Sound design for a doc - how much?

[Patryk_Rebisz]

From guys who do sound design on feature length films - how much should i expect to pay for sound design (not a typical doc, more of art doc) for a feature-length film? Looking to get low budget ballpark so i don't totally embarrass myself talking to sound design people.

 

[unclebob6958]

Do you mean sound design or audio post? A subtle but crucial difference

 

[Patryk_Rebisz]

To design the sound effects and sound environments. Someone else will do the mix.

 

[GaryNattrass]

For a 90 min feature I would have a minimum of 15 days sound design and five days to mix and do stereo deliverables, daily rates will vary but I would be charging a minimum $15,000 but other places may cost you way more.

 

[Noiz2]

For a no/low budget doc. in the US $15,000 is probably pushing the high end. Really depends on your needs and what you are aiming to end up with.

For instance who is doing the production clean up? That is often a major part of the work. How much "design" are you talking about? How comercial is the work?

For a no budget doc. that is going to try to get into festivals but has no real connections and the production is not too bad you might be able to get it done for 1/3 of that.

If this is a commercial film with a budget and has some distribution in place then quite a bit more.

Your description reflects that either you have it very broken down and you are looking for a very specific part of the sound post or that you don't really understand what it will take. In the first you can probably get the lower part of the spectrum, depending on the film. If that later, folks are going to be very hesitant to cut you a lot of slack because they know all the other things that you are going to need.

$750/ day is closer to the rate that companies pay for advertising post and promo films. Not sure of the NYC market but in SF nobody doing doc. post (for non major release films) is getting that.

But then I would probably change Gary's numbers a bit. A narrative feature runs about 10 man hours per finished screen minute. A doc with full FX and backgrounds is going run about the same. So you are looking at closer to 900 hours. Assuming you don't have that budget and you are willing to make some tradeoffs you are still looking at a month or two in post. On the other hand the way the "in the box" workflow has evolved the mix is mostly done before the official mix starts. You can probably knock the final out in one long day or two more humane days.

Not sur this all helps a lot. Films are almost always bid out on a budget, at least bigger ones are. You give me a look and I give you a budget. Or you tell me the budget and I tell you how far that is likely to get you. In both cases things change sometimes. Your dialog is much worse than you implied, or I'm giving you a deal so you have to wait while I deal with a full price gig that came in, etc. The better the "deal" is that you work out the more flexible you are likely to have to be.

A hint in how to get better deals. No editor wants to work on a show they won't want to show anybody afterword. So they will work on garbage if there is enough $$$ involved but if you want someone who knows what they are doing to work on your project and you don't have $$$$ then you had better be willing to give them the time to make it sound really good.