Post-Production Facilities and the Final Mix

ABC RN often likes to ensure that post-production occurs at ABC studios – especially when the EP is one to get their hands dirty with a program… at any rate, your show will be packaged and delivered from RN so it needs to get there somehow. How much post-production work you will need to do at ABC depends on your level of experience, the editing software you use and other factors such as the length of the program and the show you are working for.

If you don’t edit your own work then you will be assigned an audio engineer and studio time to put the show together. You need to come in highly organised, with a clear sense of how the piece will be edited and preferably a paper edit. You should also know exactly where all the sound and material you want to use is – so you don’t waste valuable time looking for some lost grab. While you don’t get much time to ‘play’ with the material when you work with a sound engineer – you do get to draw on and learn from their long experience of working with sound. In the edit, you engineer is your greatest resource.

If you do edit and pre-mix your programs from another location – and it’s a major feature – you will still probably be required to come into the ABC for the final mix. Transferring the material form your studio to the ABC can sometimes be tricky. First, find out if RN uses the same editing software you created the project on – the chances are it wont. If it doesn’t, you will need to ‘bounce down’ the individual tracks of the edit session or montage and transfer them to DVD or a portable hard drive. Transferring individual tracks and reconstituting them in a new system is preferable to transferring a pre-mixed stereo track.

Kyla Brettle

Independent Producer & Lecturer in Radio at RMIT University