How much to budget for ADR/sound design?

Tom Lowe

Tom Lowe

Well-known member
I am shooting a small indie roadtrip movie this summer in HD (either Red or a 1080p camera). The movie will be 100% outdoors on location - the woods, mountains, deserts, beaches. There is not much dialogue, but I would like to have the option of ADRing quite a bit of it.

In addition, I would like to work with a sound studio to really do a great job on sound design -- the sounds of wind, feet walking, rivers flowing, waves breaking on a lakeshore, birds and insects in the woods, etc.

How much money am I going to need to budget for ADR work, and how much for sound design? Keep in mind that my whole budget is only $150k, so I am obviously looking to do this as cheaply as possibe.

thanks
 
Well, it really depends on how much looping you are planning on doing, because that's where the costs can add up. If you plan on taking it to a facility, then plan on spending $20K - $30K on the low side, for everything, including a mix. The thing you should do is to contact several post places that deal with indie projects and get bids from them.

-Dave
 
The option of ADRing quite a bit of a movie is always there, however gettting the best possible sound on set is the best option. As far as how much to budget for ADR, consider that on average you will get through about 10 cues an hour and ADR stage prices usually range from about $100 an hour on the low end up to $350 an hour. So how many lines do you really want to ADR?
Dave's estimate for an all in post sound package is pretty close for a small low budget type of service. Dont expect a big Hollywood type sound for that kind of money though. You would probably get a basic dialogue & FX editorial, 2 days of foley (hung, not edited)and a day or 2 of ADR, with maybe a 4 day mix for that.
 
That sounds about right for DVD distibution with no music budget. Obviously you can use those soundtrack building software to score you movie but if you want to hire a serious composer add another $10,000 to $20,000 to that budget.

I would like to know where you get a studio for $100 an hour. Cheapest I have ever seen is $150. Guess it depends on your location.

The best way to figure out an appropriate budget is to start talking to your local facilities now. To get you in the ballpark, figure about 400 to 500 man hours are needed for sound on a 90 minute feature. This figure will be much higher if you plan to ADR the whole picture.

Good luck
 
20K for sound design is way out of my budget! I was thinking more like 5K! My whole movie budget is 150k.

I think I could probably get away with a five to ten hours of ADR. I can record a lot of the nature sounds while on location and buy others I might need at sound dogs or whatever.

Aren't there any pro tools or up and coming sound design folks who might give me a deal to do the sound design on a small indie like this?

What exactly is sound sweetening? Just cleaning up location sound, or is it adding sounds and fx?
 
Obviously you can put something together for practically nothing. Some will find a semi-pro looking to build his resumes while others might embark on doing it all themselves. The above prices are just the going cheap end of the professional rates that included (at least in my estimation) editing, sweetening, FX, and mixing. The ADR is tough to estimate a budget without knowing how much is needed. The 10 lines an hour at $150 an hour is a pretty dead-on sound studio standard.

The best way to approach a movie budget is to develop a budget based on the script, equipment and professionals needed, etc. After looking at that budget, if you can't raise enough money to cover it, look for areas to cut cost. Some will rush to cut their audio budget and regret it later but there are certainly practical ways of trimming your audio costs down without hurting yourself too much. We gave you the industry standard (in most US cities), you work down from there. I am not trying to sound like a dick but that is your job as the producer (assuming you are the producer). Do the leg work to find talented people who will work for cheap and you're golden.

To use ADR as an example; just about anyone with a mic and a computer can do something resembling ADR but watch your average student film and see if that is something you can live with.

As I stated before, expect somewhere between 400 to 500 man hours for your average feature. It's up to you to decide who you hire to fill those man hours and for how much. ADR and mixing are two areas I would not suggest you do anything less then working with an established industry professional. 30 to 50 hours mixing in a studio will eat your 5k right there.

Good luck and start making those phone calls. :)
 
Tom Lowe said:
wabbit, thanks. What all exactly is involved in mixing?
Click to expand...

Oh Boy!!!
Let me break it down for you a bit.
After you have finished editing picture it is handed over to post sound.
As Wabbit said there is about 400-500 man hours involved in the process.
1) Dialogue editorial: Involves taking the production tracks and smoothing out cuts,
adding fill where needed, taking out unwanted sounds that happen on set, splitting
out to make it easier for mixing. Usually about 10 tracks.
2) ADR: Well you already know that. Could be 8-16 tracks for principle characters.
3) Walla: All the background actors in any given scene. Another 10-16 tracks.
4) Foley recording: Footsteps, cloth noise, basically anything the actors touch or move, car keys, hand slaps etc. Usually 8-10 tracks.
4) Sound FX: Car engines, doors, gunshots etc. etc. 16-24 tracks.
5) Backgrounds: Wind noise, room airconditioners, birds, river flowing, frogs etc. etc.
16 tracks
6) Music: Depending on how the composer delivers. Could be any where from 8 to 24
tracks or more.

So if you add up all the tracks, it is not hard to get 80+ tracks of different sounds that need to be combined to make your final "sound track" whether that be a stereo or 5.1 mix. How do you balance all that? You take it to a Dub stage and a mixer will go through scene by scene and balance all the different tracks to your liking. It is a very time intensive process that on the low budget end you may get through as much as 30 minutes a day, or what is known as a "rough mix" or up to the Hollywood features where they could spend a day just mixing a 2 minute car chase scene.
 
The best thing to do is to meet with several sound design studios. The price really depends on several factors. for instance how busy will they be when you are ready for your audio, how flexible can you be with your time frame. Will you be willing to do it at night with the junior guy? Maybe you should find someone that has his own studio and needs to better his/her reel.

Then there are more personal things, such as : do they like you? are they interested in your project? Do they think that your film might attract a lot of publicity, in which case they may want to be attach to it... Or maybe they do another kind of work, and really want to get into "documentary" or "feature films"...

And last, how good is the original recording. Is ADR really necessary for all your scenes, can they use some of your recording for background effects, or does it have to be all done from scratch? If the original audio track is good to begin with audio will be much cheaper. Which is one of the reason to meet with audio pros before you go shooting, if anything you can get some free advices. It's really amazing to me how many people don't talk to post production people in pre-production. Well over 50% of what i do (I do digital special fx for a living) is "fix" stuff that could have easily been avoided just by asking before shooting, or having a proper vfx supervisor on the set. In most cases, whatever you try to save during the shoot will end up costing you at least 3 times as much in post.
 
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Thanks for all the advice, guys. It's very helpful.

So for adding wind, car engines, rivers, clothes rustling, etc, will the sound mixer person/studio have those types of sounds on file already?

I plan to record as much original sound as possible on location.

Also, is anyone here familiar with a place called Stewart Sound in south Orange County, CA? Someone recommended them to me, but they are rather big, I think, so they might be out of my league.

I'll start looking into this soon so i can budget for it in advance.
 
Off camera sounds can be recorded during production but your post facility will also have a library of F/X that can be used. Stuff like footsteps, clothing russle, sync f/x should be foleyed in to sync with the scene. Like with ADR, how much foley you will need varies greatly. Plan on a day or two at least. But as said before, get your sound team in position beforehand and work out the estimates before you go into productions. The headaches and money drain saved will comeback ten fold.

Kind of off-topic but I go the new "Apocalypse Now, Complete Dossier" DVD. There is some really great extra features on how they completed and mixed the soundtrack. Best behind the scenes DVD extra I have seen anywhere and on the most groundbreaking film for audio no less. Everyone should check it out.

Cheers
 
The mixer will already have audio sessions (probably from pro tools) with all the sounds already in place. As a send editor, I tend to pre-dub my sessions before I hand them off to be mixed, so it's easier on the mixer.

On the budget you are working with, your best bet is to find some younger dudes who pretty much just work out of their apartments. You'll want to make sure they have some experience under their belt, though. Someone who has done a few indie features is a good candidate. The first feature I did, I was responsible for everything but the mix, so it was a big job, but I got it done in about a month, and for more money than what you have budgeted. If you can get your post sound budget up to $10K, you might find someone, or a few people that are really good sound editors that have some down time. I tend to work for less if I have absolutely nothing going on.

-Dave
 
Of those 400-500 hours of post sound, how many hours for the actual 5.1 mix of a 90 min. feature (on average)?

In other words, assume I've got the sound design/edit/adr/foley covered. Now I need to rent mixing facilities http://www.hdstudiosla.com/post.php
and pay a mixer. How long does the average competent mixer take to mix?

thanks

:-)
sabirna
 
when you say 10-16 tracks what do you mean exactly as far as timelines, 10-16 timelines of sound or do you mean songs, I am a bit confussed, can someone give an example of a track on vegas for example
thanks

ozduc said:
Oh Boy!!!
Let me break it down for you a bit.
After you have finished editing picture it is handed over to post sound.
As Wabbit said there is about 400-500 man hours involved in the process.
1) Dialogue editorial: Involves taking the production tracks and smoothing out cuts,
adding fill where needed, taking out unwanted sounds that happen on set, splitting
out to make it easier for mixing. Usually about 10 tracks.
2) ADR: Well you already know that. Could be 8-16 tracks for principle characters.
3) Walla: All the background actors in any given scene. Another 10-16 tracks.
4) Foley recording: Footsteps, cloth noise, basically anything the actors touch or move, car keys, hand slaps etc. Usually 8-10 tracks.
4) Sound FX: Car engines, doors, gunshots etc. etc. 16-24 tracks.
5) Backgrounds: Wind noise, room airconditioners, birds, river flowing, frogs etc. etc.
16 tracks
6) Music: Depending on how the composer delivers. Could be any where from 8 to 24
tracks or more.

So if you add up all the tracks, it is not hard to get 80+ tracks of different sounds that need to be combined to make your final "sound track" whether that be a stereo or 5.1 mix. How do you balance all that? You take it to a Dub stage and a mixer will go through scene by scene and balance all the different tracks to your liking. It is a very time intensive process that on the low budget end you may get through as much as 30 minutes a day, or what is known as a "rough mix" or up to the Hollywood features where they could spend a day just mixing a 2 minute car chase scene.
Click to expand...
 
24fps4ever said:
when you say 10-16 tracks what do you mean exactly as far as timelines, 10-16 timelines of sound or do you mean songs, I am a bit confussed, can someone give an example of a track on vegas for example
thanks
Click to expand...

I mean the amount of audio tracks on the timeline.
 
sabrina said:
Of those 400-500 hours of post sound, how many hours for the actual 5.1 mix of a 90 min. feature (on average)?

In other words, assume I've got the sound design/edit/adr/foley covered. Now I need to rent mixing facilities http://www.hdstudiosla.com/post.php
and pay a mixer. How long does the average competent mixer take to mix?

thanks

:-)
sabirna
Click to expand...


Entirely depends on your soundtrack and you. A 90 minute feature can be done in a week (50 hours) or a month..maybe longer. If you have gone through beforehand and spotted all the potential issues and have a good sense of what you want before you start, it should go on the quicker side. Obviously, more complicated scenes (music, dialog, foley, many f/x, etc) will require more time then a simple scene with just dialog and some ambient. In other words, Apocalypse Now will take far longer to mix then My Dinner with Andre.

In addition to mix time, there is input and output time. Expect a day or two for that. $125 an hour is ridiculously cheap; get a quote beforehand and ask to speak with a previous client.

Good luck
 
sabrina said:
Of those 400-500 hours of post sound, how many hours for the actual 5.1 mix of a 90 min. feature (on average)?

In other words, assume I've got the sound design/edit/adr/foley covered. Now I need to rent mixing facilities http://www.hdstudiosla.com/post.php
and pay a mixer. How long does the average competent mixer take to mix?

thanks

:-)
sabirna
Click to expand...

It will vary depending on the type of movie, the quality of the production dialog and the quality of the editorial. If the mixers have to spend time moving files around, 'cause the editorial wasn't layed out properly that can eat up valuable mixing time.
A good ballpark is to estimate 10 minutes a day. Some mixers will get through 20 minutes a day, some 30 minutes. A lot will depend on your budget and time allowed.
If you were to go to a stage and say you only have enough money to do a 3 day mix on your 90 minute movie then the mixers will plow through it and get it done but will it be as good as if they spent 6 days or 9 days? Definitely not!
 
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