You're in a rush to meet a video post-production deadline. How do you ensure top-notch technical quality?

Starting with locked edit to colour correction, vfx, and audio: Creative decisions have to be clearly and coherently put forward. Late changes in creative directions are not only costly but usually ensure mediocre output as the time and energy are not there.

To deliver a proper show/film all departments should be in contact. Edit, Color grading, VFX, audio mixing, must reflect the artistic intentions. So breaking down those tasks must reflect what were the artistic intentions. What should go first? An understanding what the show/ film should sound and look, talk to the directors, and the prioritize the tasks.

In post-production, especially under tight deadlines, I focus on maintaining both efficiency and quality by leveraging a well-structured workflow. I often begin by using proxies for smooth editing, ensuring real-time performance without compromising quality. From there, I prioritize color correction and grading, as it directly affects the emotional impact of the piece. I’ve also found that automating repetitive tasks, like batch rendering or applying templates for transitions and effects, saves time. This method allows me to focus on refining key details while keeping the project on track for the deadline.

These ‘smaller segments’ are typically handled by specialized professionals, each focusing on their respective areas of expertise. Therefore, the approach you mentioned—likely suggested by LinkedIn—is more appropriately a decision for an executive producer.

In my experience, having an optimized workflow that allows you to advance certain steps in the process in the timeline so that when you get to the end, you only have to make small adjustments in search of optimal quality. For example, making a general color correction of important scenes from the beginning as well as moving forward with the audio work so that both the director and the clients have their review times assured.

This is when the expertise will show up. Years of experience makes a huge difference on how to "attack" a project. All the pieces will be there and your trained vision, feeling, knowledge is the way. A novice editor might lose the track of things, on the other hand, the experienced one will smell the right path and set things up in such an organized way that will look like "an easy thing to do". One tip. Always get familiar with the project and the media available. Listen, watch, read the entire thing, after that just use your good judgement to assembly the media in the most creative way possible according to the schedule.

When working under tight deadlines, I've found that creating templates and presets for frequently used tasks, like color correction and transitions, drastically improves efficiency. For example, I have a go-to set of grading presets that fit various lighting scenarios, which saves me from starting from scratch each time. I also rely heavily on custom keyboard shortcuts and batch processing to streamline repetitive tasks. By automating where possible and minimizing manual steps, I can maintain high quality while meeting tight deadlines, ensuring consistency and speed throughout the project.

This is of essence. Colorists, VFX artists, sound mixers, are working their best; but a QC professional must point aberrant(or subtle) defects, ensure proper color management, point artifacts, and be in touch with image or sound artists. A QC professional should be a person that understands not only image , but audio, and in a finishing house must be in contact with those post-artist that made all images( and sounde) to better correct imperfections. A second look on the overall image is the challenge of QC, before sending the final product to a client.

In high-pressure post-production environments, collaboration becomes essential. I've worked on projects where delegating tasks, such as handing off VFX work or audio mixing to specialists, significantly sped up the process. Using cloud-based platforms, my team and I could collaborate in real-time, with multiple editors working on different sections of the project simultaneously. This not only accelerates delivery but also adds diverse creative inputs. Leveraging the strengths of each team member ensures we maintain technical quality while hitting tight deadlines.

Before final delivery, I always perform thorough checks to ensure everything meets the project’s standards. I rely on a detailed checklist, which includes verifying export settings like codec, resolution, and bit rate to maintain quality. One technique that has saved me time and headaches is testing the video on multiple devices and platforms, ensuring consistency across them. I’ve learned the importance of running final previews on a few different screens to catch any issues with color grading or sound levels. This extra layer of scrutiny is key to ensuring a polished, professional final product.