The biggest challenge in this ever-evolving technology space – where we witness new software and tools being launched every other day – is how can video editors, artists and graphic designers remain up-to-date, upgrade their skill sets and deliver high quality content quickly. And it’s something most studio heads and supervisors would like to see being done in real time keeping pace with technology leaps.
This is where AnimationXpress and Adobe’s workshop ‘The Art of Post-Production’ came in. AnimationXpress in association with the renowned and widely-used multinational computer software company Adobe had organised the event on “The Art of Post-Production” on 22 February, 2017 at Raheja Classique, with prominent speakers lined up: Gaurav Rungta, Harry Hingorani and Guru Vaidya.
The event commenced with introduction of the speakers and a speech by AnimationXpress, founder and CEO, Anil Wanvari. Wanvari addressed the audience saying that post-production takes up more time than production itself, sharing his own experience of working with his team on the same. “Learning the art of post-production from our partner Adobe is a great opportunity for you all to engage with each other and learn the best practices,” he said.
He then invited TVF post-production manager, Gaurav Rungta on stage to give a talk on the topic ‘Tricks and tips of post-production while working with web and digital media platforms.” Before working for TVF, Rungta was a freelance editor who managed post-production pipeline for various TV shows and commercials. He later joined as an editor at TVF and worked on some of their major shows like Permanent Roommates, Pitchers and Tripling. As the number of shows increased, there was a need to develop a proper pipeline to manage everything.
“I managed the post-production because I was very familiar with the Adobe pipeline,” young Rungta said. After experimenting on the initial episodes of Permanent Roommates and its instant connection with the masses and resulting success, they realised that web series was the future. Pitchers was entirely laid out on Premier Pro, Audition, Photoshop and After Effects, and Rungta was assisting in editing and managing the pipeline. TVF had adopted a small pipeline of one show at a time initially which has now extended to five at a time. For one episode which is about 10 minutes long, they have three days of edit schedule and seven days of post-production schedule, “which makes post a very integral part of the entire production.”
He explained that post-production pipeline for their team involved getting the data, doing the dubbing and sound sync, editing, adding graphic elements and VFX, colour grading and corrections, sound designing and the final delivery. The team gets only three days to edit a 10 minute video and thus have to pull off a 12 hour work-shift on all three days. Training the editors – who previously worked on another software – to work on Adobe’s video-editing software is another challenge that they face. He went on to demonstrat the functions of some of the key features of Premier Pro which were – Tracker, Lumetri Colour, Proxy, Native Support and Closed Caption. When asked how he kept his team updated, he answered, “We have sessions every month where we discuss the new tools.” They teach one another and that is how everyone gets acquainted with the latest additions. “Keep yourself updated at all times; that is how we are able to do projects,” he advised.
Next up was a seminar by Redchillies.VFX, chief creative officer, Harry Hingorani on “How VFX enables content creators to become innovative storytellers.” Redchillies.VFX has worked on 35 films of various productions including their own. Hingorani screened the show-reel of the VFX work carried out by his team for the movies My Name is Khan, Krrish 3, Ra.One, Fan, Chennai Express, Om Shanti Om, Dostana, Don 2, What’s Your Raashee? and Krazzy 4 title track. He shared his experience of working at Redchillies.VFX and described the journey of the company from the film Paheli to Raees.
He explained the various challenges they faced during each movie, and how the team of artists have to bring to life the director’s vision through visual effects. Some of the tough sequences were those of fighting, chasing and destruction of property. Some of the software which they have made use of in their earlier projects are Maya, Nuke, Houdini for 3D animation, modelling, compositing.
Followed by the two enlightening sessions on post-production, Adobe India’s senior solutions consultant, Guru Vaidya conducted an informative session on “Fast-pacing the editing workflow with the help of Adobe Creative Cloud.” Vaidya demonstrated the Liquify Tool of Photoshop using which one can make someone smile more, make adjustments to jawline, enlarge the forehead, enlarge eyes and play around with the features of the face. This can also be done on cell-phones with the help of the applications like Adobe Fix and Adobe Mix which are freely available on Android and iOS platforms.
The Adobe Character Animator of Adobe After Effects helps to create live animation. There are keyboard triggers to help create cycles of animation. “We want to give you tools that will help you work by yourself without going to animation schools,” Vaidya said. He also revealed that they had bought a stock photo company called Photolia which will now enable the Lightroom users to submit their photographic work to Adobe on Photolia. Adobe Audition has features to unify and repair sound. “Editors who do not come from a sound background find it difficult to fix audio. Through Premier you can export your entire timeline to Audition where we have made your work easier by not using audio jargons.” The tool Remix in Audition is “like a little DJ sitting inside your machine,” which will analyse the sound, identify vocals and instruments, and adjust the duration of audio according to the video without any glitches. The final tool that he explained was Media Encoder, which helps to work on multiple projects simultaneously by keeping the finished ones for rendering.
After three heavy sessions on post production, a lucky winner was announced who got a free annual subscription of Adobe Creative Cloud. The winner was Sanchi Rane. The audience, which were from video-editing background, interacted with the professionals over the networking dinner.
