cost to have post work done

Zim

Zim

New member
Not sure were to best start this thread but this will be ok!

I have a film I made a few years ago that I edited. I would like to have a good editor do some fine tuning, color correction and some post sound. The film is a documentary that runs and about an hour and a half. What could I expect to pay hourly for this to be done by a professional editor? I know it could be a wide range, but just some basic ideas to see what I might need.
 
Going rate here in the DC area is (generally) $150/hr.

But you can probably get someone to quote you a flat rate bring that the economy sucks right no.
 
Depends on the skills of the editor.

The better ones could handle it all.

If they couldn't they could at least work as your post production supervisor and farm out those tasks to people who may be better at it than they are.
 
I wouldn't have a picture editor do your audio post, that's not their job, few picture editors are good at sound design and sound mixing.

You will also need stems/handles to do an effective audio mix. Which program did you use for editing it? Can it export an .OMF file?
 
puredrifting said:
I wouldn't have a picture editor do your audio post, that's not their job, few picture editors are good at sound design and sound mixing.

You will also need stems/handles to do an effective audio mix. Which program did you use for editing it? Can it export an .OMF file?
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100% this.

Though, OMF is a bit dated and has some limitations. AAF is better if available.
 
Alex H. said:
100% this.

Though, OMF is a bit dated and has some limitations. AAF is better if available.
Click to expand...

Shows how long it's been since I sold my audio post company. Yes, .AAF! I've done my own sound design in-house, the past few years,
and it's usually pretty basic stuff, dialog editing, noise reduction, EQ and compression in house, it's been a while since
I did it for another producer. .OMF used to be the standard.
 
AAF files not reliable in my experience, sometimes they import OK, sometimes not. Problems are rare w/OMF and I request that format if the editor's NLE can export them. AA Translator helps if conversions are needed.
 
Rick R said:
AAF files not reliable in my experience, sometimes they import OK, sometimes not. Problems are rare w/OMF and I request that format if the editor's NLE can export them. AA Translator helps if conversions are needed.
Click to expand...

Weird. I have never had an issue with an AAF that wasn’t due to operator error when the editor tried to export.
 
Zim said:
Not sure were to best start this thread but this will be ok!

I have a film I made a few years ago that I edited. I would like to have a good editor do some fine tuning, color correction and some post sound. The film is a documentary that runs and about an hour and a half. What could I expect to pay hourly for this to be done by a professional editor? I know it could be a wide range, but just some basic ideas to see what I might need.
Click to expand...

I would not have the picture editor do the sound. I also would go for a flat rate. I'm not sure what picture editors make (more than sound editors!) but when I was doing a bunch of mostly student and no budget films on in the off hours what I charged varied somewhat with the project. But students don't have a lot of dough so generally I would ask for $1,500 for shorts up to ~30min. That came with some strings such as if a gig with an actual budget came up they could get sidelined for a bit. And this was 15 years ago or so. On the higher side of that kind of gig would be $5K - $15K for a feature.

As a comparison a low budget for sound post at the studio (nonunion) was about $120K and we were getting $10k for 30 second spots (just for sound edit, the mix was done someplace else).

So this is basically a personal piece and hardly anyone is working right now you can probably get a pretty good deal. To a certain extent editing is a muscle and if you don't use it you loose it, so when work is scarce you can often get good deals. One reason you don't want to go hourly is the time doesn't get shorter with a lower budget so sound post and mix is still going to be in the range of 6-15 manhours per finished screen minute. So a flat rate means you don't have to think about the insane hourly equivalent ;~). Even on big features your base pay is figured at a weekly rate. In union shops that was calculated from the hourly but the other shops you worked back from the weekly (or day) rate to figure hourly if you needed it for overtime.

There are a couple of reasons not to have the same person do both sound and picture and it's not that pict editors can't hear. There are folks who are really good at both but they almost with out exception do not do both on the same project. Visual editing is a mostly subtractive process and sound is a mostly additive process. It takes a bit of work to switch approaches.
Another reason is the equipment is different. Picture editing stations are often in lousy places for sound, a lot of them are fairly noisy. I know there are exceptions but I have seen very few picture editing rooms that were not sonic nightmares. Since you are going to want a mix out of this the sound really needs to be done in a space set up for sound.

Doc.s are probably one genre that often has one person do both but that is generally because they have no budget and really don't do much in the way of sound post. The better documentaries though do do a real sound post. It can really help.
 
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