6 Preparation Everything that you do on a project before you actually start to ingest media into Final Cut Pro contributes to having a successful and efficient editing experience. Decisions that you make all along the way--script, location, lighting, audio recording, and shoot- ing format--each have a part in defining what happens in post. Mistakes made in the preproduction and production phases have a way of rippling through the postproduc- tion process, sometimes combining or compounding to make bigger headaches. As mentioned in Chapter 2, workflows should be thought of as extending both before and after the postproduction process--before, as in preproduction and shoot- ing; and after, in terms of compression, interactivity, and distribution concerns.