Real World Digital Video, Second Edition

The Missing Ingredient?

You may never be so discouraged as when you view your first rough cut, but don't be too depressed. The tedious, exacting work of postproduction makes all the difference, transforming the contrived into a convincing, lifelike story.

What do you need to get from here to there? Patience helps—and either plenty of money to hire the needed expertise, or lots of time to make your way by trial and error.

But the most important ingredient in postproduction is the magician's flair—a sense of artful trickery.

Think about it: In some early talkie, a cowpoke in a white hat swatted the air, and the audience believed that the low-down varmint in the black hat was dealt a crushing blow.

It took an insider to know that the real abuse ...