"Stock" What? ... No Stock Here

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

An interesting discussion I had with studio people is studios use all original and propriety sound effects, visual effects, greenscreen backgrounds and everything else.

I am sure I am not the only Indie filmmaker using royalty free stock footage, backgrounds, sound Fx and special effects from packages like Video Copilot. And, my reason is simply--budget. By the time I get to post, my wallet is tapped out. That's why I use stock.

Anyone want to add to this discussion.

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

And, we can add the actual shoot with stock props and on set effects with fog machines, etc.

It's just not in an Indie budget to be 100% original with everything.

 

[PaulGriffith]

Lot's of hollywood and network productions use stock. Some of the most popular are arial shots of cities, Favreau complains about it in one of the Iron Man commentaries because they had to scale some 1080p stock to 2k to match the rest of the footage.

Music is another one. Shows like CSI that used a music montage every episode while they investigated and did lab work pulled los of stuff from their stock library. Shoot, they even used the theme song for House in one episode before House even existed. Oh yeah, the theme from House apparently came from their library as well.

There's a famous clip in Transformers that Bay pulled from the Island.

Not to mention VFX work and compositing with explosions and textures and models and all that jazz. Most major productions shoot most of their stuff and create it ground up, I doubt that any of them used 100% custom created anything for their productions.

 

[AudioPostExpert]

An interesting discussion I had with studio people is studios use all original and propriety sound effects, visual effects, greenscreen backgrounds and everything else.

I can't speak about VFX or footage but as far as Sound FX are concerned your statement is incorrect. The vast majority of sound FX for a very big budget feature will be bespoke sound FX, maybe as much as 100% but it's not uncommon for a few SFX to come from a SFX library or another project. As a general rule, the lower the budget for a commercial feature the greater the amount of library SFX. TV movies/dramas generally have the majority or vast majority of their SFX sourced from libraries again dependant on budget but I personally know of no TV productions which use entirely proprietary SFX.

Commercial library SFX are obviously of far higher quality than free SFX and can generally be made to work well and sound "professional" but some bespoke SFX are always required because the exact feel or timbre required for certain important SFX either doesn't exist or is unconvincing. Also, if you think about it, why would the big commercial SFX libraries, which cost many thousands of dollars, even exist if those who buy them could never use them in commercial products and get a return on their investment?

I am sure I am not the only Indie filmmaker using royalty free stock footage, backgrounds, sound Fx and special effects from packages like Video Copilot. And, my reason is simply--budget. By the time I get to post, my wallet is tapped out. That's why I use stock.

From the sound of it, you are either allocating your budget very poorly or managing your budget very poorly. You need to balance your budget allocation very carefully to avoid huge weaknesses in certain areas of your film making. This is in my experience an extremely common mistake by inexperienced film makers attempting to make commercial quality content and is the downfall of many otherwise decent quality productions.

G

 

[Modern Day Myth Prod. LLC]

Well, my new sound guy trained in a post audio house before he went into location recording. He was telling me post audio houses have their own collection of sound effects, a library as you say, that is of higher quality than what Indie filmmakers have available to them if they don't use big post audio houses.

Hopefully, when I get a business partner, planning the budget will be one of their responsibilities. I will never make another film solo. No partner means no future productions for me.

I do have someone interested waiting to read my scripts and story bible when they are ready.

In a post house I used to work in, the head editor used to pride himself in making original sound effects, special effects, and titles.

He would hand create Vfx with a digital tablet and animate it with effects in After Effects. He also hand designed titles and animated them.

He also recorded original sound effects in a sound proof room he also used for ADR recordings.

He also had twelve years experience working for Canal + in both Spain and France before working in London before coming to the USA.

Doing original effects and titles was one of the signatures of his work as an editor.

 

[AudioPostExpert]

Well, my new sound guy trained in a post audio house before he went into location recording. He was telling me post audio houses have their own collection of sound effects, a library as you say, that is of higher quality than what Indie filmmakers have available to them if they don't use big post audio houses.

Yes, all commercial audio post houses will have their own sound library, which will likely include one or more purchased commercial sound libraries and of course a collection of SFX they themselves have created. My library contains getting on for a terabyte of SFX.

You seem to be a little confused. In your original post you stated studios use "all original and propriety sound effects". In my last post I explained that while some original custom made SFX are almost always created, it is very rare for a project to only contain original SFX and that virtually always some library (non-original) SFX are used. Creating all original SFX for a project requires several audio post teams, a great deal of time, is extremely expensive and therefore only happens on features with very large budgets.

Of course, the SFX libraries used by commercial audio post facilities are of high quality than those used by indie film makers as indie film makers tend to use free SFX and those SFX are generally free because they are not of high enough quality for someone to want to pay for!

G