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Current mood:  disappointed Category: Movies, TV, Celebrities
I mean really. We've been working on this sound edit since last August. We had done a series of ADR's (automated dialogue replacement) - the process of dubbing or looping to replace voices for a motion picture. In our case, we were having some of the actors re-record (dub) the lines they spoke during filming in some of the scenes that must be replaced to improve audio quality. Once that was done, the mixer added the new dubs, some, and I do mean some foley - the process of creating post-production sound effects for enhancing a soundtrack of a film - and gave me a supposed final sound mix.
It was a tremendous improvement but I was uncomfortable with the sound in a few scenes. Now the sound editors and I had an agreement. They are obligated to improving the sound to broadcast quality. The scenes that gave me pause wasn't broadcast quality.
Most of the blame was on me. You see, we hired a production sound mixer a month before production. She agreed to the pay and conditions. However, when I saw that she was avoiding meetings, I started to grow weary of her so-called commitment. It wasn't until a few days before production that she hit us with the ultimatum. The whole time, she was seeking other work and was offered a job to work on a film that was filming around the same time of my film, who was going to pay her more. She acknowledged her commitment to us first and gave us an opportunity to renegotiate her pay or else - bon voyage. Stupid me was going to give in to her dishonorable business practices, but I only had half the budget and couldn't promise her more than we agreed upon. So, we lost her, the sound person, and it was too late to find another. We, instead, went with the option of giving sound duties to my co-producer Susan Olupitan and a P.A. we hired named Arthur Felder. Susan had some experience with setting up sound equipment but she wasn't a real production sound person, and she had to teach the P.A. what little she knew.
Despite their combined in experience, most of the film's sound was relatively good. But the scenes that were bad were really bad and were in dire need of improvement. That's where the post production sound editors came in and they were able to improve the sound but I knew it wasn't enough.
When I found difficulty in the sound editors reaching them with my concerns, I chalked it off as me just being a perfectionist and that I should "leave well enough alone." Meanwhile we were submitting this film with unsatisfactory sound to film festivals as the final film. Going into he holiday season of 2008, we started getting the rejection notices from the film festivals, all of whom are the top tier film festivals in the world. This didn't prove anything because there's a whole lot of politics with that, and that's a whole different conversation. But I couldn't help but think that the sound was rubbing these film festival the wrong way.
It wasn't until January of 2009 when my established actor friend approached me with the opportunity to have the film screened at the top Latino film festival in New York City. They were starting a division to select films from other minority filmmakers and they made my actor friend one of the jury members of that division or something. Even though the whole idea sounded a bit screwy to me, I submitted but he got back to me with the feedback I needed to hear since last fall. They thought the film was very good and intelligent with great performances, but they felt the film wasn't quite ready in the sound department. They basically complained about everything I was concerned about.
For me, it was a moment of mixed feelings. I was happy to see that it wasn't me being a perfectionist. My concerns were justified. But I was pissed off that this could have been avoided if the sound editors and others listened to me since back in the Fall of 2008. Meanwhile, we were submitting this questionable sounding film to all of these film festivals. We're still waiting on the word from some of them now.
So, I came down on the sound editors with the thunder and insisted on another sound edit. At first they thought about charging me for additional ADR but I was like, "Hell to the no." We have an agreement. Broadcast quality. Remember?
A month and a half later, once they were able to free up their schedules for our little insignificant film, they started work on the ADR for the film. Now that the ADR is finished, they're still putting us on the back burner for other projects, delaying the real final completion of "Pro-Black Sheep."
See what I'm saying? I doubt whether Spielberg or Spike Lee has to deal with this bullsh!t. People are really playing themselves. But it's all good.
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Vapors
By Biz Markie
Release date: 1995-05-01 |
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5:25 PM
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