Fix It In Pre
The new mantra for the photographer who, like me, relishes being prepared
I have a confession to make: sometimes I fix it in post. Often, actually.
“Fix it in post” can be a dangerous sentiment. You hear it on movie sets and photo shoots and any sort of production, really, representing the idea that a particular problem could be better dealt with in post production, long after the shoot day is over. Or if not “better” dealt with, at least “easier” to deal with. Later. Much later. Any time but right now.
For photographers it might mean instead of taking the time to fix a wrinkle on a shirt or a flyaway hair or a shiny forehead or a damaged product, we’ll simply keep the production moving and address the challenge later, during the editing process.
Sometimes I’m guilty of this. Aren’t we all?
It’s 3:00 pm, we’ve got this and two more shots for the day, and we see an issue — a dust smudge on the product, let’s say — and some quick calculus runs through our brain. If we take the steps to address this now, how much time will it take, and how successful will the fix be? Can it be just as easily and effectively fixed later with a few clicks of the mouse? If the equation works out, fixing it in post can absolutely be the right choice.
But not always. Maybe not even usually.
Sometimes we do the math wrong and underestimate just how efficient that post-production fix might be. Or, much worse, we underestimate how effective the fix might be.
There’s nothing worse than sitting down to fix the thing you decided to fix in post and realizing ohhhhhhhhh nooooooooo this is going to be much more time consuming than I thought. Or, even worse, I don’t think I’m gonna be able to pull this off. Yikes.
What’s happened is diabolical: you from the past betrayed you from the present. Way back on the production day, present you made bad choices which would prove unfortunate for future you. Because that day, present you had other stuff on their mind. Past you sold you out to keep things moving back then, and now present you is screwed. What a jerk.
The right way, of course, is usually to take the time to fix the thing in real life during the shoot. Not philosophically “right” (although some would argue that too) but practically speaking. There are many things that just look better when repaired in reality instead of digitally. You know them when you see them, and too often the issue is simply that you didn’t plan correctly — maybe not allowing enough time to make such fixes, or not having enough product, or rushing through the production, or any number of other equally banal reasons. Whatever it is, now future you is really in a bind, right here in the present.
In truth, the best way to fix problems doesn’t even even happen on the production day. It happens well before, in the pre-production phase, when you stop them before they happen. In most cases, everything will be better if you make one simple change:
Fix it in pre.
If your hero hat has a dust smudge on it, trying to clean it may be impractical, slowing down an expensive production. But if you “fixed it in pre,” you maybe brought along a second hero hat, or even a third, so you can swap immediately.
That’s fixing it in pre.
If your talent is a little shiny, or sweaty, or sunbaked, “fixing it in pre” might have meant hiring a makeup artist, or bringing along a fan for the talent, or setting up a canopy for shady relief from the hot sun.
The best problem solving occurs in the planning phase. With the right preparation, whatever may go wrong, you can fix it in pre.
Maybe I’ll make this my new mantra. I like to be prepared, after all. I tend to think that’s an important part of being a professional.1 I can be a bit obsessive about the pre-production on my assignments. I like to scout locations personally, rely on professionals to be part of the crew, to try and address every aspect of the production so that, whenever possible, I can not only have a plan B but also a plan C and, ideally, a plan D as well.
I was (briefly) a boy scout. They taught me to be prepared. I still think like that today.
I bring backup cameras and lenses and SD cards and lights and modifiers and… Why not have a backup for everything else? A backup plan, I mean. If that location is under construction, we can move there. If the talent shaved his beard, we can pivot to this other look. If the sun goes behind the clouds, we can add sparkle with a shiny board.
We professionals love our backups, but do we spend enough time and energy to have a backup plan for all the things that can go wrong? I certainly try to, but you can’t foresee every possible failure. This is where experience comes in. The way you prevent certain errors and mistakes is simple: you make them, preferably all of them, at least once. Fool me twice and all that.
I’m no perfectionist, but it’s possible I am a control freak. I try very hard to be prepared. I like to have a plan, and a backup plan, and if at all possible a backup to my backup plan. To my way of thinking, this is why professionals get paid the big bucks.
A friend once asked for a bid to shoot portraits of a half dozen of his small agency’s colleagues. I happily gave him the friendly bid of $1,500. They decided to go another direction. I said “What, was the other guy $500 or something?” My friend, surprised, said, “How’d you know?”
On the day of their shoot my friend called me sounding worried and a tad bit sheepish. Did I happen to have a white seamless background they could borrow, he asked? Sure thing, I said, but why? Well it turns out the $500 guy didn’t have a white seamless background. I gave my friend the seamless and handed it over with history’s most dramatic side-eye.2
That other photographer was not a dummy, I’m sure. But he was considerably less experienced. And my assumption is it was simply a communication error: nobody said they wanted white background portraits, and he hadn’t yet learned this was the kind of detail that needed to be asked in advance of the session. He learned it that day, though, and I bet he still employs it all these years later.
It’s an incredibly valuable lesson. Murphy’s Law says that whatever can go wrong, will. I like to say Murphy’s Law is my religion, because it’s proved true so many times — especially on set. But if you’re well prepared, it’s not a big problem. Because you can just solve it the best way:
Fix it in pre.
Have you heard the old adage about preparation w/r/t backup equipment? I think it comes from Army: “Two is one and one is none.” I love it. And I tend to live by it. Maybe I’ll add “fix it in pre” to my list of old adages as mantras.
I think my friend learned his lesson, because he’s hired me on more than one occasion since.