M&E delivery ?

[Mark 66]

I am needing to deliver a trailer stereo, and soon a fill 5.1 feature to Europe. They will need an M&E and I have not done this before.

Do I need to separate all the music as well as the dialog?
so this means 3 - 5.1 stems?
if the music is separate why is it separated?
and does it include music that would be coming through a radio in the movie?

Any insight to what the process is on there end so I can understand why I am doing this.

Thanks Mark

[nucelar]

M&E (Music and Effects) is basically everything except English dialogue*. The M&E is used for dubbing the movie in a foreign language. M&E creation implies extensive use of foley (footsteps, clothing noise, door creeks...) and dialogue editing in order to artificially isolate the dialogue from the production sound. The easiest way for knowing if you have a good M&E is imagine the job of the foreign language mixer. He has to mix the movie with ALL the lines done ADR in the studio so he needs all underlying sound texture and of course the music. Or you can also imagine the sound of the movie if the actors were just flapping their lips instead of talking.
Normally you need to deliver just 2 stems: Full Mix and M&E. Maybe you are asked to deliver a separate dialogue stem for reference.
If there is music (and only music) coming from a radio, it should be in the M&E stem. If there is some kind of dialogue coming from the radio it should be kept off the M&E.
The process, in two words, is to mute all your dialogue tracks and seamlessly fill the gaps with production sound snippets (e.g. traffic noise, rain...), foley effects, and/or sound library effects.

(*) Any dialogue in other languages you wouldn't understand either, should go to the M&E stem.

Cheers
Carles

[Charles D. Ballard]

It’s important to get a detailed description of what you’re expected deliver.

I’ve received and delivered separate dialogue, music and effects tracks. A separate music mix is useful when replacing a music cue. I’ve worked on a number of imported films that the score was kept but the “pop” music was all replaced with American music. A couple of times we only received an M&E so we had to re-build the “E” so we could replace the “M.” A lot of work! It’s much easier with separate music and effects mixes.

And yes, the music mix should contain all music.

[TheHenchman]

I am needing to deliver a trailer stereo, and soon a fill 5.1 feature to Europe. They will need an M&E and I have not done this before.

Do I need to separate all the music as well as the dialog?
so this means 3 - 5.1 stems?
if the music is separate why is it separated?
and does it include music that would be coming through a radio in the movie?

Any insight to what the process is on there end so I can understand why I am doing this.

Thanks Mark

Just make sure you have a complete full foley track. Otherwise QC will reject it.

[Mark 66]

Thanks for the Info! big help.

mark

[Mark 66]

Would breaths (blowing out cigarette) be included in the dialog portion meaning they would not be on the effects mix?

Thanks, Mark

[TheHenchman]

Would breaths (blowing out cigarette) be included in the dialog portion meaning they would not be on the effects mix?

Thanks, Mark

Our foley guys tend to cover those as well as kisses and eating sounds, so yes, they would be on the M+E.

[Pythagor]

it's useful to put breaths, screams etc on optional track as far as sometimes we steal lips moving while breath for a word