Twenty five years ago, when the Texas-based post house Matchframe was started, the idea of post production supervision was nonexistent. "Today we just assume it's something that's needed." says Ken Ashe. the facility's post production supervisor "We don't feel comfortable taking on any commercial or other longform project without assigning a post production supervisor just for keeping track of the elements alone." He dates the shift in thinking to about a decade ago when the sophistication of motion capture, coupled with strong animation departments. brought clients into a world that was beyond the understanding of an average person.

Ashe also points out that a post supervisor onsite is necessary to lay the groundwork for special effects that will be created in post. "The DP wants to create a mood. The director wants to focus on the actors' delivery. Neither of those people, and usually no one else on set, has that as their primary focus," explains Ashe. "A post production supervisor is going to be there to help look at the scene, recognize the challenges that occur that day and help solve them. As Woody Allen says. "Every day, a fresh truckload of compromises comes through the front door."

A handful of post pros have offered tips to guide others doing post production supervision work, and they talk about recent projects that presented challenges and how those were solved.

Project/Challenge: On an indy film out this fall, a shot called for a person to be trapped in a structure. During discussion with the client, Ashe recognized that it would be more believable, and reasonably priced, if done as a practical rather than re-creating the entire environment and structure with 3D animation.

"Although you can go a long way to be realistic these days. I think there are certain times there's an innate understanding in a person's mind whether it's going to look realistic or not," he says of his experience and instinct that influenced his suggestion.

TIP #2 "Our regular clients know that a 10-minute phone call before they get deep into a script or into the shoot winds up answering a lot of questions in their minds." says Greg Browning. president/editor of DV-Ent Artists Group (www.dvent.com). "We do know that we're being asked to provide a lot of flash for smaller and smaller amounts of money, and the best way to do that is talk ahead of time."

This consortium of independent editors and artists who operate under one roof in Minneapolis was established two years ago and does provide post production supervision for its corporate and commercial clients. The individual owner/operators provide offline, online, telecine and graphics services.

Project/Challenge: When General Mills bought Pillsbury merging the two companies together it wanted to create several corporate programs with a commercial flair to explain the merger to employees. DV-Ent put three editor/producers on the job to create eight two- to five-minute programs which, tied together, was delivered at the end of 2001. Each editor acted as a producer and post supervisor taking the script and materials, then cutting the pieces with little supervision. One music video style piece. House of Meals (a parody of the cable show House of Style), was influenced by the post supervisor's idea.

"The client needed to shoot with Digital Beta and MiniDV," says Browning. "The editor helped coordinate with the director the best way to use high-end and cheaper resources. They used Digital Beta for essential shots, the wide master shots, and then went crazy with MiniDV. That influenced that director; so in subsequent shoots for the same project they used that technique as well. We encouraged them to use multiple cameras in situations where they thought they could only afford to have one nice one." The client was an internal producer plus two freelance producer/directors. DV-Ent editor/producers were Rich Coleman, Brian Kerr and Browning.

TIP #3 GET THE WORD OUT THAT THE SERVICE IS AVAILABLE. "At a facility like ours where we offer both edit and post aspects, we're always encouraging clients to talk to us," says Kevin Gottlieb, producer at Madhouse (www.madhousenyc.com) in New York City. "Sometimes they might not even know that they need more assistance in post. We're aware of that, we know all those pitfalls and post scenarios. Our editors are a tightly knit crew with our graphics people, and there's a continuous flow of information there, and that team can work with the director so you have everyone playing the right roles in order to get the project where it needs to be."

This edit/post house, established about a decade ago, provides graphics, visual effects and sound design, offering Discreet's Flame and Smoke on SGI Octanes, plus Mac G4s running Adobe software. It caters to agencies and producers of short films. Post production supervision is a regular service. "We've been overly enthusiastic about post production supervision and have tried many times to involve ourselves early on," says Jason Sedmak, editor/director of effects.

TIP #4 DON'T TRY TO BEALLTHINGS TO ALL PEOPLE. "In modern post, so many creatives are looking to own their own systems in order to do it themselves," says Steven Wagner; director at Astropolitan Pictures (www.astropolitan.com) in Chicago. "You need to think about ramifications -- updates, support, hardware and compatibility. If you are a director; then direct. [Clients] owe it to themselves to find a post supervisor and facility they can trust.

Astropolitan has considered its working methodology carefully -- it maintains a lab of creative tools, just enough gear to develop pieces and complete offlines. For finishing they go elsewhere. As a hybrid production/post company, its artists take responsibility for their own work.

Project/Challenge: Visual effects supervisor Andrew Honacker charted the workflow for a recent HD music video called So to Speak for DJ Acucrack since 100 percent of the shots required digital effects. Daily activity was then guided by lead digital artist Talon Nightshade. Much of the background in this cyber-erotic clip is miniatures, which were photographed at high rez and photomapped using RealViz's ImageModeler software. Nightshade jumped from 3D to 2D several times using Discreet 3D Studio Max and Adobe After Effects 5.5.

For So to Speak, a DV animatic with rough 3D, compositing and conceptual art elements headed off many potential post pitfalls and helped narrow the focus to the right post techniques. "For one set-up, our actress's head was going to be placed on a segmented, rotating 3D body. We were afraid that a special rig would have to be constructed to maintain her proper rotation. Instead, some early testing in Pinnacle's Commotion software proved that we could stabilize the footage after the fact, so we shot the actress without a need for any rigging. This probably saved an hour of set time and the expense of the rig," says Wagner. The clip began airing on MTV last month.

TIP #5 ASK FOR ANOTHER TAKE

"That's something that's often not very welcome because there's a time crunch," says Madhouse's Gottlieb. "But sometimes that extra take, whether it's just a backplate or a take with fewer elements in it, can be the savior of a shot when you're in post." Fewer last-minute fixes in post means fewer financial pitfalls. "Not that we're adverse to helping out at the back end. We do a lot of fixing on things that never would have been anticipated."