MFJF map · UK
Post-production: from rushes to deliverables, the rooms and the people
The crew go home after wrap. The footage does not. It comes to a post house, where over weeks or months a small number of specialists turn a hard drive full of takes into something you can watch. The stages happen in a fixed order, the rooms are booked by the hour, and the runner keeps the building working while learning the order and the words.
Ingest and dailiesEvery day of the shoot
Camera cards or drives arrive, sometimes daily during production; a trusted runner often carries them in, logs and labels them.
The offline editWeeks or months, overlapping the shoot
The creative cut, in a small, dark, quiet room with two or three desks and a door that stays shut. Cut on lightweight proxies; the output is a locked cut plus a list of every clip used (an EDL, AAF or XML).
Picture lockThe moment nothing else moves
The director, producer and, on television, the broadcaster sign off the cut. Everything downstream is scheduled from lock, which is why post producers get tense when a lock date slips.
VFXMonths, alongside everything else
Every picture that could not be captured on the day. Most of it invisible: a sky replaced, a wire removed, a modern lamppost painted out. A fixed-order factory with a review schedule everyone lives by.
Online, grade and soundAfter lock
The locked cut is rebuilt at full quality, then given its look and its sound.
Deliverables and QCThe stage nobody outside post has heard of
Every commissioner, distributor and streamer has a delivery specification. Deliverables are where post houses make or lose money, and runners are the ones burning drives and chasing courier signatures at ten at night.
