Best (professional) Workflow for MusicVideo Production

[Angelo Lorenzo]

It depends on how picky the client is. If you aren’t working for a media team who is use to seeing footage that isn’t very contrasy (I assume this was shot with Cinestyle or at least the contrast rolled back) then I would do a quick first look (actually called a first light), to at least wrangle in some nice contrast. I would then export the footage to an intermediate file like ProRes or DNxHD. This can be done in Resolve or, if you have it, Speedgrade.

You can then do your rough cut within Premiere. If it’s not very effects heavy then you can dynamic link single shots out to After Effects for sfx or fixes like motion stabilization. You’ll need to render these shots out in After Effects and replace the dynamic links with real footage, why? So you can bring real footage into Resolve for a final look using an EDL that will basically rebuild your timeline within Resolve.

Alternately, if the video is really sfx or colorgrade heavy, I would create and export a LUT in Resolve instead of rendering out intermediates, and then apply the LUT in Premiere and After Effects using something like LUT Buddy (yes, it even works for CS6, just shuffle it around the plug-ins folder). Your client will see nice previews with some contrast, but you’re working behind the scenes with the flat footage all the way through and then linking the original flat footage in Resolve at the end.

Generally a workflow is:
first light -> rough cut -> edit lock -> effects and conform -> final color and finishing

Of course, depending on your timeline, effects might happen before edit lock once you have a good idea of what shots are part of a particular sequence.

And this takes into account no audio because you’re cutting against a music track.

Angelo Lorenzo
Fallen Empire Digital Production Services – Los Angeles
RED transcoding, on-set DIT, and RED Epic rental services
Fallen Empire – The Blog
A blog dedicated to filmmaking, the RED workflow, and DIT tips and tricks

[Sam Sanders]

Thank you so much. Thats helped me a lot.

Big thanks.

Sam