The Video is Wrapped: Now What?

Arguably, post-production video is among the most vital steps in producing effective marketing videos. This is the stage where your video comes together and comes to life. The technical decisions you make in terms of transitions, filters and music have profound effects on the overall feel of the finished work. But more importantly, this is the stage where you shape the story you tell. And the magic of film is that it may not be the story you set out to tell.

When the camera stops rolling and you know you have all the needed footage, you can begin the process of organizing, planning and editing the actual video. First, you’ll want to carefully review all the footage and, if possible, transcribe any interviews conducted. Transcriptions enable you to envision the overall arc of the story you’re telling and help you zero in on the sound bites that best support your message.

Typically, as you review the footage and transcripts, more than one story emerges. That’s a good problem to have — it means you have the raw footage to produce multiple videos. But it’s up to you to focus the content so that you’re telling just one story at a time.

In fact, good video editors can take the same raw footage and tell radically different stories based on the post-production choices they make.

“During pre-planning and production, we try to set up broad questions to get our interview subjects talking about the full range of topics we may want in the video,” said Kinetic Creative Director, Josh Wirth. “This gives us the flexibility in post-production to take that raw footage in different creative directions. We might choose to produce a video focused solely on the ‘what’ question and leave the ‘why’ for a second, more aspirational video.”

Lights, action, music

Set the tone with great sound! Sound is typically handled later in the post-production process after you’ve edited the frames down and added visual effects and filters. With the visual work done, now you can play with music and sound effects.

Regardless of whether you decide to include music, you need great sound. Done right, good sound is rarely noticed but bad audio jumps out at viewers immediately. Use noise filters and other audio tools to tune out background noise and set consistent volume levels.

Once the audio is clean, consider adding sound effects, voiceovers and music to create a more immersive video experience. Remember, few videos truly shine without great sound.

Ultimately, the music you choose has a profound effect on how viewers perceive your footage and your message. Check out this example using the same footage with four different sound tracks.

All your post-production choices matter. But it’s not just the music that changes perception. Post-production gives you the opportunity to take viewers down wildly different paths based on all your editing choices. Such choices can include the types of editing cuts used (e.g., standard, jump, fade, dissolve), color correction, effects filters and other enhancements. Here’s another example featuring two different songs paired with different editing styles and techniques.

Both examples illustrate the power in your hands when it comes to post-production. As Kinetic’s Josh Wirth puts it, “Post-production is a magical stage where you get to combine creativity and technique to produce art. Like all great art, how you mash up the elements plays a big role in the brand statement that you make.”