How sound post markets differ...

[Henchman]

I think editors can, and prefer to work from home, and come in during the mix.
Having 100 edit suites to service 5 dubstages, is insanity, IMO. As it means you have 100 suites, with systems that need to maintained and kept up to date.
Colossal waste of money.
Seriously, who was in charge of running that place?
Business wise, it was a complete fallacy to maintain that amount of space.

[denniskersten]

"Team work is what makes projects really flow, and team work is really benefiting if the team is close both physically and mentally."

I also believe in this. I work in a small team as a dialogue editor (with a sound designer and sound designer/fx editor). We handle 1 (sometimes 1,5) film at a time. Working in a small team makes me more involved which has greater satisfaction in the end I think. We work in the same studio and have separate rooms but are in eachothers room often to discuss a scene. Really nice and concentrating workflow.

[ErikG]

Originally Posted by Henchman

I think editors can, and prefer to work from home, and come in during the mix.
....SNIP...

Can, and prefer... Do they really?

Do most editors have adequate and similar enough monitoring setups so that quality when delivering to the mix doesn't suffer?

Are they as focused during that full working day if there are other "homely" distractions?
Will they spend more or less time then what the deal actually states?

Supervision by phone/Internet is not the same as beeing together at the same time, guiding and leading and inspiring is harder to do if not physically present.

This isn't as important if there's just one or two editors, but when there are multiple editors coherency can become an issue.

The collaboration via Skype/email etc is not at all the same as discussing over coffee or lunch... Or just wandering over to the studio next door to see if a complex idea involving several disciplines might have merit or not.

It CAN be done online as well, but it's never going to be the same.

OTOH working alone at home, the editor and the editor alone manages his work, no studio managers that question the reasoning for spending time to record new stuff rather than reusing.
Less interruption (hopefully) when "in the zone".
Not having to adapt to a studio managers reasoning for booking rooms.


More thoughts?

[apple-q]

Originally Posted by ErikG

Do most editors have adequate and similar enough monitoring setups so that quality when delivering to the mix doesn't suffer?

I must say that I've worked in various facilities of the last 10 years but my "home" setup always had better monitoring and equipment (plugins) than the rooms I was sometimes forced to work in due to packaged deals the producer had with a facility.

Most of the time I had to bring in my own gear to get certain effects done at all.

It's much easier for a one-man-studio to maintain and keep his gear up to date than for a 100 edit room facility where even the tiniest purchase of a 100$ plugin sums up to a 10k$ investment. This is the main reason IMO why these so called dinosaurs of post-production struggled so much over the last years. They invested a huge sum when they opened but maintaining cost is also gigantic. Something like a major upgrade as going from PT9 to 10 can mean a live or die investment if you have 50-100 seats to upgrade.

These big facilities usually had some kind of one-size-fits-all DAW/speaker setup (100% were stereo. Never seen even an LCR setup in a cutting room in these very big companies ) which are always a compromise and usually a step back for people who are used to work in their own rooms with their favorite tools.

Maybe this is different in the US.

[ThisIsSka]

Originally Posted by apple-q

It's much easier for a one-man-studio to maintain and keep his gear up to date than for a 100 edit room facility where even the tiniest purchase of a 100$ plugin sums up to a 10k$ investment.

Surely software companies do volume licensing deals for this situation?

[georgia]

Originally Posted by ErikG

Can, and prefer... Do they really?

Do most editors have adequate and similar enough monitoring setups so that quality when delivering to the mix doesn't suffer?

Are they as focused during that full working day if there are other "homely" distractions?
Will they spend more or less time then what the deal actually states?

Supervision by phone/Internet is not the same as beeing together at the same time, guiding and leading and inspiring is harder to do if not physically present.

This isn't as important if there's just one or two editors, but when there are multiple editors coherency can become an issue.

The collaboration via Skype/email etc is not at all the same as discussing over coffee or lunch... Or just wandering over to the studio next door to see if a complex idea involving several disciplines might have merit or not.

It CAN be done online as well, but it's never going to be the same.

OTOH working alone at home, the editor and the editor alone manages his work, no studio managers that question the reasoning for spending time to record new stuff rather than reusing.
Less interruption (hopefully) when "in the zone".
Not having to adapt to a studio managers reasoning for booking rooms.


More thoughts?

I work from home. I shut down my old place.. too much overhead. I have 6 editorial stations and do picture, Visual effects, and sound. I have a great team and scale up or down the team as required with lots of team work daily. I Also work daily with a couple of my VFX guys in London via phone, skype and dropbox... no issues what so ever. When I need a major design effort, I just fly everyone in for a couple days or weeks. We're doing the entire POST effort right now for a 90 min feature that is a COmedy SCI FI project that is VFX/CGI editorial heavy. no issues. I have high end monitoring gear for both audio and picture, and when I need it, I can fire up a 6 foot video screen/projector and genelec 5.1 system to pre-mix. Then I just take it to a dub stage and finish. I have no issues with "home interruptions". In fact I work longer hours, get more done and can do it for less expense working from home. The only real problem in working at home for me is when to stop working...

cheers
geo

[ggegan]

I do a lot of editing and predubbing at home and I really prefer it in many ways. I have excellent gear, my room is properly tuned and calibrated and I can adjust my schedule to suit my needs. I also make more money, since my overhead is nil.

However, there is a danger of becoming isolated. It is harder to stay in the loop about what's going on outside of your current project. Working at a facility or studio creates a lot of opportunities for random encounters with sound people working on other projects, directors, producers, picture editors, etc., which are very valuable for keeping the work coming in, not to mention the potential exchange of ideas.

[brandoncross]

I do 95% of my booked time at home as well. At my home studio, I've gone way above what is needed. My home studio is a +/- 8 dB room. Not many other mix stages are that flat or are even treated correctly. My extreme preference is to mix at home and bring the sessions to a commercial facility to playback.

[Airon]

I find it harder to stop, and to be honest I did find it harder to start sometimes, but only when I first started working at home.

When I work on a series full time, I find it nice to be with the people there if it's an intense schedule. If it's relaxed and we're all just doing a chunk of the work that fits in to a reasonable life schedule, then it's ok not to be in the same place for me.

A lot of my commercial work is with local people, so there's meetings and field recording preps and lots of good laughs. The free work I do is most often via Email, Skype and Mumble.

I love working at home, because all my gear is where I need it, including a recording setup right behind me(all noise machines are in another room). My backups are as fast and safe as I can make them. Nobody has to be called in. The facilities and setups I've seen, except for the mixing rooms, have all been bigger compromises. So yeah, I'm happy with working at home.

And, Gary, I completely agree on the opportunities one gets by being around people in post and/or production. I still enjoy every job I do elsewhere too, especially with picture editors during the editing phase. Most of the people I know in the industry I met by being on-site.

It's one of the reasons I take on local free jobs with friends I've worked with before from time to time. You mix with the people you're most likely to enjoy working with in the future. And they know you exist and what you're like.

[jrfountain]

Hands down the biggest thing I miss from working at a facility is all the interaction with other like minded folk. Iron sharpens iron, it's so refreshing to see another sound effects editor's approach. When you're on your own at home you have to make a more concerted effort to stay connected. It's one of the things I enjoy most about coming to a mix.

That said, working at home is really a no brainer in terms of cost and having your rig set the way you like it.

JR

[apple-q]

Just a note. When I wrote "home studio" I wasn't referring to the place where I live but my personal studio (which is in not in my house)

I do like to keep cables and my job away from my home as much as possible.

[Henchman]

I was cutting and mixing Fx for a series here in LA on the lot for a major studio ere in LA.
Worst room I've ever cut in. Ever.

[MixMasterM]

Working from home, especially if you have a family, is a no brainier. Having dinner at home with my wife and kids is priceless. My home rig (a separate custom built studio on my backyard), is set up exactly how I like to work, I edit and sometimes mix there. I am lucky enough though to also be an in-demand freelance mixer in my area, and work at different facilities in town, so I get the opportunity to interact with other talent and clients. I have also worked in-house at several sound facilities, and see the value in that, although I usually brought in my own gear., cause the setups were pretty basic...and I seemed to work longer hours back then, but the interactions with other editors and mixers were valuable and many times inspiring, especially early in my career.
I have to say though, that the most fulfilling experience, as far as creative work flow, was and still is, when I worked on a series back in the mid 2000s, where I supervised and mixed, hired an awesome sound team, and we all worked with the picture dept at the post suites leased by the production company. Producers and directors were always around for quick preview sessions, and we had an awesome collaborative vibe with the pic dept, sending them SFX to place in their edits, and being asked in to look at cuts to see how sound could work in a scene or whether certain takes were better for sound then others. The outcome....a critically acclaimed series that won a Gemini award for sound, and mixes and editorial that were creative and completed efficiently and on time, with minimal notes and extremely happy clients.

Sometimes wish all projects worked that way....

[MixMasterM]

An additional thought....occasionally there are security reasons for having to edit at a facility. I've worked on a few films where I had to work at a sound facility because picture cuts and sound work could not leave the building. I have also heard through a buddy in LA of a recent project where fobs and security systems have been replaced once a major blockbuster film entered into their facility. It's not only in the facilities best interest to keep the talent in-house, but also personally, I would certainly not want to risk any possibility of a leak if the QT had my departments watermark, or worse, my personal name on it. The last thing the studios wants is a bunch of quicktimes floating around several personal home suites, and/or getting transferred on sites like drop box etc...I'm sure there are exceptions to this....certain editors with a high degree of clout and /or name brand, that have built a long relationship with the studios, and have access to secure ftps, but that is not always the case for most editors who work from home.

Just my 2 cents for a possible reason why a place like sound one had so many edit suites....although 100 seems over the top....certainly 20 to 30 would be absolutely necessary for a facility at their level.

[postfieldmusic]

I absolutely hate working from home, but I´f I had a proper setup I may feel different. As illustraded in Picture A; at home with a knee injury, and Picture B: in my studio with a cup of freshly made espresso.

arvid in stockholm

[narcoman]

Originally Posted by georgia

The only real problem in working at home for me is when to stop working...

That alone makes the overhead a necessity for me!! I worked at home throughout the 90s. Never again!!!

[nzl62]

Originally Posted by georgia

I work from home. I shut down my old place.. too much overhead. I have 6 editorial stations and do picture, Visual effects, and sound. I have a great team and scale up or down the team as required with lots of team work daily. I Also work daily with a couple of my VFX guys in London via phone, skype and dropbox... no issues what so ever. When I need a major design effort, I just fly everyone in for a couple days or weeks. We're doing the entire POST effort right now for a 90 min feature that is a COmedy SCI FI project that is VFX/CGI editorial heavy. no issues. I have high end monitoring gear for both audio and picture, and when I need it, I can fire up a 6 foot video screen/projector and genelec 5.1 system to pre-mix. Then I just take it to a dub stage and finish. I have no issues with "home interruptions". In fact I work longer hours, get more done and can do it for less expense working from home. The only real problem in working at home for me is when to stop working...

cheers
geo

Sounds like a helluva nice setup to have at home! Care to share some piccies?

[BIGBANGBUZZ]

I used to work a lot from home on my own, the worst part I find is the isolation.
I was mainly working on budget TV mixes.
The benefits of working at home can be better up to date equipment, plugins and your own sound library.

Maybe future sound studios, should build empty edit rooms with great acoustics and leave the rest to the sound editors/pre mixers



Sent from my GT-N7000 using Tapatalk

[ErikG]

Thanks for all your posts and thoughts!

Personally I love working from home as well, but my day job is at one of Swedens largest sound post studios. And I have never actually HAD to work from home other than by choice for longer periods. As I started as a music engineer at a "proper" studio complex, this is really where my world is.

Setting up a decent room "at home" that allows for proper monitoring levels and with decent accoustical properties is not a simple thing.

Most "GearSlutz" will more than likely be prepared to both spend he time and money to do so, but editors in general?

[Thomas W. Bethe]

I find working at home has a lot going for it. I also think I can spend more time on a project if I want to work later at night or get up earlier in the morning. Since I don't have to drive to work I can start on a project anytime I want and I have worked all night when the mood was right.

I also find that there are a lot of distractions working at home like telephone calls from "robots" and door to door canvassers and do gooders (I live in a college town). But I can always not answer the phone or the front door.

I also miss the work place and getting to share ideas and ways of working with others but I would not go back to the grind for anything.

I have a GREAT room and GREAT equipment and I can get things done very quickly.

I vote for home!

[ruy]

Everybody is cutting at home for small and big projects now, although working at home in a one bedroom apt NYC is not precisely the optimal situation. Sound One had picture department, post supervisors, music editors, offices, tech and people who had their own companies set up in there. I wouldn't take that "100 sound edit suite" number so literally. The last film I cut at Sound One, we couldn't find a room for the Dialogue editor and I had to ask a fellow sound editor to let me work at his suite since there was no available space. This just proves that what once worked as a selling point might now work against you in the present low overhead days.

[Smallbudgetguru]

I used to work from home but got really sick of having clients in my personal place. Built a 1,700 square foot three room shop two years ago and it's wayy better for me. I can have more people working, faster turn around and higher quality products , not to mention larger budgets.

It's a 10 minute walk from my flat which makes it the best of both worlds. It's even better when my wife and son hang out at the shop!


Here's a panorama of our reception area (sorry it's a bit messy)

[Tom Fleischman]

Originally Posted by Henchman

I think editors can, and prefer to work from home, and come in during the mix.
Having 100 edit suites to service 5 dubstages, is insanity, IMO. As it means you have 100 suites, with systems that need to maintained and kept up to date.
Colossal waste of money.
Seriously, who was in charge of running that place?
Business wise, it was a complete fallacy to maintain that amount of space.

There has been a lot of flogging of this idea that Sound One had 100 "editing suites" on these threads. I worked at Sound One for 18 years, leaving in 2004, and I'd like to add a bit of perspective so here's some fact-based information. First of all, they weren't "suites", they were one-room offices with connecting doors. When I worked there they were equipped with rental equipment (moviola, synchronizers, and rewinds) that Sound One made money on. I never bothered to count, but I seriously doubt that there were 100 of them. Later, they rented these rooms to picture departments who brought in their own digital gear. They never had fully equipped digital sound editing suites in the Brill Building outside of those used by the small staff of Sound One Editorial sound editors, and there were fewer than half a dozen rooms like that.

You need to understand that Sound One became the hub of post sound in New York during the 1980's, when everything was still analog and editors NEVER worked from home. Having picture department and sound department editing rooms in the same facility as the ADR, foley and mix stages was a huge advantage for the company in those days. Even after the move to digital in the 90's it was a hub of activity and the center of the universe in New York post production. That's the background history thats been missing here. That's why the facility was so big.

When I left in 2004 I saw the handwriting on the wall. I was very unhappy about the horrendous corporate takeover that left Sound One in the hands of people who turned a warm, friendly family company into a corporate cog whose only purpose was to serve it's corporate masters 3000 miles away with quarterly reports that showed a profit. It utterly ruined this company that was home to so many talented people.

The location in the Brill Building was unsustainable after the entire film community moved out of midtown, and I never understood why they stayed there so long after I left, taking a significant chunk of their revenue with me, making it even more unsustainable. It was the rent there that did them in, along with incompetent corporate management and a corporate vision that valued an assembly line approach to sound post production over talent.

[Pedantic Sound]

Originally Posted by Tom Fleischman

incompetent corporate management

Is there any other kind?

[philper]

Originally Posted by Pedantic Sound

Is there any other kind?

There is, but they almost always have to have come from the business they are managing, not transferred in from some other business entirely. There is an abiding myth in the business world that management is a separate talent from the business being managed, and it can be transferred anywhere anytime and be successful. The results of this dearly held notion are visible in situations like Sound One and nearly the entire music business.

philp

[Smallbudgetguru]

Originally Posted by philper

There is, but they almost always have to have come from the business they are managing, not transferred in from some other business entirely. There is an abiding myth in the business world that management is a separate talent from the business being managed, and it can be transferred anywhere anytime and be successful. The results of this dearly held notion are visible in situations like Sound One and nearly the entire music business.

philp

+1 and Amen!

[JohnOmix]

Thanks Tom for the inside info. Your link to 3000 Master Orifice Tube Kit cracked me up.

Too true about business people who think they can do much better than the 'dumb showbiz flakes'. There is a lot of trust, skill, experience, and an intangible element that can't be put into numbers and analyzed on a spreadsheet.