Animated Sci Fi feature, how long for one man?

[jahtao]

Hello.

Don't have much experience with animation. How long would it take me to do a 90min animated sci fi film by myself? And yes I am serious!

There will be a fair amount of dialog, music, action and sfx. Its not sparse in any of those areas. It's a medium budget sort of production.

If anyone is feeling a bit confident with their estimations, perhaps they'd like to have a stab at breaking it down: foley / tracklay / mix

Much appreciated
Matt

[jimlongo]

I used to do "Skyland" 24 minute episodes in a week (with either each show scored by composer, or edited from library by our music editor). Pretty much all by myself. It's a very sfx heavy show.

Since I was editing sfx and mixing I sort of rough mixed sfx as I cut them, then spent another day smoothing out the mix.

When I say a week I mean 6 - 14 hour days.

[dsteinwedel]

When I did the '9' short a few years back, it took about 1 week/minute of film. That was without proper Foley facilities (having to cut feet by hand & such). If you have access to pits & props, that time can be reduced significantly. Still, it all depends on the complexity of the project and how deep you are willing to go.

--Dave

[ggegan]

Originally Posted by jahtao

Hello.

Don't have much experience with animation. How long would it take me to do a 90min animated sci fi film by myself? And yes I am serious!

There will be a fair amount of dialog, music, action and sfx. Its not sparse in any of those areas. It's a medium budget sort of production.

If anyone is feeling a bit confident with their estimations, perhaps they'd like to have a stab at breaking it down: foley / tracklay / mix

Much appreciated
Matt

As a rule of thumb, most mixes on medium budget films (whatever that means anymore) are about 10 predub days (5 FX, 5 DX), 10 final days (a reel per day (90 min is usually 5 reels) plus a one day fudge factor, 2 days of fixes, 1 day print master and 1 day M&E. That's 4 5 day weeks for one guy. However it really depends on a lot of factors and if you want to mix a reel a day with one guy, your predubs better be really good.

For Foley, I figure that 7 or 8 days for a busy feature is probably the absolute minimum.

I don't do a lot of editorial budgets, but off the top of my head I would figure a week per reel (48 hour week) for DX/ADR, the same for FX, 2 weeks for BGs and 1 week for Foley, assuming you don't have to program everything. Remember that if you are supervising the ADR, that is at least a couple of extra weeks that you won't be cutting. That's just a ballpark estimate and without seeing the film it's almost useless.

[Henchman]

How much time is in direct relationship to how much money they have.

[Jesse Peterson]

It's a lot of work and how long it takes is pretty subjective. One time saver that I use is to have common tedious stuff like footsteps and cloth etc mapped out in sampler banks.. very easy to perform to picture.. then try out alt sounds by moving the midi around.. adjusting pitch and time is pretty easy this way too.. in fact I'd say the most difficult thing is knowing when to stop. print and sweeten when you're happy.

I'm on an animated project right now too... which calls for sound design of specific things like supercomputers and nano robots.. but I'm using the same method and loading up sound sets I create to the keyboard for speed and flexibility.

Also, with the keyboard is really easy to accidentally come up with the perfect sound.. I often come up with stuff that is pretty cool, but doesn't fit the project... bounce it anyway and it'll usually end up in a future project somewhere.

J

[dmitri]

Originally Posted by ggegan

As a rule of thumb, most mixes on medium budget films (whatever that means anymore) are about 10 predub days (5 FX, 5 DX), 10 final days (a real per day (90 min is usually 5 reels) plus a one day fudge factor, 2 days of fixes, 1 day print master and 1 day M&E. That's 4 5 day weeks for one guy. However it really depends on a lot of factors and if you want to mix a reel a day with one guy, your predubs better be really good.

Always wondered how long is a typical mixing day in US? Here in Russia the big studios want to sell 2 shifts a day for one room, each shift is 7 hours long, so the workday is either 7 or 14 hours. Of course, when I work at my personal studio there's no limit).
Also, in mixing and editing, is the lunch break included in paid time?
How much $$ overall is a medium US budget today?

[Henchman]

Originally Posted by chsound

Always wondered how long is a typical mixing day in US? Here in Russia the big studios want to sell 2 shifts a day for one room, each shift is 7 hours long, so the workday is either 7 or 14 hours. Of course, when I work at my personal studio there's no limit).
Also, in mixing and editing, is the lunch break included in paid time?
How much $$ overall is a medium US budget today?

Normal mix day is 9 hours plus an hour for lunch.

[JSt0rm]

5 weeks if your chops are up there.

edit:

When doing these rambo things I tend to work 14 hours a day until its done so when I say 5 weeks I mean 5 weeks straight. Also the more panning and leveling you do while editing the better.

[ggegan]

Originally Posted by JSt0rm

5 weeks if your chops are up there.

edit:

When doing these rambo things I tend to work 14 hours a day until its done so when I say 5 weeks I mean 5 weeks straight. Also the more panning and leveling you do while editing the better.

That works out to about 10 48 hour weeks.

[JSt0rm]

Originally Posted by ggegan

That works out to about 10 48 hour weeks.

hey I'm cheap

[JSt0rm]

Just to expand I did a ultra low budget sci-fi film for xxk all in and was able to find it in the budget to source out a lot of the stuff (foley, dx editorial)

[soundfx]

My perspective might be a tad different. I have done animation solely for the last 5 years as a one-man show. And the way I work...I don't do foley first, then DX, then mixing. I do it all at the same time, so I would say 3-4 weeks if you are fast and have a fantastic library you can work from. I would venture to do 5-10 minutes of screen time each 9-hour work day. But there are a lot of variables, so there can't be a "set" timeframe. If I were bidding this sort of gig, I would say one month of solid work, with no other projects butting in.

[ggegan]

I guess it all depends on what "medium budget" feature means. In my world it means a range of between $250k to maybe $450k for an all-in sound budget on a union show. That's a lot more than some and a lot less than others. For that kind of money people expect high quality, highly detailed work mixed on a good sized theatrical dub stage and will not want to compromise, although at the lower end of that range there will definitely have to be a few corners cut. I would consider $150k to $250k all-in to be low budget for union features. I don't see how you can do a union feature for much less than $150k if you are playing by the rules. By my definition, all non-union features are either very low budget or micro-budget. That's not a value judgement, it's just how I see the relative scale of budgets using mainstream Hollywood features as a guidepost.

[JSt0rm]

Originally Posted by ggegan

I guess it all depends on what "medium budget" feature means. In my world it means a range of between $250k to maybe $450k for an all-in sound budget on a union show. That's a lot more than some and a lot less than others. For that kind of money people expect high quality, detailed work and will not want to compromise, although at the lower end of that range there will definitely have to be a few corners cut. I would consider $150k to $250k all-in to be low budget for union features. I don't see how you can do a union feature for much less than $150k if you are playing by the rules. By my definition, all non-union features are either very low budget or micro-budget. That's not a value judgement, it's just how I see the relative scale of budgets using mainstream Hollywood features as a guidepost.

I would agree with that. for me a decent indie feature is 50k to 80k Anything below 30k gets next to impossible to have a team on. And anything below 15k comes with the understanding that there isnt a QC guarantee but more of something for the festivals.

But I will say that no matter what if I take the job I give it 130% It may not be in the budget for custom recordings and 5 weeks on the dub stage but I try to make the best product I can. I feel that there is no way I will grow into working on bigger and bigger stuff if I don't tackle every project like its going to be my last.

[ggegan]

Originally Posted by JSt0rm

I would agree with that. for me a decent indie feature is 50k to 80k Anything below 30k gets next to impossible to have a team on. And anything below 15k comes with the understanding that there isnt a QC guarantee but more of something for the festivals.

But I will say that no matter what if I take the job I give it 130% It may not be in the budget for custom recordings and 5 weeks on the dub stage but I try to make the best product I can. I feel that there is no way I will grow into working on bigger and bigger stuff if I don't tackle every project like its going to be my last.

I understand. We all do the best we can with the resources we are given to work with. And low budget does not necessarily mean low quality.

[jahtao]

Originally Posted by jimlongo

I used to do "Skyland" 24 minute episodes in a week (with either each show scored by composer, or edited from library by our music editor). Pretty much all by myself. It's a very sfx heavy show.

Since I was editing sfx and mixing I sort of rough mixed sfx as I cut them, then spent another day smoothing out the mix.

When I say a week I mean 6 - 14 hour days.

Thanks v much. Does that include voice recording for all the characters etc?

[jahtao]

And thanks everyone else.

The figure that's been tabled is 6 weeks. We discuss it all tomorrow. Hoepfully you'll hear more from me on this subject.

Thanks again

[jimlongo]

Originally Posted by jahtao

Thanks v much. Does that include voice recording for all the characters etc?

i didn't do any of the voice recording.

The voices were recorded pre-animation, as is traditional in all animation. I do know from other series that they can record an episode in a day . . . however due to logistics of booking actors that's rarely the actual case.

A French version was recorded after animation and I had to mix that version as well. Funny part is that with all the action the original English actors yelled a lot, however the French actors were much more intimate (read "whisper") so the French mix was pretty challenging.

[jahtao]

Originally Posted by Jesse Peterson

It's a lot of work and how long it takes is pretty subjective. One time saver that I use is to have common tedious stuff like footsteps and cloth etc mapped out in sampler banks.. very easy to perform to picture.. then try out alt sounds by moving the midi around.. adjusting pitch and time is pretty easy this way too.. in fact I'd say the most difficult thing is knowing when to stop. print and sweeten when you're happy.

I'm on an animated project right now too... which calls for sound design of specific things like supercomputers and nano robots.. but I'm using the same method and loading up sound sets I create to the keyboard for speed and flexibility.

Also, with the keyboard is really easy to accidentally come up with the perfect sound.. I often come up with stuff that is pretty cool, but doesn't fit the project... bounce it anyway and it'll usually end up in a future project somewhere.

J

Yeah boyeee think you might have mentioned that in an old thread, had defo logged that one!! Nano bots, cool!

[jahtao]

Originally Posted by soundfx

My perspective might be a tad different. I have done animation solely for the last 5 years as a one-man show. And the way I work...I don't do foley first, then DX, then mixing. I do it all at the same time, so I would say 3-4 weeks if you are fast and have a fantastic library you can work from. I would venture to do 5-10 minutes of screen time each 9-hour work day. But there are a lot of variables, so there can't be a "set" timeframe. If I were bidding this sort of gig, I would say one month of solid work, with no other projects butting in.

Nice answer. That's fast! Where you based man? (just curious)

[Jfriah]

Originally Posted by JSt0rm

I would agree with that. for me a decent indie feature is 50k to 80k Anything below 30k gets next to impossible to have a team on. And anything below 15k comes with the understanding that there isnt a QC guarantee but more of something for the festivals.

oh man that made me laugh...


things are a bit different up here.
Jeff

[smurfyou]

Originally Posted by jahtao

Thanks v much. Does that include voice recording for all the characters etc?

One thing to keep in mind is that the dialogue recording will be one of the first things after the script and boards are finalized. Then you won't touch the show until after animation, which can take who knows how long. So the VO will need to be broken out on your proposed schedule, not lumped in with post.

I would estimate at least 5 weeks of post if they want you to do a decent job. Preferably longer. Thats an awful lot of work for one person (speaking from experience). As others have said, premixing while you're editing helps.

[D'Animation]

Usually takes about 4 months between a shipped animatic and full colour footage returning to the studio so you have some time to be prepping etc whilst working on something else. I would give yourself a week of wiggle room at least in the post schedule - if your at the mercy of overseas studios returning footage for you to work on maybe more - I've had nothing to work on one week and then 5 ep's the next week....