Overview

Any industry that radically changes how it works within 10 years can be said to have undergone a revolution. This revolution happened in desktop publishing about 20 years ago and has happened to video production over the last 10. This revolution means that where once an industry worked by compartmentalization, it now works in free form. Now producers are editors, directors are cameramen, soundmen are making graphics. For those who have come from a more structured, traditional workplace, this new open-work model can be intimidating. Many of my clients are producers who now find that they are in a position to essentially do an entire production themselves, from script to screen. Yet they reach a point where they feel intimidated by finishing a project, fine tuning it, and creating the graphics, the simple animations, and the opening montages. They are happy to make the big decisions but reluctant to do the final polish. They would rather leave the finishing with its esoteric details of luminance ranges, color saturation, black level, pixel aspect ratios, interlace flicker, antialiasing and others to someone else. Regardless of whether you do it yourself or have someone else do it for you, in the new era of video production you should have a working knowledge of some of these details yourself, especially if you re working in Final Cut Pro.

Every program is enhanced with graphics, whether they are a simple opening title and closing credits or elaborate motion graphics sequences illuminating some obscure...