The importance of dailies operation cannot be overstated. Dailies are the first cuts of footage generated each day on set. They serve as a critical bridge between production and post-production, providing essential insight into the quality and direction of the project and allowing directors and producers to evaluate performances, gauge the effectiveness of lighting and camera work, and make necessary adjustments in real-time.

Furthermore, dailies help maintain continuity throughout the production process. By consistently reviewing footage, filmmakers can track aesthetics, performances, and story arcs, ensuring that the narrative remains cohesive and compelling. This meticulous attention to detail is a hallmark of professional filmmaking, distinguishing successful projects from those that falter.

Dailies also serve as a valuable archival resource. As digital assets accumulate, having daily footage organized and accessible provides a reference point for future editing and marketing efforts. It strengthens the project's documentation, supporting promotional material and content distribution down the line.

Prioritizing dailies operation in digital video production is not just a best practice; it's an investment in the quality and efficiency of the filmmaking process.

Production technologies are constantly developing and innovating in ways that allow productions of any size access to tools and methods that were once only available to the tentpole blockbusters of Hollywood. More low budget productions are able to integrate multiple cameras, a variety of contemporary and archival footage, and parallel post-production of sound mixing, video editing, VFX and color grading.

While these methods allow for greater creative range, they also introduce many critical points of failure. Secondary cameras and archival footage, more often than not, utilize different color spaces and transfer functions, different recording formats and data rates, different resolutions and aspect ratios, etc. And without a common workflow, all editors, VFX artists, sound mixers, and colorists must overcome these issues individually for a project to come together.

Understandably, a predefined workflow is vital to the seamless integrations of secondary media sources and parallel editing. By taking the time before a camera rolls to designate recording settings for each capture device, intermediary formats and proxies, metadata tagging procedures, asset organization, file management, and final deliverables, a production will be better equipped to manage files, edit, handoff work to other editors, and deliver efficiently and without miscommunication.

Despite being commonly conflated, color correction and color grading, or look development, are two distinct yet necessary processes.

The goal of color correction is to normalize footage; by ensuring colors match consistently in footage used across different shots and scenes or captured by different cameras, repairing any aberrations of the image, and color accuracy.

Look development is the process of manipulating color, luminosity and contrast within an image to create a visually stimulating, tonally and thematically appropriate aesthetic unique to the project that reinforces the visual language and is unique, identifiable, and memorable.

Color correction is a vital process to maintaining quality of the visual image; look development is vital to creating a complete project that is unforgettable to the viewers.

The final step of any production. Regardless of distribution or exhibition, every production needs a file showcasing the final video. That file must be created in accordance with viewing intentions in mind. A video created for cinemas will not look the same on a smartphone or tablet, and a video created for YouTube will not look the same if projected in theaters.

As the final deliverables are mastered for the screen on which they will be viewed, it is also important to ensure that all of the footage, audio, titles, timelines, graphics, VFX, etc are saved and stored safely in an environment where they can be safely recovered and easily accessible.