Television Post-Production: Tips You Can Steal!

Announcer: Welcome to Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.

Angry Man: Is this some kind of joke?

Unidentified Voice: Biagio.

Biagio: Who did this episode? It’s episode 83 and we’re talking television post-production. Everything you should consider from hardware to software. How to decide which tools are right for you. A crazy secret way to get free training for learning new software. Free software that will let you do pro work. And a whole lot of this poopoo.

Unidentified Voice: I.

Biagio: Music courtesy Dave Pelman music Dave Pelman. Com. Hey everybody she’s joke. We’re married. We make unscripted film and television and want to help you do the same.

Joke: Hopefully by teaming up with us.

Biagio: All right, well get ready people, because episode 83 is going to be in depth. Right, honey?

Joke: Oh, this is the one has been waiting to do.

Biagio: Oh my gosh. Joke has literally been shaking her head at me for like the last. Well, I guess like the last three hours because I’ve been typing up my notes for this episode and they’re 11 pages long, which is maybe overdoing it a little bit.

Joke: And everyone just tuned out.

Biagio: And everybody’s like, Adam, not listening to this podcast. No, don’t leave yet. Anyways, today’s episode is about television post-production. What I want you to take away from today, well, is not just the tools that we use to finish our television shows to edit, sound, mix, color, correct, do visual, visual effects, compositing titles. Because the tools we use you might find that useful and informative. What I think is more important is why we use those tools, the reasons we chose to go with the post workflow we have, because what you’re going to need to do is use your own reasoning in the end to decide what’s right for you. I think some of our tips and some of our reasoning may also work for you, may help you choose the right tools. On the other hand, I think what’s most important is to know that we’re not trying to Ram software or workflows down anyone’s throat. We’re not here evangelizing stuff. We’re just here to say, listen, this are the answers we came to after many years of trying to figure it out, right?

Joke: Not evangelizing. But these are the answers.

Biagio: These are the answers. No. So anyways, I just with with that incredibly long intro, I think I just want to go ahead and dive into what will be in in-depth podcast now. Like I said, today we’re going to talk about hardware and software. We’re going to talk about editing, color correction, sound mixing, graphics, visual effects. But before we get into any of that, I want to talk about the most important concept you should consider when building your post workflow, and really when getting into any creative endeavor and joke. Do you know what that concept is? Nope. She does, but she thinks it sounds really geeky and she’s gonna make me say it. It’s the concept of iteration, and I know that sounds kind of geeky, right?

Joke: A little.

Biagio: Bit, a little bit, but what is iteration really mean? It’s just a fancy way of saying, how many times can you improve something on the schedule you have. So in other words, if you’re editing, you know, a project, how many times can you edit that project in the schedule you have? Because every time you edit and reedit and reedit, theoretically it should get better. So iteration is really important knowing that you can try and do something over and over again as many times as possible. Hopefully getting better every time means that if your tools help you work faster, you iterate more often. You end up with better work. As a matter of fact, back in the day, that was why we chose Final Cut Pro over avid in our early days, right, Joe? Yep.

Joke: We sure did. Choose Final Cut.

Biagio: To laugh right.

Joke: On iteration.

Biagio: I’m clearly more into this iteration idea. The joke is, although she’s into it too, she just doesn’t call it that. The point being that back in the day, we felt that we could do more with Final Cut Pro in the same amount of time that then we could with avid. And so for years we were Final Cut Pro. Many of you know that we’re now Adobe Premiere. We’ll get into that a little bit later. But our main reason for choosing Final Cut Pro when we started our career was it allowed us to work faster, to do more cuts in a shorter period of time, and therefore iterate more often. And I think that that’s such an important concept in whatever tools you choose for your post workflow or any of your creative works. You know you need to choose stuff that you are comfortable with. It is going to help you do the best work in the shortest amount of time. All right, so first stepping back I want to talk about of course, hardware. So for any post-production you’re doing these days you need computers. Now we’ve always been math based.

Joke: Yes. For a long time. I think even before we met, I had a mac.

Biagio: You had a mac, I had a PC, I had a PC, you.

Joke: Had a man. I swayed, you know.

Biagio: You swayed me right away. I’ve been Mac ever since.

Joke: Yeah, well, you know, once you go, Mac, you don’t go back.

Biagio: Well, that’s what you used to think. That’s what I used to think. Now, I will tell all of you that while we currently are all Mac or server is Mac, our computers are Mac. There’s not a PC in this place. I mean, that’s not true.

Joke: Added a PC to our server.

Biagio: You’re right, we just added a PC to our server, so there’s like one PC in this place. I will tell you, for those of you getting into the biz now, and it hurts me to say this because this is where I am a little bit of a fanboy. I love Mac, but I think you do yourself a disservice not to consider PC these days. The fact of the matter is that right now at least PCs are faster. They’re cheaper, then maybe a little less stable. I have not worked on PCs in years, is probably probably been close to 20 years since I’ve worked on a PC, so I’m not speaking from firsthand experience, I’m just speaking from talking to others and looking at what Apple has been doing with their hardware these days.

Joke: We’re not.

Biagio: Doing or not doing. I mean, we never bought a trash can, the trash can computers, the black, cylindrical looking things, the because they’re just weird. They’re not helpful. They’re not expandable. Really. I mean, you can, but it’s a pain in the butt. They’re not refreshing. They’re pro line. I’m really waiting to see what Apple does with with their pro computers. Right now we use mostly their high end iMacs because they’re fast enough for most editing tasks. But for color grading or visual effects, you need faster stuff. And I don’t know where the future is going to go for us as a company. I think that those of you just starting out should look at PC and and especially if you don’t have a lot of money, you might want to look into starting there. So that’s that’s where we are in the hardware landscape. And as always, I think you need to choose what’s right for you based on your budget, based on software you already own. I mean, if you’re already heavily invested in Mac and own a bunch of Mac software, probably not going anywhere anytime soon. If you’re just starting out, you might want to try PC. If you’re already on a PC, good for you. I wouldn’t switch to the Mac right now. All right, so that’s what I have to say about hardware, which will probably, believe it or not, be the shortest part of this podcast. Joe just side. If you didn’t hear her, it was more of a grunt. It was more of.

Joke: A more of a grunt.

Biagio: It sounded pretty painful.

Joke: Well, you know, hey.

Biagio: As you can see, I’m the techie one in the relationship.

Joke: Anyway, this is important.

Biagio: This is important, this is important. But moving on to software, I do want to mention a side note though. This is something that my lovely wife brought to my attention recently, and my head almost blew up because I had no idea.

Joke: Oh no. Is this going?

Biagio: Oh no, this is super exciting because when you when you have so much software to keep up with and learn, how do you do it?

Joke: Lynda.com.

Biagio: Lynda.com is what we use, what we pay a bunch of money for. And then it turns out that if you have a Los Angeles Public Library card, if you live in Los Angeles, you can get a free Lynda.com account. I’ll put a link in the show notes. You’ll be able to find them at producing unscripted Comcast 083. But I couldn’t believe it. So if you, as you find yourself choosing the software to use and you suddenly learn, you need to learn how to use it. If you happen to be in LA, make sure you get a library card and get your free Lynda.com account. It’s amazing if you don’t live in LA, I have to assume libraries elsewhere have similar programs, and if they don’t have Lynda.com accounts, maybe they have other free online training. Or you know, you can always just go old school and get a book so the libraries are there for you. It’s free, so you have no excuse not to dive in and learn a new piece of software. Now that said, let’s talk editing. We already did a podcast about why we switched to Adobe Premiere. That’s episode 60. You can find it at producing on six zero. But for us, I want to talk about the why it came down to iteration. Now, we talked again earlier about Final Cut Pro and back in the early days, how we could just do more. One Final Cut seven became Final Cut X, which happened about, I don’t know what, 4 or 5 years ago now.

Joke: I locked it out to be honest.

Biagio: It was a sad day, right?

Joke: It was sad.

Biagio: I mean, I cried literally.

Joke: Well, I don’t know if we literally cried.

Biagio: No, no, I cried.

Joke: You went to the bathroom and cried.

Biagio: I don’t even think I went the bathroom. I think I just wept right in the middle of the office.

Joke: I just remember standing with our assistant editor looking at the presentation and everything, and we’re like, wait, what? What just happened?

Biagio: That’s it. It was what just happened? I mean, it literally like it blew our minds. For those of you who use final Cut acts, you know, listen, you can do great work with it. Don’t get us wrong. It’s just, you know, we had built a whole post workflow around working one way that suddenly didn’t work that way anymore. And so we were faced with the decision of going avid or premiere, basically. And at the end of the day, for the way we work, we felt we could do more cuts in less time with Adobe Premiere, and that’s why we chose Adobe. Now, if you’re a one person shop, if you’re just starting out, it really doesn’t matter what you use. You could use Final Cut Ax, you can use premiere, you can use iMovie, you can use any one of the free editing programs out there, as long as you can do great work. When you’re a solo shop, that’s all that matters. Things get a little trickier when you need to start hiring, right? Joke.

Joke: Yeah. I mean, listen, we work in a freelance business, and so avid has been the predominant player in town. And so I would say probably about 90% of editors are like avid majored. I don’t know how to say it.

Biagio: Or there are primary software. That’s what they grew up on. That’s what they know. They don’t want to learn anything else. A lot of them.

Joke: Yeah. So a lot of the younger editors, you know, came up with the final cut or the premiere of it all or people just starting out. But, you know, the old Guard is definitely more avid. A lot of the companies are still avid, although that’s starting to change a little bit. So, you know, our biggest concern and it’s it’s still a concern. It’s still something that I think Adobe, is working on or needs to focus on some more is to bring editors into the fold so that the pool of, of premiere, knowledgeable editors grows.

Biagio: Yeah. In the meantime, honestly, I just hire smart people. I think we try to do that anyway. Like, if someone is a good editor, we’ll just hire them and we’ll say, we know your first week is going to be rough. Get your Los Angeles Public Library card, go to Lynda.com and learn Premiere before you come in. And and we don’t mind if you learn a little bit on the job, because smart people are often more important than finding someone who knows premiere but isn’t necessarily have the editing chops we’re looking for. So that said, we do also own other software licenses. Listen, I own Final Cut said we know a ton of Final Cut seven licenses. We own Final Cut X, we own avid, mainly because sometimes we may have to work with another producer or another company or a network who has a project that was done on one type of editing system and needs to get open over here or transferred or whatever. So it just makes good sense for us to own all of them. I think if you’re just starting out, one is plenty and it’s all you need. As always, choose what’s going to help you in your particular situation in hours. Working in a system where we want to do editing and visual effects and sound mixing often all at the same time, we have found that the Adobe Suite in general, and especially premiere specifically, the best to be able to iterate through a lot of ideas. That’s the word of the day. Iterate. It sounds so geeky, but we found that the best way to get through a lot of cuts quickly. That’s why we use premiere. You use what’s right for you. Now I want to move on to the next important phase of post-production we’re talking about today color correction and grading.

Joke: Yes, another one of your faves.

Biagio: Well, but honestly, this is one of your faves too. I mean, because.

Joke: I like the end result.

Biagio: Yes, you like the end result. You know, like the time it takes to get there.

Joke: Well, you know, it’s you know, it looks beautiful.

Biagio: It looks listen, it looks beautiful in the end. And joke will tell you. And I will agree with her that when you have a really beautifully graded project, it just gives it a certain amount of polish, especially on I mean, with series it goes without saying you’re always grading your series, but on pitch tapes, presentations, if you can color grade them and do it well, it really makes a difference.

Joke: I agree.

Biagio: Great getting and I agree out of my way. Find this is a huge victory for me by the way. So woo woo. That’s all I have to say about that.

Joke: The amount of time you should take to do.

Biagio: It well that I always take longer than that. I. Then you want me to or I probably should. So let’s talk about color correction and grading. And the fact of the matter is we use a variety of tools in different situations. Now, I do want to say that for me, if it’s just me by myself and I’m cutting like a pitch tape or I’m cutting a whole pilot because it’s a really low budget pilot or whatever. But basically it’s me. I’m the one. I’m the guy. I use the magic bullet suite from Stu Mash, which in Red giant. We did a podcast about that, a few podcasts back. It’s very powerful. And most importantly for me, I am super fast with it. So I we actually used it to color correct our documentary Dying to Do Letterman, which played in theaters, and it worked great. I just used it on a TV project we delivered last week. It worked wonderful. I was able to to get a great look, and the best part about it is I use it right inside of premiere. You can use it right inside of, I think, any editing system, so it just works in your timeline. You don’t have to worry about going to another program if it’s just you and you’re working by yourself. Like, for me, that’s the way I go now. I only own a few licenses of Magic Bullet. As much as I would just love to give more and more money to Stu because he deserves it. The fact is, we own a lot of edit bays. We have a lot of edit bays, we have a lot of computers here. And so if you’re using plug ins, you have to buy that plugin for every machine you own. And at a certain point it really adds up, especially if not all your editors know that plugin. So if I am editing a pilot or a presentation with a few other editors and I trust them, the color correct, but they don’t necessarily know magic bullets or we’re just not in a position to buy more copies of it at that time. We use the built in color correction plugins right inside of premiere, and honestly, you can use the built in color correction plugins in any editing program these days. Their strong, they’re powerful. Once you go to Linda com or that your library and you learn the basics of color correction, you’ll be able to use them just as well as you can any of the other plugins I’ve mentioned. So for instance, another project that we just recently developed, it was me and an assistant editor worked together on it, and we colored the whole thing using Premier’s native plugins. It worked great. It looked beautiful. I didn’t feel like I really lost any power. There’s a few little niceties from Magic Bullet I would have liked to have, but the end result nobody would know the difference. So you can use the plug the built in color correction tools right in your system, right, honey?

Joke: Yes. And the benefit of using the ones in your system is speed and render time, which allows you to have more. What? Honey?

Biagio: More iterations. My wife does actually have a very solid point here. A lot of times those plugins take forever to run. Honey, I’m so impressed with your your your technical technical approach.

Joke: To that, to this iteration.

Biagio: Then you are see iterations by getting as many done as possible. But it’s true. A lot of times your native plugins will just render a lot faster. So because they’re built by the company that built your software, so that can let you get through things a lot quicker. Now what about when we go to series? We should probably be using one of these tools we love so much for series, right? Actually we don’t. Those laughs. Well, no, but for a very good reason. Listen, for TV series we use DaVinci resolve. By the way, there is a free version of the venture Resolve that does 98% of what the paid version does. You can download it from Blackmagic. Com so it’s completely free. We use the paid version because we use a few of the advanced features, but most of you will never need those. If you’re doing a pitch tape for sure, you’ll never need them. But why? Why do we use DaVinci resolve? Especially when Adobe comes with speed grade, which is also a very powerful color corrector? Honey.

Joke: It sure is. But this goes back to the pool of freelance artists out there. And while Speed Great has come a long way, the pool of artists who use speed grade has not really exploded or grown that much. So most most of the color grading artists still use DaVinci resolve.

Biagio: Or there’s a few programs they use, but that’s a very popular one. But most importantly, we have an artist who we love, and that artist uses DaVinci resolve. And I think joke will agree with me. One thing that we always say is if you can hire someone that’s better than you.

Joke: All the time.

Biagio: Yeah, all, all the time. Well, Joel is a way better colorist than I am, believe me. And and he’s an artist and this is the tool he wants to use. So we built a DaVinci resolve color suite. It’s pretty awesome, actually. And thank you for letting me build it, because I know you weren’t sure about doing that first.

Joke: Oh, you know, if Joel dreams it, then somehow you shared those dreams. And next thing you know, here we are.

Biagio: We have a very nice little color correction suite right here at the office, which allows us to grade in house, which is also it was also very important to us, not just because I want to have a color correction sweet and house and it’s geeky and awesome, but because if we’re in the middle of an edit or something changes, if we’re editing and we get a note from the network and you’re like, oh my gosh, can you please change this thing last minute, we can just walk down the hall and change it. We don’t have to do a whole nother output or output a patch and take it to a facility somewhere. If Joel wants to talk to me about something, he just walks over to my bay and we talk about it. I’m literally right next to him. So that was part of the reason why building a Da Vinci Bay made sense. Again, the great part about DaVinci. You can download a free version and it’s not like a stripped down version. It is a legit incredible version, way better than anything. You would need to cut a pitch tape or even a pilot really. So if you’re not using the Adobe suite and you want to get your hands on some great free color correction software, download the Vinci Resolve. Okay, next up, sound mixing. Now joke. This is an area you actually think everyone should pay attention to, and I didn’t even have to argue this point with you.

Joke: If you say so.

Unidentified Voice: Why now? Come on now.

Biagio: What you were just talking the other day about like how that is one thing. People should take the time to learn it.

Joke: It is. Yeah, I agree.

Biagio: It’s true. If you have great sound, people will ignore a bad picture. If you have a great picture, people will not ignore a bad sound. They won’t be able to follow your story. So when it comes to sound mixing, I’m going to talk for a second about hardware and then get into software. But here’s my take on what’s important and get ready to start hearing jokes. I and grown a lot. First of all, before we even talk about what what software are you using, the most important thing you can do is have the right kind of speakers. That doesn’t mean super expensive speakers, but it does mean the right kind. Or in the worst worst, worst case scenario, the right kind of headphones. What you want with your speakers. I’m going to give you two words. These are very important words. This is what you want. You want to have speakers that have a flat response a flat response. Here’s why. If you use cheap multimedia speakers or you use stereo speakers, they’re designed to make everything trick the human ear to sound better. The problem is, if you do your sound mix on those speakers and then you go like to a really nice network pitch where they happen to have really good speakers, which happens to us all the time. Or heaven forbid, you go to a movie theater and you play that same mix you did on those stereo speakers over the movie theater speakers. All of a sudden, all those frequencies that you couldn’t hear on those little speakers are going to be loud and crazy on the really good speakers, and your mix is going to sound horrible, and you will have the worst surprise of your life. It happened to us for the first time years ago on a documentary we did, and when we saw it in the theater, we were just a gas. This is like like again, we’re talking like 20 years ago. And it was because we’d done the mix on really crappy little speakers, and all of a sudden you get to halfway decent speakers and it sounds awful. Now, if you can’t afford a great flat response speakers, you can get flat response headphones in the range of like 50 to 150 bucks. And a lot of people will tell you don’t mix on headphones because it’s not the same as hearing it on speakers. I will tell you that in a pinch, I have mixed on my $100 Sennheiser headphones, which are pretty flat, and when that played back in the network pitch room, it sounded just fine. So I think that even those are better than mixing on crappy little speakers.

Joke: I feel.

Biagio: So.

Joke: Excited about flat response.

Biagio: There is one other really geeky thing that I did to my room, because I do have the flat response speakers, and they’re not the world’s most expensive flat response speakers. They’re actually pretty low end for as far as the, you know, because you can go up to like thousands of dollars. Mine were in the hundreds, but I did. I treated my room with sound treatment material, which you can find online. You can buy it from all or any places, do a search for sound treatment material. But then I did the really geeky thing, which was I tuned my room.

Joke: Yeah, see, he’s letting some some he’s he’s omitting some parts of this story. As in how many paths did it take to treat that room?

Unidentified Voice: Okay.

Biagio: Okay, so I had some help treating the room. I could have done it by myself, would have just taken a lot longer. But for tuning in the room, I have this piece of software from IK multimedia called Arc arc, and basically what it does is it plays this really loud, crazy noise in your room. It goes.

Unidentified Voice: Boop boop boop.

Biagio: That sounds just like. That joke is making fun of me again. And then what it does is it records.

Unidentified Voice: The pew pew pew.

Biagio: Back through a microphone and it figures out what’s wrong with your room, and it fixes it.

Joke: Deafening.

Biagio: This is happening. But but I will tell you that I did notice it makes a big difference in my mixes. So if you’re serious about mixing and you don’t have the best sound mix room in the world, you can go ahead and check out arc from IK multimedia. You can tune your room. That’s what I did. Okay, now for the software for pilots and presentations. I use the built in sound mix tools in premiere. They’re kind of hidden. They are extremely powerful. I can tell you that having done mixes on Pro Tools, having done mixes in audition, and having mixed in premiere in my crazy sound tuned room, I can tell you that you can get the same results. I love this mix tool as a premiere. I think they’re really, really fabulous. If we’re doing something that’s a series, I do not do the sound mixers. Correct, honey?

Unidentified Voice: Oh no no no no.

Biagio: That would that would be awful. Again, I always believe in hiring people better than us. In our case, we do go out of house for the sound mix because as much as I like.

Unidentified Voice: My p p p room.

Biagio: Nothing beats, you know, a a multi-million dollar, you know, sound suite where they’ve built it to perfection for your sound mix.

Joke: Are you telling me they haven’t done the pew pew pew?

Unidentified Voice: Oh, they’ve done the pew.

Biagio: Pew pew. They have their own pew pew pew tools. They do. They use them as part of the ASP all day long. I mean, they do it for like, way longer than I did.

Joke: Yeah. I’m going to have to ask about that.

Biagio: Yeah. It’s it’s called frequency response or something. I forget the technical term, but basically yes, they, they tune their rooms for real. And so we go out of house. Basically what we do is we export and what’s called an OMF or an AF from premiere, and we export that. Then they import it into Pro Tools. If you don’t have the Adobe Suite, by the way, Adobe Audition is what I do. Our podcasting, it’s a great sound mixing tool. I think in a lot of ways it can compete with Pro Tools. I usually just don’t have time to go out of premiere to do a proper mix on our pitches and our our pilots, but there’ll be audition comes with a suite. Great tool if you have the time, like if you’re doing an independent feature, I think you’d be well served if you couldn’t get a pro tool suite to mix it in audition. Also, there’s a free open source program called audacity. Again, free. You can download it, you can mix in it. It’s a great tool. It’ll do most of what you need, if not all. So last but not least, visual effects and 3D.

Joke: I mean, yeah.

Biagio: Now my wife and I have some strong feelings about this. Opposing feelings. I started learning how to do 3D and visual effects back in the 90s. It’s taken me a long time to get to a decent level, but I’m at a place now where I can do what some people would call Hollywood level visual effects. I can do, you know, a computer generated imagery. I can do photorealism. I can also do 3D graphics that look really nice.

Joke: For the record, he tricked me into this by saying this was going to be his hobby.

Biagio: Okay, well, it was my hobby originally. Then it just turned out that we could get paid for it, so that’s not so bad.

Joke: We’ve gotten paid for this.

Biagio: Well, we saved money by doing it ourselves.

Joke: That’s different now.

Biagio: Now, now, that said, okay, I will tell you that for basic titling and lower thirds, you know, as we get I’m going to get into like the whole the whole process here of 3D visual arts. But if all you’re doing is basic titling, you can get away with whatever’s in your editing system. We just delivered a very high end presentation for a major network. Stay tuned for more. Can’t talk about it yet, but soon. And I did all the lower thirds right in premiere. And how did they feel about them? Honey.

Joke: They were awesome and I agreed.

Biagio: Yeah, the network loved them and thank you. They turned out great. I did them right in premiere Premier’s got basic title editing tool that lets you do titles, basic shapes. So if you if you know what you want to do, you can get it done in there. And it was super easy, super quick. It was awesome. Like no reason to go outside the program for that. Now, if you’re going to do more complicated compositing and compositing is just a fancy way of saying put stuff on top of each other and mix it together. Like if you put a title on top of your video, you’re compositing it. I use After Effects, which comes with the Adobe Suite. It’s a great program. It has a little bit of a learning curve, but you can learn a little and do a lot.

Joke: Learn a little, do a lot. That’s that’s a good slogan.

Biagio: Yeah, learn a little, do a lot. If you’re if Adobe is not your thing. Black magic. Who puts out the Vinci resolve also has a fantastic free compositing program. There’s a paid version and a free version, but again, the free version is way more than most people will ever need. It’s amazing. It’s called fusion, downloaded for free at Blackmagic. You can use it for commercial purposes. It’s incredible. Now it’s node based, whereas After Effects is layer based. That might mean nothing to many of you. Some people think node based is a little bit harder to learn, but hey, it’s free. So if you want to get into some heavier compositing, especially if you’re going to try and do some photorealistic CG composites, you might want to download fusion and give it a shot. Now for full on 3D, right? The pinnacle of of post geekiness, if you’re actually trying to do, you know, photorealistic 3D or full 3D graphics, there’s a few different ways to go about it. Now, me personally, my 3D program of choice is cinema 4D. Right, honey? Yes, you love cinema 4D, right?

Joke: Yes, I see it on my credit card statements all the time.

Biagio: It is expensive. The upgrades are expensive. But I’ve tried, I tried, you know, I tried everything, including Maya, which is sort of the industry film standard. Can never get my head around it. For me, coming from an artist perspective, cinema 4D was far and away the easiest 3D program to learn quickly and get great results fast. Also, cinema 4D, which was originally built for motion graphics for doing great, incredible 3D titles, has grown into a program that can also do photo real CG. So for us who are doing pitch and pilots where we need to do graphics that have full on 3D and can compete with network graphics, but also do reenactment shows like our crime shows where we need to do photorealistic CG in some cases to do a seagull or a CGI house or a CG building. We can do both in cinema 4D. So for us, that makes it a really good investment. Now, recently, however, I find that I’ve been doing a lot more with a plugin inside After Effects and that plugin is called element. It comes from a video copilot. It’s a $200 plugin and it lets you do full on photo, real CG if you know what you’re doing right inside of After Effects, which is pretty awesome, especially if you already have the Adobe Suite. So my advice for those starting out who have a budget would be if you have After Effects, try maybe try Video Copilot inside of the After Effects. See how that goes for you. Also, by the way, After Effects comes with a free version of cinema 4D called cinema 4D light. It’s stripped down, but you can get your feet wet with 3D. Or if you have a real budget, I’d suggest trying cinema 4D. What if you have no budget? Great news! There is a free, totally featured 3D program anybody can download and use called blender. You can find it at blender. I’ll put it in the show notes and full on Hollywood 3D level renders have been done inside of blender. You could literally make a blockbuster feature with blender. It has a steep learning curve, but it does not have a steep price tag, so you could pick it up for free and get your feet wet with 3D. Now, the reason I mention these is because I do believe that part of the reason we’ve been able to break into true crime and break into other areas of the industry is we were able to do certain things in 3D that would have been very hard to pull off otherwise, especially in reenactments. When you can’t get a location or you can’t pull off a certain shot, being able to do a photo real 3D shot can take you a long way. Sometimes you’re out shooting, you know, a true documentary series and you just get a really ugly light stand in there knowing how to do the visual effects. To paint that light stand out is a great skill to have. That’s why you want to bother learning these things, in my opinion. So there you go. A very interactive podcast today between me and my wife. Yeah, this is it. I wasn’t where post-production is there.

Joke: I don’t I didn’t know what else you were going to come up with titling like.

Biagio: We talked about title captioning. I’m not going into captioning yet. Nobody needs to know about that.

Joke: Great. Oh my gosh. This is this is great news.

Biagio: So anyway so there you go. Listen I know this was an in-depth podcast. Maybe I was a little self-indulgent today. I just I love post, I love the fact that you can do just about anything with paid tools, or do the same stuff with free tools. There’s no reason for you not to get done what you need to. The real question about your post workflow is what’s going to help you do what?

Joke: Iteration?

Biagio: Yes, iterations. What’s going to help you iterate the you know, you know, at the highest, at the highest.

Joke: Can I out?

Biagio: You help me out me.

Joke: I’ve never heard you use that word before.

Biagio: I know, but it’s like it’s like I think it all the time. I’m like, it’s one of those words. It’s always in my head. But I never say it out loud because it’s such a funny word. Iterate, iterate. Okay, you probably don’t call it duration because really, you just call it how many times is going to take me to get it right? How many times is it going to take me to make it good? So you just need to answer for yourself what tools are going to help you in every phase of the process, to work as quickly as possible so that you can make your product as good as it can be in the time you have. And that’s that’s kind of what it comes down to.

Joke: I love it. So two weeks from now we’re going to do a much shorter podcast.

Biagio: Yeah, two weeks in and out. We’ll go back to our under 18 minute podcast. This is the first time we’ve done a long one in a while. I know, but we’ll go back to our under, you know, we’ll go back to a much, much shorter podcast. But for those of you who’ve made it this far and maybe have never listened to this podcast before, oh heaven. If this is your first time you’ve ever heard our podcast. It’s not usually this long or this geeky, but the main reason, as many of you know, that we started this podcast, is because we make TV and film. Reality TV, unscripted television and true crime are our bread and butter, and we wanted to be able to give people an easy way to pitch their concepts to us. That’s what this whole podcast has been about all 83 episodes up to and including today’s. So if you would like to learn how to pitch your concepts to us, just head on over to Producing Unscripted. Sign up for the newsletter and follow the directions you do need to follow the directions. There are a few hoops to jump through, but those of you who are serious about wanting to work in this industry will have no problem making your way to our portal and submitting a pitch. So that’s it. As always, thanks for tuning in. We’ll be back in two weeks, and I’d like to thank my wife for bearing with me through this techie geeky podcast episode today.

Joke: Oh, that. I just hope they bear with you.

Biagio: That’s true. I hope you all did. I hope you took away something useful. And if not, next time will be much shorter. All right. Thanks so much, everybody. Bye bye bye.

Joke: See you in two weeks.

Announcer: Producing Unscripted with Joke and Biagio.