So I am in a situation in which I agreed to do "sound design" for a short film a year ago. It came to my desk and they had me rush a pre dub out in one week to send off to sun dance 2010. Well now they have made many many edit changes and it is back to me as of 2 weeks ago. The production audio is fubared in many scenes, I have tried everything I know but no luck. They only recorded audio into the RED and I do not have access to the audio of any additional takes. I am now in this predicament in which I am going to recommend ADR. Personally I do not really have the facilities at the current time to even do ADR, and I know their budget does not have any room in it. I'm getting paid 600 maybe 1000 do to the whole 30 min movie.
If they don't have ADR done, I really do not want my name attached to the movie in an audio manner because its really really terrible production audio. Other than horrid signal to noise ratios many scenes have people talking in them( director/dp) and BGs and other noise can only cover that up so much. I know with design I can add a lot to the movie, but the average person looking to hire me for their next project will just hear horrid dialogue.
How do you deal with your hands being tied from the start and because of that, your name would suffer if you actually did the project and was credited for it?
I have been working awhile at building up my name and am now moving from the free work on student projects to some free projects with exceptional design potential and the occasional paying gig.
I don't know, I am just in a situation where I almost feel morally obligated to do the project, but the director is just clueless and movie itself is pretty terrible. I'm leaning towards the side of doing what I can with what I have and then adding a bit to each scene. It is not worth my time to design and mix the film to my standard, but I would like the money haha, so I may request to not be credited.
Can only polish a turd so much, so at what point can I demand to stop playing with poop?
Any thoughts/Guidance/Similar experiences
sorry /rant off