will provide data on the number of viewers so that we can make impromptu policies, depending on the markets’ demands.”
The film industry, for Yogi, is a creative world full of spatiality and flexibility. “Nothing is patent or exact in the film industry. Everything must be done based on the current market conditions. It’s why creating a film is something that needs true sincerity. Therefore, every small step taken into account will be very meaningful. Their fans, for example, the storyline, the ending, the promotion. Every single detail matters,” he concluded at the end of the interview.
