Crafty Table: “We’ll Fix It in Post” Is One of the Most Expensive Sentences in Filmmaking

California just created a major new incentive for post-production. Indie filmmakers should take the larger hint: post isn't where you send the movie after you've made it. It's part of the movie you should be planning before you shoot.

California just made a fairly extraordinary admission about the changing economics of filmmaking.

In September, Governor Gavin Newsom signed legislation creating a standalone California tax credit for post-production. Editing, sound, music, visual effects and finishing can now qualify even when the underlying project doesn't qualify for California's primary production incentive, with the new program offering credits ranging from 35% to 50% of qualified expenditures depending on the project and circumstances. 

That's primarily a story about California trying to bring entertainment jobs back to the state.

But there's another lesson buried in it for independent filmmakers.

Post-production is production.

We continue to budget and talk about movies as though there is the part where we “make the movie” and then, afterward, this other thing called post happens.

That's how you end up hearing one of the most expensive phrases in independent filmmaking:

“We'll fix it in post.” Sometimes you will. You just may not like the bill.

Your Shooting Budget Isn't Your Movie Budget

Ask a first-time producer what their movie costs and you'll often hear a number that is really a production number.

They have the cast. They have locations. They know the camera package, crew rates, insurance and catering. They've calculated how many pages they need to shoot every day and figured out how to somehow get through principal photography without running out of money.

Then everybody wraps.

Congratulations.

You own footage.

Now you need to turn it into a commercially exploitable motion picture.

That distinction sounds obvious until you see how many independent-film budgets treat post-production as a handful of optimistic lines near the bottom of a spreadsheet.

Editing. Color. Sound. Music. VFX. Done.

Except that's not everything required to get the movie from the camera to a distributor.

Maybe the edit reveals that the story doesn't work quite as well as everyone thought on set. Maybe you need ADR. Maybe a location recording is unusable. Maybe the song everybody fell in love with during the edit costs considerably more than expected.

Maybe the VFX shot somebody said would take two hours takes two days.

Maybe you need pickups.

And eventually, somebody has to deliver the damn movie.

Budget Through Delivery, Not Through Wrap

When I'm evaluating an independent film, I care far more about the real completion budget than the number somebody says they can shoot it for.

Those aren't necessarily the same number.

The real completion budget is what it costs to get from the first day of preproduction all the way to a finished movie that can actually be delivered and exploited commercially.

That means producers should be thinking about post before production because decisions made on set routinely determine what post will cost.

Take sound.

You can save time on set by accepting compromised production audio and telling yourself you'll clean it up later. Sometimes that's the right decision because losing another hour of production would be more expensive than repairing the audio.

But that's a calculation.

If nobody has actually calculated it, “we'll fix it in post” isn't a strategy. It's a credit card.

The same applies to visual effects. If you know something will need to be removed, extended, replaced or composited, talk to the person who will eventually have to do it before you shoot the scene.

Five minutes of planning can save hours of roto. A different camera angle can save thousands of dollars. That's what good producing looks like.

The Cheapest Version on Set Can Become the Expensive Version Later

Independent filmmakers are understandably obsessed with getting through the day.

They have to be.

You're racing sunlight, actor availability, locations, overtime and a thousand other things trying to kill the schedule. Sometimes you knowingly create a problem for post because solving it on set would cost more.

There's nothing inherently wrong with that.

The mistake is believing the problem disappears because you moved it into another department.

It didn't disappear. You financed it.

That's how $5,000 worth of compromises during production can become $25,000 worth of post-production.

And post has a nasty characteristic that production doesn't: by the time you discover the problem, your leverage is terrible.

You can't decide not to finish your lead actor's dialogue.

You can't release a movie with unfinished VFX covering something the audience isn't supposed to see.

You can't simply ignore a piece of uncleared music if it has become structurally important to the cut.

The movie is already made. Now you have to solve the problem.

Bring Post Into Preproduction

One of the easiest things an independent producer can do is involve key post people earlier.

Your editor doesn't necessarily need to sit through every production meeting, but the editor should understand what you're planning to shoot and where potential problems may arise.

The same is true when a film is heavily dependent on VFX.

If you have 60 effects shots, the time to discover that you've designed them in the most expensive possible way is not when somebody hands the VFX house the locked cut.

Talk to them before you shoot.

If music is central to the movie, understand the clearance implications before the temp track becomes emotionally inseparable from the scene.

And if you're planning to sell the movie, understand what you're eventually going to have to deliver.

That last part matters because finishing a movie and delivering a movie aren't necessarily the same thing.

A distributor may require technical, legal and marketing materials that weren't part of your romantic vision of “post-production.” Depending on the deal and territory, that can include everything from masters and audio configurations to captions, music documentation, artwork elements, legal materials and other deliverables.

Those things cost money.

Budget for them.

Don't Spend Your Last Dollar on the Last Shooting Day

This is the part I wish more first-time producers understood.

If your financing is $1 million and your production plan requires you to spend $999,000 to get through principal photography, you do not have a $1 million movie.

You have an unfinished movie and $1,000.

The temptation is understandable because everything above the line and on the screen feels tangible. Another shooting day feels valuable. A better actor feels valuable. A nicer location feels valuable.

A reserve for post problems feels like money sitting there doing nothing.

Until you need it. Then it becomes the most important money in the movie.

That doesn't mean every independent film needs an enormous contingency sitting in a bank account. It means the producer needs to identify which assumptions in the post budget could realistically be wrong and preserve enough flexibility to survive when one of them is.

Because one of them probably will be.

Every “Fix It in Post” Should Have a Price Tag

I would make one simple change to the way filmmakers use that phrase.

Whenever somebody on set says, “We'll fix it in post,” the producer should mentally add:

“How much?”

Maybe the answer is $200.

Great. Keep shooting.

Maybe it's $2,000 and continuing production costs $5,000 an hour.

Still a pretty easy decision.

But maybe nobody knows.

That's when you should get nervous.

The point isn't that you should never fix anything in post. Modern filmmaking would be impossible without doing exactly that.

The point is that moving a problem into post is a production decision with a financial consequence.

Treat it that way.

California Just Put a Price on Something Indies Routinely Underprice

California's new incentive is interesting because the state is effectively recognizing post-production as its own significant piece of the filmmaking economy. A movie can shoot somewhere else and still potentially bring editing, sound, music, visual effects and finishing work into California under the new program.

Independent filmmakers should recognize the same thing at a much smaller scale.

Post isn't the miscellaneous category after the movie.

It's where the footage becomes the product.

And if you're financing an independent movie, I would stop asking only:

“How much can we shoot this for?”

Ask instead:

“How much does it cost to get this movie from Day One to something a distributor can actually take delivery of?”

Those numbers may be surprisingly different.

The filmmaker who understands that before principal photography has options. The filmmaker who discovers it after wrap has bills.