Contemporary Post-Production

Contemporary Post-Production is an engaging and insightful guide through the often fraught and stressful phase of post-production. It brings the art and craft of editing to life, describes contemporary workflows, and demonstrates how to break the post-production process into manageable phases. It also explores editing approaches used by five award-winning filmmakers across fiction films, documentaries, and interactive works.

This text addresses key questions about the editor’s role in shaping a story, the roles of various members of the post-production team, when and how to delegate to specialists, and how to engage in the most efficient and constructive conversations with them. Another key focus is on career pathways, with each featured filmmaker sharing how they broke into the editing field and offering advice on building a lasting career.

The featured filmmakers reflect a diversity of life experiences and work, and their interviews shed light on the people behind the process. They provide guidance on cutting-edge tools, such as the most essential software to know, how they incorporate GenAI into their work, and how they utilize remote workflows. A brief look at the past offers valuable context for understanding the future, including a section on key innovators in film history. Examples include Alice Guy-Blaché’s pioneering use of sync sound and Oscar Micheaux’s re-editing techniques to navigate censorship – stories that illustrate past innovations and continue to inspire today’s filmmakers to push creative and technical boundaries.

Each technical chapter includes class activities and exercises to help readers practice specific skills. Additional resources provide ample opportunities for continued learning.

This book serves as an invaluable resource for students in post-production courses and anyone looking to enter the industry or refine their skills.

Melanie La Rosa is an award-winning filmmaker, film professor, and advocate for diversity in media. A 2022 Public Voices Fellow on the Climate Crisis with the OpEd Project and Yale Program on Climate Change Communication, her films have screened internationally and broadcast on PBS. Her work has won funding from NYSCA, Queens Council on the Arts, Brooklyn Arts Council, and Solutions Journalism Network. Her films include "How To Power A City," "The Poetry Deal: a Film with Diane DiPrima," and "Sir: Just A Normal Guy." Her articles appear in World War Zero, The Progressive, and Gateway Journalism Review, among other publications.