Having shot your movie and made a successful production journey, you have captured the raw picture and sound elements you need—the puzzle pieces, so to speak. Now you need to put the puzzle together seamlessly.

That is what the following section is all about—the meat-and-potatoes of postproduction. On the surface, it may appear to be a highly technical section—after all, you will be learning about data management and workflow; visual effects; animation; and, to start things off, the basic skills needed to do effective nonlinear editing. But as you will discover, it is among the most important creative sections of the book, and that is why we are calling it “Production Glue.” Through the skillful use of editing, visual effects, character animation, and other postproduction techniques, you will come to learn how to link and manipulate the elements you captured on-set, and combine them with key synthetic or stock elements that you could not obtain during the image-capture process, to literally make everything match so that your narrative flows as you intend; how to fix or circumvent errors you made in production; and how to seamlessly “glue” everything together.

There is an art to it, an art that you can only perform effectively if you have a basic understanding of the tools needed, and how to wield them with confidence during postproduction. With this section of the book, you will learn how to make disparate parts whole—essentially the art and science of filmmaking. Don’t be intimidated by some of the technical challenges you will need to eventually master as you move through this section. You’re about to embark on an exciting phase in the process—learning how to take the final, advanced steps toward creating the cinematic art that motivated you to take this course in the first place.