Dear All,
I am right now working on mixing a documentary for broadcast TV.
There are quite a few sound effects I'd like changed and/or reworked from scratch from my own personal taste because the cheese factor is strong with these ones.
I'm curious how you go about rejecting or asking for a rework to be done? Do you go through the producer, director, or straight to the SFX editors themselves? What is the convention on this type of thing?
There really isn't a "supervising sound editor" on this job - just the editors themselves.
Am I totally out of my mind if I think I can just reject something that I don't see as fit for the final soundtrack? And how to I go about not hurting the editor's feelings? Obviously he thought it would be a good idea to place those effects there, and I don't want to be the bearer of bad news and all but I just think for the good of the project that the soundtrack can do without those effects. I don't want to tear the heart out of some intern, though.
How much say does the Mixer have in the final soundtrack? My guess would be a lot because he's ultimately responsible for running it off and making it "sound good". So I think it's perfectly fine to reject something back to an editor if something's not quite right. But am I wrong in thinking that?
Basically, foley/spot effects are all pretty much cheesy stock library effects that have either incorrect physics (very strong bottle-down on a table when he lightly places it there) or incorrect sounds altogether (a bunch of people fall down and they literally cut in BOWLING PINS falling over)... And this is a pretty straightforward piece. No tounge-in-cheekness about it. Just a run-of-the-mill History Channel documentary going on here.
What would you do in my situation?
Thanks! - Ryan