OutPostFilm Marina is at the water’s edge. There are luxurious guest houses within easy walking distance, as well as hotels and lodges. You are 5 minutes from spectacular beaches and fabulous mountain walks.

Of course work comes first - but what about time-out?

Besides unequaled Cape wine estates, mountains, nature reserves and other attractions nearby, there are big game parks and adventure activities to suit every heart condition.

You’ll find our other studio on the outskirts of McGregor, bordering a nature reserve.

This village has earned its reputation as a refuge for artists, eccentrics, spiritual seekers, and tuned-in creative types. Situated in the heart of the Breede River Wine country, it is surrounded by famous wine-estates within easy reach.

The environment is well worth exploring: surrounded by mountains, straddling unique vegetation zones, it has plenty of outdoor opportunities for R&R - as well as alternative health & healing therapies to suit all stress levels.

Peace, quiet, clean country air, gracious living - about as good a place as one can find to nurture a creative endeavor.

Bullet- proof media handling. This is the industry standard.

The most flexible tool for collaboration with other creatives.

If you work in long-form - you need a really solid media database. No other editor can match Avid on this.

Some NLE’s provide a whole lot of Whizz Bang effects and templates - some customizable. But it won’t be long before you start recognizing the variants. You create unique films - you don’t need a bunch of templates. You need responsive tools for ultimate control.

Trimming: when you are fine tuning a complex timeline, if you stretch or shorten a shot or an audio clip, you need to be able to control exactly how the other tracks are affected. Only Avid gives you the ability to do complex, multi-track, multi-directional trims.

Rendering: If you change a title which is the top layer of a multi-layer effect, you don’t want to have to re-render all the layers below the one which is changed. Avid will even keep the partial render of the top layer if a section of the background layers did not change.

All of this translates into less time wasted, more creative options and less frustration to you.

In the transcription text document the director makes his or her selections by whatever method: changing font/ highlighting sections etc. In that same process , he or she also selects a memorable word or phrase in each paragraph or section (which relates to a separate clip), and makes that word or phrase bold. That bold text, which is easy to find in the document, becomes the clip name.

The editor or assistant uses the text document as the basis for digitizing, and for the naming of the clips simply copies and pastes the bold text from the document to the clip name in the bin.

Now the director and editor will be on the same page - because memorable phrases or words are easy to find in a bin and in a text document, and are far more useful to jog memory and make conceptual connections than a numerical system.

Of course there are many options available, but I have yet to find one to beat the Herman Miller Aeron. It is not the cheapest option by a long shot, but it is a quality product that will give you excellent comfort and promote a good posture for many years. And - no - I don’t have shares in the company. I wish I did.

It has been around for fourteen years, and has a place in the permanent collection of the New York Museum of Modern Art.

Your work is mostly sedentary, it is often stressful, and through-the-night sessions (I’ve had plenty) are seriously damaging. There is usually plenty of coffee available, as well as quick snacks, and unless you have a health-nut running your kitchen, chances are that there won’t be much in the line of raw fresh salad and fruit available.

Worse still, if you have to rely on take-away food, you will have even less control over what you put into your body.

So, what can you do?

Try to build some exercise into your daily schedule. Run, cycle or play a ball game. If you can work out - do. I swim when I can, at my local health club. There is nothing quite like knowing you still have 18 lengths to go - when your heart is pounding and your limbs are like lead - to diminish the stress of the day. If nothing else, take a brisk ten minute walk during a break. You could even invite your client along. Great for clearing a creative block.

Coffee: I think it fuels the post industry like nothing else. I’m also mildly addicted, and enjoy an early morning Java. But limit your intake. Coffee is not a health product. It messes with sleep patterns, interferes with digestion and aggravates hypertension. Make sure you have water for drinking easily accessible. And drink several glasses every day. Try a glass of water instead of a coffee sometimes.

Snacks: They can kill you. They are usually sugary and/or fatty. If you earn your money at a workstation and you snack regularly, over the years I guarantee that you will eventually have a weight problem.

If you have to snack, have some fresh fruit, or raw nuts. If necessary, bring them to your workspace yourself. Keep a stash in your drawer or bag. Display fresh fruit in a bowl, provide a few plates, knives and serviettes for clients and yourself. It looks great and will be appreciated. Its not difficult to cut a dependency on the vending machine or snack bar.

Finally, do what you can to influence the catering - whatever form it might take - to include some healthier options: you know - fresh and raw.

You will live longer and be healthier.

Have you ever felt that in these otherwise well-resourced facilities the workflow is not exactly conducive to the creative process?

We like to think that OutPost is different in these respects. You and your project are at the center of our operation: Everything we do is designed to support you.

You will find a relaxed and friendly space where its easy to work. Its quiet and secluded yet conveniently situated near anything you might need - and parking is a breeze.

Unfortunately, this is the kind of attitude I sometimes find in new up-and-coming editors. They are so taken by the dramatic ability to add million dollar effects with one click, that it seems rather boring and old fashioned to worry about silly things like unique tape names, bin organization and whether timecode is enabled or not.

Of course this is a sweeping generalization, but it is one of the pitfalls of the democratization of content creation. It has become affordable and easy for anybody to get the hang of iMovie or some other application, to present themselves as an editor (with impressive showreel full of “borrowed” clips) and to get jobs for which they are not really qualified

Your collaborator drags the project into his or her projects folder. All you do now is email the OMF of your cut as an attachment, to the collaborator. (OMF is a relatively small file.) Changes can be made, markers with comments, tweaks, grades - whatever… When the new OMF is sent back to you you have a fully updated timeline which links seamlessly to your local media. Of course any rendered effects and titles will need to be recreated or rendered - but these are quick one-step operations.

Repeat as required, making sure you label the different versions sensibly to avoid confusion or updating the wrong timeline.

Brilliant. Works across platforms.

For example: You have a tape which contains clips related to a forest walk, a meeting with village elders and various general views of the village. Start by calling the bin “Forest walk”

The clips will be named Forest walk.01 through Forest walk.xx. NO TYPING REQUIRED!

Now change the bin name to “Meet Village Elders”. The new clips will be so named, starting at Meet Village Elders.01

Do the same with “Village GV”. If necessary append further descriptive words to the Village GV.xx clip names such as “chief’s house”, “well”, “schoolhouse”… whatever.

You might as well overwrite the automatically generated clip number in this instance, as your descriptive word will be more useful than the number.

Remember to copy and paste where possible. It saves a lot of time, and if you do not know the keyboard shortcuts for this, learn them today. They are arguably the biggest time saving functions when using any computer application.