how much to hire good audio guys for my project?

J

jbrie645

Member
Hello,

I realize my question is very vague but please bear with me. I am planning on directing a very dialogue heavy feature in a couple of months. I really want the sound to be professional. I have a rudimentary understanding of audio but, if possible, I would like to hire some audio guys to make it top notch. So I have a couple of questions:

1. Are there audio guys who see a project the whole way through? What I mean is will they do the boom mic or sound mixing on set and then also do the sound editing in post production?

2. What price range am I looking at for a knowledgeable audio guy? Of course it all depends on the budget and the skill and experience of the audio guy, but say I offered a guy $2000 to do the audio for the whole project. Would that be acceptable or way off?

I'd like to learn audio the right way and get to the point where I am proficient but for now dealing with the technical minutiae is such an energy drain that I would much prefer to just offload it to someone competent. This way I can actually dedicate my energy to being creative.

All input is appreciated. Thank you.
 
I've never worked with a sound person in the field who did the mixing in post. These are 2 different jobs. Not saying you can't find someone who does it all. But, I've never worked with anyone like that. In most cases the crew in the field is paid by the day. Depends upon how many days you need and how long the days are. Also depends upon what gear they are providing. When it comes to post, you may have a better chance negotiating a flat rate. But, I've always paid by the day or hour for editing & audio mixing. If this is an indie project or a school project that's a different model and I can't speak to that. Most importantly pay people as much as you can afford (within reason of course) and treat them right. Taking care of your crew is take care of you 10x back. Good luck.
 
First, I'd like to commend you on this decision. Most people make sound the last priority and point a microphone at something at the last minute, resulting in the bad sound that plagues pretty much everything shot on a budget.

For your questions, the first has been answered. Most don't. Some might. The second is a bit more vague. Sound guys have either day rates or weekly rates. I can't tell you what the numbers tend to be on either of this, since that's considered confidential information, but I can tell you that if this were a network TV show your rate would get you about a week and a half, not counting per diem and assuming you have catering. But it doesn't sound to me like you're shooting a network TV show, which means the rate is whatever you and a qualified person agree on. If that's what you can afford and think is reasonable, people interested in your project will take it. Just make sure you have decent catering in the budget so people know they're somewhat respected and being taken care of.
 
You're talking about two pretty different beasts. Boom Operation and Dialog editing are two different, highly skilled tasks, and that's just two of the jobs that need to be done.

I don't know where you are, but production day rates fall around $250-$500 depending on the position (Utility/Boom/Mixer) and your location. Without knowing more about the project, overall budget, etc, it's really hard to say how big a production sound crew you should be aiming for.

The same is true in post, depending what you need, maybe one guy can cover your post, or maybe you need a team of editors and mixers to get you where you want to be.
 
Thanks guys. That's very helpful. I have another question as well: How many audio guys would I need on set to be assured professional sound? Are just a boom mic operator and sound mixer enough? I can imagine there would be many more on a proper budgeted project, but I would like to strike a balance between budget and quality and keep only the bare minimum required to achieve professional sound.

Thanks again.
 
Thanks Jordan. I didn't notice your post, which touches on my second question, until after I posted.

The project is simply a script I wrote and want to direct. There are no outside parties involved in it. I'm moving from the premise that the ideal budget would be $0, assuming I have all the necessary equipment. From this premise, I would like to bring in some sound experts who could significantly improve the quality of the project.

Also, my location is in Toronto.
 
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As far as gear goes, if you haven't already bought a bunch of sound gear, don't. Good sound guys will either own or rent everything they need, equipment-wise and they'll just charge you for the rental of it. If you're able to find student sound guys (I assume there are some decent film programs in the Toronto area) they may be able to check gear out from their school.
 
Hi jbrie645,

First, I would also like to commend you on putting thought into this. Far to many people don't, even in the pro levels of tv and film.

To answer your questions:

1. You might find someone who can do all our audio, production through post. I used to be one of those guys. I started out doing sound design, and got into production sound through my work at Coffey Sound, so when I was freelance, I did both, but even then I never really did a project all the way through. Usually, people tend to specialize in one or the other.

2. Production sound mixers usually will negotiate a day rate. Depending on the scheduled length of your shoot $2000 may or may not be enough. I would imagine that if you plan on shooting more than a week, then $2000 for an experience sound person might not be enough. BUT, there are people out there that are good that don't have decades of experience. You will need to find people in your area. I don't know any off hand, but people on the jwsound forum probably will. If you approach them (they are the high end feature and tv guys, but there are non union guys on there too), the same way approached us here, they will help you out.

In terms of the size of the audio crew...
Production sound crews are usually 2 or 3 people. The union stuff will almost always have 3 people. A sound mixer, boom op, and sound utility. I've seen non-union stuff that uses 2. A sound mixer and boom op. Keep in mind that on top of the rate for the crew, you will have gear rental as well, and I don't know what people charge for that. Most sound mixers keep that close to the vest with other sound mixers.

Things to avoid in this process (you seem like a smart person, so I might be stating the obvious here, but....)
-Asking people to work for free. Again, you seem like a smart person, and this usually goes without saying, but you'd be surprised...
-$100 a day won't cut it. That's almost worse than asking someone to work for free.

I was trying to think of more, but, like I said, you seem like a smart person, so I bet you'll avoid the stupid mistakes...well maybe not all of them. Everyone makes a stupid mistake every now and again. :)

Again, I want to commend you on your willingness to learn AND the thought put into this before you start shooting. That's very rare these days. With this type of attitude, and ability to learn, you can go far in your career. Some people don't care about audio (as is witnessed in another thread), think they can do it all themselves, or just don't think about it until all the money is spent. I wish I would have worked with more people like you back in my freelance days.
 
Good topic.

First there are folks who do it all, but as most mentioned it is not at all the rule. You are much more likely to find a do it all on very low budget projects.

IF they have a lot of experience, and in general that would be post into production, then it can work. The problem is that it is really two different jobs. At the higher end it gets really hard to be up on both sides of the field. On the low end with relatively simple setups (complex shots - for sound- tend to need experience and equipment that someone who doesn't do it all the time probably doesn't have) it can work really well because your production person knows what they want in post.

I would assume different people.

It is a BIG plus to have two sound people on set. Post is more flexible. In general it's nice to have a team but on micro budget films that is pretty rare. On micro films the post editor/ supervisor is also generally the mixer. It all breaks down to time and money. The work stays the same so if a fully crewed feature can crank it out in six weeks figure your solo crew will need at least five times that to get the same quality. The rule of thumb is ten to fifteen hours per screen minute. On the micro level with an experienced person at the helm you can sneak down to the seven hour per screen minute zone. Less time = less polish. Those numbers relate to getting a "normal" film with good production to a level where you could play it on a big screen and people would feel it was a "Hollywood" film, maybe low budget but sounds like it was done by professionals. Artistry works it's way in there somewhere but you can't really put a number on it. BUT if you don't have the time to do a professional job your not going to have the time to do an artistic professional job.

Money wise it varies a LOT! Even the union day rate varies around the world. In San Francisco a doc/ low budget feature is in the range of $500/ day including equipment. You can certainly go higher and on a good day you can go lower. IF this is strictly a boom mic shoot you can get a bunch cheaper because then your getting in the zone where a post person (with experience) can do it with out having to buy/ rent a lot of equipment. It's also the zone where a production sound person doesn't have to haul the whole cart out so they may cut you a deal.

Post is generally all done on bids, even big budget films. That is also all over the map. A bigger budget film will have a bid that covers XYZ and has fixed dates for locked picture etc. If you don't make the dates then the bid gets expanded. On micro budgets it is usually a fixed rate and if you don't make your picture lock date the rate doesn't change but the schedule does and you may have to let them fit you around other jobs that did come in on time. Post can be a lot more flexible than production IF you are flexible. If you come in and say I need it all finished by X and X is not really enough time then you are going to pay a premium. If you come in and what it the best it can be and are willing to let that take as much as it takes AND let your editor work you around other paying gigs you might get a VERY good deal.

The two biggest factors are your flexibility (and general ease of working around) and the quality of your work. If the script is fantastic then you can get a better deal, if people want to have you around you can get a better deal.

For features in what I'm guessing are your budget zone I have done post from $25K to free. I would figure that in the $5K and up range you will get more options. Under $5K and whoever does it is doing it at around cost. Cost for post is mostly overhead. Even if they schedule you around they are loosing some work because they are spending time on your film, they are running up the electric bill, there is rent/ mortgage etc.

And I will second the don't buy. At least until you have your people in place. It may at that point be more cost effective to buy somethings rather than rent. Also you may be able to buy for the production and then give it to your sound person as part of the compensation. That only works if it's something they need/want so again you need then first.
 
I would not nec agree about not asking people to work for free. If that's your budget I'm OK with it, I probably will not do it unless I know you pretty well or LOVE the project, but I'm not going to think your a dirt bag.

However there is asking and then there is asking. If you go around asking like your doing them a favor to let them work on your film BIG RED FLAG.

Also this is more about post. One can be more flexible when you can work in the comfort of your studio. Production is long hard work AND they can't work you around paying gigs. A lot of low budget post works out to way below $100/ day but very few people who know anything would consider $100/day for production. This is especially true with a feature since it's a big time commitment.
 
BTW the answers have all been focused on the low budget feature zone. What I call the Mini-Inde's. This is assuming your budget is someplace between say $50K and $200K. If your below that then your majorly into the favors and barter zone. When your pushing $500K or so your going to be dealing with something closer to union minimums.

For post sound with a film budget over five mill or so figure about 5%. That % needs to slide up as your budget slides lower. Someplace around $200K your no longer in a place where you can pay a living wage and that's when it gets creative. As a big fat generality, if you pay your post sound person what you pay your DP they should not be pissed. Basically if every one is getting a fair share of the small pie they won't feel bad. They may not be able to afford to work for you but that is based on economics and they should not go around saying bad things about you.

Part of what gets screwed up for sound, especially post, in many low budget films is that the pie gets eaten mostly by those who show up first and sound is left with the dirty pie pan and no pie.
 
Noiz2 said:
Part of what gets screwed up for sound, especially post, in many low budget films is that the pie gets eaten mostly by those who show up first and sound is left with the dirty pie pan and no pie.
Click to expand...

This is all too true. And worth quoting. Almost all the low budget projects I have worked on, there has been very little money left for the sound at the end. And given how much work the sound usually takes in these productions, as they didn't bother consulting with sound minding individuals in the first place, it would probably be more expensive than what they have spent :) I do a lot of free work for experience since I do this on the side, but now a few years has passed, I do that less and less. I've learned what I needed to learn and someone else can fill the void I leave behind :)
 
Terrific thread. Lots of really solid advice and thinking.

If I may suggest... Get through the preliminary stages of preproduction, mostly the first draft of the shooting script. Then pay an experienced production sound mixer to do a quick vetting of the shooting script and ask her/his opinion on your projects production sound requirements. It may well be a "simple" boomed mic and recorder shoot, and you may be able to cut a deal for a one person mixer/boom-op crew. However it may turn out that you will need lots of wireless in addition to a boomed mic. That increases the equipment needs and mandates a production sound mixer and a boom-op.

Listen to your PSM when on the set and apportion him/her the time needed to do the job correctly. (Tarrantino would re-block and/or re-light a scene to get the production sound right.) Get copious room tones, production sound FX & Foley, and dialog wilds after you finish each scene; it provides plenty of grist for your audio post editors mill. BTW, make sure that you scout your locations with sound in mind as well as the look.

Capturing great production sound also saves you money in audio post; much less noise reduction and (hopefully) no ADR.

Congrats for thinking about sound in advance; far to many of your peers ignore sound until the editing is done, and by then it's usually much too late - and quite expensive.

Good Luck!!!
 
RE:UncleBob, you can't actually do Foley in production, I think he was just getting excited because someone was talking about sound before they shot instead of "how do I fix this mess".

Personally I generally ask them (the production sound folks), if I get the chance, to focus on dialog. Wild takes after the scene are also great to have in post.

I don't generally want production FX. But that may just be because of my path in post. My worry is that too many new filmmakers try to get those SFX in the take and then it makes for problems in the edit. Big films try to eliminate all the sounds except the dialog for some very practical reasons. It makes your editing easier and it makes the sound edit easier.

It does require however that your post sound people be able to get the sounds they need. I do a lot of recording and have a large library and know people with even bigger libraries so getting the sounds is not generally a problem for me but that isn't true for everybody.

Also a set is a lousy place to try and record FX. Production recordists often don't have much FX recording experience so what you get from them is often very hit or miss.

This is sort of it's own thread but... When a sound editor does FX recording they are not just recording the sound of X. They are recording the sounds that will make up the sound that will get used for X. It's a very different thing. Take say hitting a golf ball. What I would typically get from production FX might be some hits at an OK distance. It might work, depending on how the shot is cut. What I would record is a bunch of swings (with out hits) at a few distances, some hits from ECU to a few feet away, I would probably try to get the feet movement with out a swing. Stuff like that. When the shot comes in I can build the hit I need. The production recordist isn't going to have the quiet or the time to do all of that. So for me I would rather have them focus on what I can't do better, the dialog. If they nail that my job just got a LOT more fun.

I also recommend getting room tone. I rarely use it, but again that is my flow on mini-inde's. On a big budget the dialog edit would use them a lot to fill holes. On a thin sound track I would be doing the same, but as a rule I have generally thick BG's so I rarely need the RT for fill. For me not using them saves some time. The filling in of the holes is really important if you were doing an all mag show because your filling in RT AND tape hiss and it's really noticeable when it cuts in and out. And when your dialog track is going to be heard by the director naked (the track not the director). For mostly the same reasons, every edit will stick out like a sore thumb.

Since on a Mini-Inde I'm the guy, I never play naked dialog tracks for the director. I also haven't done an analog tape show in ages. So my BG tracks are my RT. I still need them every once in a while, and stealing bits from the other dialog doesn't always work so it's important to have them, but it's not the killer it used to be. IF you are not replacing the BG's though you will need all the TR you can get.

PS If it wasn't clear RT= Room Tone and BG= Background, also called Ambiance, and Nat Sound in the video world.
 
Noiz2 said:
RE:UncleBob, you can't actually do Foley in production...
Click to expand...

I'm aware that Foley can't be done during production. (In fact, if the footsteps, etc. are not performed live to picture they are technically sound FX.) However, having all of that material is a huge plus when you can't afford Foley pits/props and a huge sound library. I've progressed beyond that stage (thank God!), but all of that audio fodder was a God send from the two clients that did put in all of that extra work on their shoots. They would capture doors, windows, cars, footsteps and the like in addition to room tones and dialog wilds.

Once we get to a certain point we tend to forget the trials and tribulations of ultra-micro-budget filmmaking; cutting all the audio under headphones and a quick mix at a friends studio. And currently a part of my market niche is filmmakers who are only about three or four steps past that.
 
unclebob6958 said:
I'm aware that Foley can't be done during production. (In fact, if the footsteps, etc. are not performed live to picture they are technically sound FX.) .
Click to expand...

Hey your the one that told them to record Foley during production. There is way too much confusion with that term as it is so I didn't want it left uncorrected.


Your other point is one way to look at it and I said as much about why I look at it another way. I also don't have a Foley stage. I have access to a very small one that I helped design. It has no pits, it's mostly just a very neutral and sound proofed room. But 90% of the Foley I do (except when I'm working at the place with the stage) is just in my house. And I still have the sound FX CD's (I got rid of the LP's) that I bought at places like Tower Records.

However I always recorded a lot. Even when I was doing theatre all the time, most of the sounds I used I recorded. When I got into film most places had large libraries but we always recorded LOTS of new stuff for every show. From talking to a lot of folks just getting into sound editing it's a skill many don't have, and I think it's a shame. It's very limiting if all you can use is off commercial libraries, and expensive.

But like I said before it's my approach and that is all. In my experience the one thing that causes the most problems and takes the most time and is the least fun is cleaning up and trying to salvage wonky production sound. So for me I will trade anything if it helps get better dialog tracks.

And also in my experience I have gotten very little from production FX that I thought was good enough to use. We had an ad once that sent us a stack of DAT's of SFX from the production. We listened to them just incase anything was decent and they were GREAT! But I found out that it wasn't the production recordist who made them. The director hired a friend to collect SFX while they were in Morocco shooting. He hired the guy who did the sound for "Lock Stock and two smoking barrels"...

Anyway I wasn't saying you were wrong just that isn't what I would want. If you know who your post person is (I highly recommend you get someone BEFORE you shoot) ask them what they need/ want from production. Better yet get them to do FX recordings while your shooting. The first no budget feature I did I was on before shooting and did a lot of recordings while they were shooting. They were useful for that film but a lot have gotten used in many projects since.
 
Having at least some sort of production effects recorded wild is a big help. I did a horror short for a friend. It all took place in an old studio apartment that was all hardwood floors. They recorded a ton of wild footsteps for me, and without that I would have had a real hard time with it. I was just starting out doing the freelance thing, and I was working out of my apartment, so no foley stage, and limited sound fx library. Even if production effects and wild stuff recorded never gets used, it's a good idea to try and get some if possible.
 
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