i have made an agreement with a post sound house on a flat rate for work on my low budget feature. he has a schedule for the total number of days - give or take - for certain areas like foley and adr. but i am wondering what if i am dissatisfied with the work? on that note, should i pay him after or on a step by step basis?
-
Wondering which camera, gear, computer, or software to buy? Ask in our Gear Guide.
Post Sound House Question
- Thread starter Lordmanji
- Start date
Work out a contract where the rate goes for a certain number of scheduled days for the shoot (if they're doing your location sound) and then a flat rate for the post (either hourly, daily or total), and a flat rate for any re-dos and amendments. Also work it in there that at certain points you have to approve the next phase and that each phase is payable separately.
Well, whatever you like- just work it into the contract.
Well, whatever you like- just work it into the contract.
There are too many unknowns to give you a substantive answer. How much experience do you have? How much experience does the audio post facility have? Have you seen/heard any of their work? Have you spoken with any of their previous clients? What is the quality of the material you are giving them?
I'm the the side of the audio post house so to say - that's what I do - so I'll give you some perspective.
I often get absolutely horrible production sound tracks, yet the client wants it cleaned up to sound like it came from a Hollywood budget film. Sorry, it can't be done; unless, of course, they want to spend A LOT of money. They don't have that kind of budget, which is evidenced by the fact that they didn't hire a competent production sound crew in the first place. Often the best that can be done is to make the dialog intelligible, smoothing out the noise and suppressing the worst of it.
When it comes to ADR the quality of the of the looped dialog is hugely dependent upon the talent performing the lines. Quite often the talent has little or no experience doing ADR so it takes a LONG time, and the results are passable but not great. There's no magic plug-in that can improve the performances of inexperienced talent.
The more ADR that needs to be done the more Foley will be required, that bumps up the time/costs. Since the project has a minimal budget the Foley will not be as exacting, detailed and creative as the client - and most probably the audio post house - would like.
There are lots of very talented sound engineers out there, but on a tight budget they don't get the time to tweak as they would like. Many audio post houses rely on sound FX libraries, and without the time to be creative they have no option but to dip into those well-used libraries. The result is that the sound FX will sound canned, which they are.
The audio post house is looking at you in pretty much the same way as you are looking at them; they don't want to be on the hook for incompetence, poor planning, lack of budget and unrealistic expectations. What the audio post house is worried about is that you'll bring your $100k budget film, offer them a flat rate of $7.5k, and then not pay them for hundreds of hours of work because your film doesn't have the sound quality of an Oscar winner.
Now, I'm not accusing you of being like some of the morons that I've had to deal with on the past; in fact, most of my clients are good people who come away very satisfied with the end results of my work. All I'm saying is that you should go in with realistic expectations. Spend some time with the supervising sound editor, do a walk-through/talk-through of your film and find out what you can reasonably expect to come out of the audio post process.
I'm the the side of the audio post house so to say - that's what I do - so I'll give you some perspective.
I often get absolutely horrible production sound tracks, yet the client wants it cleaned up to sound like it came from a Hollywood budget film. Sorry, it can't be done; unless, of course, they want to spend A LOT of money. They don't have that kind of budget, which is evidenced by the fact that they didn't hire a competent production sound crew in the first place. Often the best that can be done is to make the dialog intelligible, smoothing out the noise and suppressing the worst of it.
When it comes to ADR the quality of the of the looped dialog is hugely dependent upon the talent performing the lines. Quite often the talent has little or no experience doing ADR so it takes a LONG time, and the results are passable but not great. There's no magic plug-in that can improve the performances of inexperienced talent.
The more ADR that needs to be done the more Foley will be required, that bumps up the time/costs. Since the project has a minimal budget the Foley will not be as exacting, detailed and creative as the client - and most probably the audio post house - would like.
There are lots of very talented sound engineers out there, but on a tight budget they don't get the time to tweak as they would like. Many audio post houses rely on sound FX libraries, and without the time to be creative they have no option but to dip into those well-used libraries. The result is that the sound FX will sound canned, which they are.
The audio post house is looking at you in pretty much the same way as you are looking at them; they don't want to be on the hook for incompetence, poor planning, lack of budget and unrealistic expectations. What the audio post house is worried about is that you'll bring your $100k budget film, offer them a flat rate of $7.5k, and then not pay them for hundreds of hours of work because your film doesn't have the sound quality of an Oscar winner.
Now, I'm not accusing you of being like some of the morons that I've had to deal with on the past; in fact, most of my clients are good people who come away very satisfied with the end results of my work. All I'm saying is that you should go in with realistic expectations. Spend some time with the supervising sound editor, do a walk-through/talk-through of your film and find out what you can reasonably expect to come out of the audio post process.