Pre-production consultancy
The earlier a problem is found, the more options remain, and most of what post cannot rescue was decided in a room nobody from post was standing in.
The short version
Is this for you? For the problem the edit cannot fix and the re-shoot you paid for twice. It assumes you or your own crew hold the camera; we do not send one, we make sure the morning goes right before anybody presses record.
What leaves your plate. The format settled upstream and every recommendation drawn from footage we have already edited, carried to crews that are not ours by design, and folded into the partnership at no separate invoice.
What starts working. Footage that arrives to be worked on rather than rescued, consistent light, separated sound, the angles the edit will ask for, which is cheaper than fixing any of it and considerably better.
The smallest way in. A free audit: three fields, and a written reading back, usually within about three working days. It commits you to nothing.
What to read next. The five levels to see where this fits, or the casework to see it done.
Where advice stops being a shot list emailed the night before
The crews are not ours, and that is the whole design
Partners film all over the world, with their own local teams or with a creator holding the camera themselves. So the advice has to travel: written to be understood by somebody we have never met, in a room we have never stood in, and followed on a morning when we are asleep. That constraint is what makes the notes good.
Every recommendation comes from footage we have already edited
Nothing here is a generic best-practice sheet. The list is assembled while cutting a partner's own material, which is where the real problems announce themselves: the reflection that only appears at noon, the angle the edit keeps needing, the b-roll that is missing every single month. Advice built from evidence rather than from principle tends to be followed.
The format is specified upstream
At one partner the footage arrived as heavily compressed, eight-bit mp4 shot in a standard picture profile, which is a perfectly reasonable file to watch and very little to grade. The container was never the problem, since mp4 will hold high-quality ten-bit log just as easily; what was missing was the log profile and the bit depth. The local crew was asked to record those instead, and the grade suddenly had somewhere to go. The best decision available to a colourist is often one taken weeks earlier by somebody who never opens the software. Read more: colour grading →
None of this is a separate invoice
This runs inside the two deepest levels of a partnership, the Retainer and the Partner System, and it is never a separate invoice. The reason is self-interested and worth saying out loud: every problem prevented on a shoot day is a repair job that never reaches our desk. A studio that bills for the advice has an incentive to keep giving it, and a studio that absorbs it has an incentive to make it work. The strongest move on a shoot is the one that stops a problem before it can be made.
Advice that arrives before the camera does
What the service actually covers
Studio choice and setup. Equipment purchases, and how to use what has already been bought. Light positions. Microphone placement design. Shot lists and b-roll lists. Remote set-up sessions by video call, and room acoustics discussed the same way. The capture and delivery formats that decide what post can do. All of it lands as a checklist a crew can hold on the day.
The ten mistakes post cannot fix
There is a standing list of them. Every item is something that costs minutes on set and cannot be bought back afterwards at any price: a level that drifts, a light that changes, a continuity break, an angle nobody covered. Knowing them is worth more than any plugin.
How it reaches people who are not on the call
Written, plainly, in the language of whoever has to act on it. A checklist read at seven in the morning on a shoot day is not the place for our vocabulary, and a note that only works while its author is in the room has not actually been handed over to anybody.
Many of the best post-production decisions are made before the shoot, by the people who will have to live with them afterwards.
The earlier a constraint is found, the more of them you still get to choose.
What changes for you
Footage that arrives ready to be worked on and not rescued: consistent light, separated sound, the angles the edit will ask for, in a format that leaves the grade somewhere to go. Cheaper than fixing any of it, and considerably better.
Related: Shoot planning · Camera and lighting setup · Microphone setup · Remote direction
Most fixes here cost nothing on the day of the shoot and everything after it. The audit reads recent videos for what should have been decided before recording, and puts the list in writing.
Request your free audit.
Three fields, and a written reading back: a fit snapshot, two or three prioritised opportunities, and a recommended next step.
A person reads the channel and writes the audit by hand: a considered read typically takes three working days. That is the usual shape, not a promised turnaround. We use these details only to reply to you: no lists, no lurking.
What you will get
A fit snapshot: where your channel stands, and whether we are a match.
Two to three opportunities: specific, prioritised, yours to keep.
A recommended next step, even if that step is not us.
The audit is free and commits you to nothing: nobody follows up with a call you did not ask for.
The casework shows all of this done.
The case studies are the same work with the numbers, the sources and the dates attached.
See the casework →