Work in movies. Not television.

One thing I hate about Television is the production value,

and don't get me wrong. To work in TV you have to be talented and extremely quick,

but I personally like how films allow for slightly longer production schedules and more time to get it artistically correct.

I just watched a bit of the "MISSING" sneak peak and it's pretty strewn with audio technicalities I know the sound designer and mixer would have loved to have more time to work on.. It's got no blatant errors or anything, but I know them and know for a fact they would have done more to massage the soundtrack and make the mix sparkle, but alas... TV schedules and all, I think a few corners had to be cut. It's still a good mix, I just think more time thrown in could have really elevated it.

Same thing happened on the Pacific, though I thought it sounded great!!! The mixers on that series for HBO were told "Okay, you have a week per episode (for everything...) and it has to sound as good as Saving Private Ryan. START! ........... But the mixer and designers on that series I thought did a miraculous job considering the production demand and schedule...

This is why I like Terrance Malik. Apparently he doesn't mind if it takes a year and a half to sound design his movie. That's my kind of director!

I 'spose it comes back to that basic 3-corner Production Triangle:

Quality | Speed | Cost

Pick two.

Btw... Do tv shows end up getting faster towards the end, by having built up a larger assembly of sounds & treatments over the past shows to use as a library? Or does everything still have to be done from scratch?

Question make sense?

Not that I have any vast experience on TV shows - I've only done one season of a Saturday morning animation series for kiddies - quite a bit of time is spent on the initial shows until a formula is reached. I did sound design and editing on "Magical Do-Re-Mi" and was only given eight (8) hours to complete each episode of about 18 minutes.* I put 16 to 20 hours into each of the first four or so until I had built up a library of stock sounds that could be plugged in as needed, then just had to make a few custom sounds per episode.

I will say that the experience, especially being able to sit in on the dialog and mix sessions (most especially the mixes with a true master), taught me A LOT! My own business and sound design/editing skills benefitted greatly from the enforced creativity of hard deadlines.

Just two more points... First, TV tends to be more "throw away" than film work, so the producers are more interested in the cost ratios and ROI; minor technical problems can be shunted aside. Second, only sound geeks will notice 99% of the audio flaws, just as only DPs will notice the visual flaws; the average couch potato isn't looking for technical problems - and I include most TV execs with the couch potatoes as far as technical issues are concerned.




* Don't look for me in the credits or on IMDB - I was an uncredited subcontractor.

@Steve TV shows tend to put together palettes and drag n' drop ambiences and things for their shows. It's pretty ingenious how some of the FX editors do it now-a-days.

On one prime-time show that switched studios I spoke to the guy who was doing the sound and at one point they thought the show was going to be cancelled and they up and deleted most of the library already established for it so the new designers had to recreate most of the sounds from scratch.

@Alcove - nice insight.