Looking some help/advice for my Honours Project [Sound replacement with film]

Question

Morning folks!

I've just began my final year of university, doing Digital Media with a specialisation in Sound Design and its time to do my honours project and dissertation.

The general gist is that it's a sound replacement project for film. I rebuild the sound for a short film, then receive feedback from my supervisor, as well as from the creator/original sound designer for the film.

My main problem is that of the films I've found so far, I haven't been able to make contact with the people responsible. The very few that I have been able to make contact with have either not responded to my emails, or they've replied that they do not have the time to commit to another project. There was one positive response, however the person no longer had a copy of the film with just production dialogue in, so obviously that was a no-go.

Is there any advice anybody can give me? Ideally looking for a short film, around 10-15 minutes in length, which definitely is available with just dialogue, nothing else. Any recommended websites/people I should speak to?

At this point I'm desperate after an entire Summer of trying to find someone. Its crunch-time now and I'm already behind.

Answer 1

I may be able to help you out with this, I've got a long list of short films I may be able to toss one your way for your edu project (granted I receive permission from the dir/prod).

Shoot me an email at steve (at) stavrosound.com

All have printed DM&E stems, so I could toss you the Dialogue stem to work against - that's with the understanding that by "sound replacement", your project is solely on the basis of the effects/design/music, since the dialogue present in these stems has been fully edited and premixed, so that would be cheating if your project calls for working with raw OMF dialogue and cleaning that up.

EDIT: Please, nobody else ask me. I have had too many email requests, all of which are being turned away as they cannot be accommodated. Thanks!

Answer 2

Have you considered dabbling in ADR for this project? While it isn't explicitly part of the assignment, it can only help your portfolio! If you have enough time and the facilities to do so, I'd say give it a shot.

Answer 3

You may also want to take a look at Big Buck Bunny (http://www.bigbuckbunny.org/index.php/about/). It's about 10 minutes long, and licensed under a Creative Commons license, in this case allowing you to do pretty much anything with it. There is no dialogue, so that wouldn't be a concern. You could also check out Elephant's Dream, made by the same people (http://orange.blender.org/download). You can download the production elements individually - I'm not sure how split up the audio provided is, you may be able to get a stem of just dialogue. Both of the originals are also available on Vimeo if you want to see how they were done. Have fun!