Editor & Post Lead: pipelines and teaching

01

What a post lead does and the pipeline

In simple words

A restaurant kitchen has stations: washing, chopping, cooking, plating. The head chef does not do every job, but makes sure the food moves from station to station in the right order. A post lead does the same with a video: raw clips go in one end and a finished video comes out the other.

Key facts

Post-production is everything after filming. A pipeline is the ordered list of stages a project passes through, with one owner per stage.
A common pipeline: ingest (copy and check media), organise (bins, names), assembly (clips in story order), rough cut, fine cut, picture lock, sound mix, colour, graphics and captions, QC and delivery, archive.
Picture lock means the cuts are final: no more changes to the length or order of shots. Sound, colour and graphics work after that, so a change after lock costs extra time in every department. If a change is unavoidable, make a new version and tell everyone.
A post lead owns four things: the pipeline (stages and order), the standards (style guide, loudness, file names), the people (who does what, and training), and the delivery (on time, on spec, with notes handled).
Write a definition of done for every stage, for example "Ingest is done when every clip is copied twice, checked and named".
A one-page status board (a table or a free board tool) shows each video, its stage, its owner and the due date. Anyone should be able to see it in 10 seconds.
Plan time for review. Many delays come from waiting for notes, not from editing.
Skills you already have (courses 4.2.3 and 4.8) become the standard you teach: you cannot lead a stage you cannot do.

Step by step

Write the list of stages above on a page, one stage per line.
Beside each stage write the owner (a name or role) and the tool used (for example Premiere Pro, DaVinci Resolve, a loudness meter).
Write a one-line definition of done for each stage.
Add a column for how long each stage normally takes for a video like yours.
Make a status board with one row per video: title, stage, owner, due date, version.
Put picture lock on the board as its own stage, with the date written next to it.
Check: a new person could read your page and tell, for any video, what is done, what is next and who owns it.

LESSON 01What a post lead does and the pipeline

LESSON 01 / ANIMATED LESSON / AI VOICE00:00 / 01:10

Voice

Read the video script

[Host] "A post lead does not edit every shot. A post lead makes sure the whole job flows."
[Text on screen: Ingest. Cut. Lock. Sound. Colour. Deliver.] "Name every stage, and give each one an owner."
[Screen: status board] "One board, so anyone can see where each video is."
[Text on screen: Picture lock = cuts are final] "After picture lock, changes cost time in every department."
[Host] "Write what done means for each stage. Then nobody has to guess."

Try it now

Build a pipeline page and a status board for three videos (real or practice). Ask one person to read it and tell you what happens next for each video.

ClaudeStuck? Copy a ready-made prompt for Claude

Copy this, open Claude, paste it, and Claude will walk you through the lesson step by step.

For a grown-up: Claude is for adults (18+). Copy this, paste it into Claude, and use the answer to explain the lesson to your child.

I'm learning "Editor & Post Lead: pipelines and teaching" on The Future Market. Lesson 1: "What a post lead does and the pipeline".

What the lesson teaches:
- Post-production is everything after filming. A pipeline is the ordered list of stages a project passes through, with one owner per stage.
- A common pipeline: ingest (copy and check media), organise (bins, names), assembly (clips in story order), rough cut, fine cut, picture lock, sound mix, colour, graphics and captions, QC and delivery, archive.
- Picture lock means the cuts are final: no more changes to the length or order of shots. Sound, colour and graphics work after that, so a change after lock costs extra time in every department. If a change is unavoidable, make a new version and tell everyone.
- A post lead owns four things: the pipeline (stages and order), the standards (style guide, loudness, file names), the people (who does what, and training), and the delivery (on time, on spec, with notes handled).
- Write a definition of done for every stage, for example "Ingest is done when every clip is copied twice, checked and named".
- A one-page status board (a table or a free board tool) shows each video, its stage, its owner and the due date. Anyone should be able to see it in 10 seconds.
- Plan time for review. Many delays come from waiting for notes, not from editing.

The exercise I'm working on:
Build a pipeline page and a status board for three videos (real or practice). Ask one person to read it and tell you what happens next for each video.

I'm stuck. Please:
1. Explain the main idea in plain, simple words with one everyday example.
2. Walk me through the exercise one small step at a time. Ask me what I've done so far before giving the next step.
3. Don't just give me the final answer. Help me do it myself, and check my work when I share it.

I'm a parent helping my child (about 8 years old) with a lesson called "What a post lead does and the pipeline" from the course "Editor & Post Lead: pipelines and teaching".

Here's what the lesson says:
A restaurant kitchen has stations: washing, chopping, cooking, plating. The head chef does not do every job, but makes sure the food moves from station to station in the right order. A post lead does the same with a video: raw clips go in one end and a finished video comes out the other.

The activity:
Build a pipeline page and a status board for three videos (real or practice). Ask one person to read it and tell you what happens next for each video.

Please explain this so an 8-year-old understands: short sentences, a fun everyday example, and no hard words.
Then give me 3 simple questions I can ask my child to check they understood, and a way to do the activity together, one tiny step at a time.

Open Claude

Sources

Adobe, Productions in Premiere Pro (how a large project is split into smaller projects that share assets): blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2020/04/14/introducing-productions-in-premie

My notes

I learned this

02