Outputing Stems for budget film

[One Track Music]

Hi, as a relative novice in film mixing, I recently mixed a short which I scored & sound-designed, in stereo only & just provided a full stereo mix file. The film's now been picked up for international distribution & I have been asked to provided separate stems for Dialogue, FX, & Music. I think the understanding was that they may dub the film into another language. My concern is that much of the important ambience is within the dialogue, and for the large part, I did not build a separate continuous ambience track. So without that, any foreign dubbed dialogue will be "in a vacuum". Should I try to build an entire ambience track (bearing in mind I'm not being paid for this extra work)? How does one usually address this kind of problem, so that if not for this, but perhaps future films I can get it right? Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks,

Joel

[Drew]

You're going to need to do foley (feet, cloth, props) and add to/or redo all your BG's and SFX so that the film will "sound" right without the dialgue present. It's a lot of work. Imagine a scene where a conversation is taking place while doing the dishes or cooking, you obviously can't just mute or dip the dialogue without rebuilding all the necessary ambiences and sfx. The way to avoid this in the future is to start the project knowing you will need to produce an ME and/or Stems. I don't start a project until I know what my delivery format is going to be. I realize that low-budget films often don't have the resources to fund such work, but it is a lot more expensive having to do the work after the fact. The NOT getting paid part doesn't make sense to me - but that's none of my business.

[JKD99]

Often, independent films will take the route of just doing enough foley for a quality domestic mix, but not do the M&E (and complete foley) until the film is sold; and then make the distributor pay for the additional foley and stage time for the foreign mix.
But Drew is absolutely right: a proper M&E can either involve a ton of foley that wasn't shot for the domestic, editing the usable production tracks to make use of FX and movement that were present in the domestic, or at minimum 2 days stage time (for a feature-length film) to do the mix itself if all the tracks have already been cut and foley shot and edited.
In any case, I'd say that unless you said you'd deliver an M&E as well as a domestic, then it shouldn't be you who's bearing the costs.
Hope this helps, good luck!

[Noiz2]

I'll add my vote to the others. I do a fair amount of low and very low budget projects and always make it clear what I'm providing and what I'm not. It's a lot of work to prepare for an M&E and it's a lot more work to do it after the fact. You should not have to do this for free. I'm going to assume you didn't originally agree to do this or you wouldn't be asking about it now, so I would say it's time to do some negotiations. First I would explain the amount of work involved to the producer~director then find out if it's really nec. If it is then you should at least get them to cover the expenses of the M&E. Even if you do it for free (and I can see situations where I would) you should NOT end up paying to do it.

[One Track Music]

Thanks so much for the answers. I was afraid that this would be the case. I'll certainly try and negotiate a bit of extra pay & get this clear from the beginning next time round. And I always thought of wild ambience & foley as ways to "fill in the gaps" & enhance the production tracks. This gives them a whole new meaning! Thanks again... I've got my work cut out...

Joel

[philper]

I've worked an a great many shorts that went to international distro, have provided D/M/E splits for
all of them and no-one ever came back and asked for a Hollywood-style "fully-filled" version. Everyone
knows it's just not in the cards for this sort of film. They will subtitle it or simply show it as-is. They may do a
translation in a SAP channel. Probably not. Unless your film becomes a huge cult hit, it won't matter.
If it does then a distributor will have to come up with the money to do the extra work. Large commercial
features and TV series do this work because a large chunk of the studio's profit come from overseas distribution, and the larger countries and language groups overseas want "localized" versions. The making of these versions is a sizeable business in itself.

Philip Perkins CAS

[One Track Music]

Thanks Philip & others. I did an OK job patching things together, & got myself paid a little for my time. I took the sum of the info here and I think it'll work out fine. Jack of all trades... master of none. I really appreciate all the help from you post gurus.

Joel

[minister]

i know it's too late for this one ... but ... on old time consoles they used to buss all the D,M,E tracks separately. when i setup to do a film mix, i buss each item to the appropriate buss. so, i may have 25 tracks of fx all bussed to the fx buss and 4 tracks bussed to the music buss etc. then, when i am ready to print sterms or DME for translations, i simply solo (or mute) each group and let 'er rip. you can even do all three at once if you create 3 audio tracks with the seprate buss inputs and record 'em/ then you get the 3 things in the time it takes to do 1.

hope i am not repeating something you already know.

[bigbadhenchman]

FYI, the distributor cans till refuse what you have delivered if it does not meet their QC.

So, just like the others, unless they specificallty asked for a filled M+E track when you started, then don't feel at all obliged to do all the extra work out of the kindness of your hart.
Remeber. it's their film, not yours. Anythign needed beyond the original agreement should be paid for.