# How Much For Sound Design Work?



## Ned Bouhalassa (Sep 20, 2007)

Question relating to a pitch I'm making: What would be an OK fee (budget is tight, from what I hear) to do sound design work on a 75-minute futuristic animation? We're talking flying vehicles, monster screams, one-to-one battles, etc. No typical foley work, though, as that's being taken care of.

Thanks! ~o)


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## Patrick de Caumette (Sep 20, 2007)

No less than $2000: you'll probably be busy and spend a bunch of hours on this.

These people have no clue that they are talking to a guy that can seriously score...
since you should be doing the soundtrack as well.... o=<


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Sep 20, 2007)

Did you really mean 20,000? Seems that 2,000 would be small considering how long the sound design work could take. Oh, and the gig includes composing as well as sound design. I just want to know what might be a reasonable fee for the non-composing part.


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## Patrick de Caumette (Sep 20, 2007)

:D ...I wasn't sure of what you meant when you said animation.
If it is animation for a well-distributed feature or video game, then obviously, the rate should reflect that (and frankly, I haven't done that type of job yet)

Animation on its own doesn't usually come with a big budget...


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Sep 20, 2007)

You hit the nail on the head (as usual!), Pat. It's low-budget. Still, the music and sound design is important in a sci-fi 3D animation with little dialogue and much action/discovery. Seems to me like the sound design could easily take 3-4 weeks. It is a feature, after all. Maybe 2 grand a week makes more sense, so 6 to 8 grand total. How much is it for video games sound design then?


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## John DeBorde (Sep 20, 2007)

Ned Bouhalassa @ Thu Sep 20 said:


> You hit the nail on the head (as usual!), Pat. It's low-budget. Still, the music and sound design is important in a sci-fi 3D animation with little dialogue and much action/discovery. Seems to me like the sound design could easily take 3-4 weeks. It is a feature, after all. Maybe 2 grand a week makes more sense, so 6 to 8 grand total. How much is it for video games sound design then?



If i remember correctly, a lot of folks quote VG sound design based on a per effect rate, which might be something like $100/effect, assuming an average of 2 hours to create each effect.

But someone please correct me if i _don't_ remember correctly. :mrgreen: 

john


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## Patrick de Caumette (Sep 21, 2007)

$100/fx is not a bad fee, especially since Ned would probably create them at lightning speed! =o


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## Waywyn (Sep 21, 2007)

I think it would be better to have something like a general fee.
If you would calculate 100 per sfx, you would be in hell only approximately counting how many sfx you created ... then you have layered stuff going on. Creating your own stuff where one sfx consists of maybe 10 tracks, etc.

You can do that if you work for single effects for games, where you basically have to deliver each sfx as a single file. I'd rather go for a minute fee or a general fee for the whole movie.

The best you could do is, ask yourself:

How valuable are you: references, reliable, pro work etc.
How kind are you: because the production is low budget 
How long do you need: if you make 1 minute per day, you sit 75 days, thats over 2 month. Check the fridge btw :D

Put all in a pot and then make something up. Like: Usually I am earning 10000 a month, but I would need 2 months for the project. That's 20k, but I am very kind, so let's make it 10-15k or so 

If this is too expensive but they only could pay you money you couldn't eat food or pay rent from - then forget it. References are cool, but what do you have of references when your weight is half than before and you can't take the next big job because you are too exhausted!


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Sep 21, 2007)

Huh, OK, so it turns out there's more $$ than I thought. Like 4 times as much...maybe. Alas, it's a p i t c h . And a pitch is a bitch. $till... time to roll up da sleeves! o/~


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## John DeBorde (Sep 21, 2007)

Ned Bouhalassa @ Fri Sep 21 said:


> Huh, OK, so it turns out there's more $$ than I thought. Like 4 times as much...maybe. Alas, it's a p i t c h . And a pitch is a bitch. $till... time to roll up da sleeves! o/~



yeah, you gotta watch out for that. when it turns out that there's more money than you originally thought, there's usually even more money than that somewhere if they need it. sounds like they're trying to lowball you.

It's tricky tho, as you don't want to price yourself out by being either too high or too low.

imho, you also need to ask yourself if doing sound design in that great of a quantity is something that you really want to do.

good luck!

john


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## Dr.Quest (Sep 21, 2007)

$15,000 would be bare minimum for this gig. It's going to be a lot of work. In animation, every sound you hear has to be created.
J


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Sep 21, 2007)

Doing the pitch will give me a small indication of the complexities. I've noticed that in many scenes, there's rarely a lot of movement going on in any of the background. It's not like Toy Story, more like Lara Croft (the game), I suppose, as only two or three characters move/are in action at the same time.


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## KingIdiot (Sep 22, 2007)

Remember you'll be creating environment sounds as well.

$100/fx in video games isn't really the "going" rate. I'm not saying some people don't get that, but it really depens on the game and type of effects, if you're doing placement and etc...

generally its more around the average of $40/fx range. As far as I've seen/known (maybe i'm under bidding)

Animaion Sound Design is a tricky gig if you ask me and takes a lot of work and is usually best when you focus on the subtleties. That means lots and LOTS of layers of nuances.

Jamey/IOComposer might be a great guy to ask about this, maybe even in PM. He could give you some good avice on both approach and money I'm sure.

Good luck, Ned....and let me know if you need any help  hehehee I'm dying here, and wouldn't mind building up some new SFX design portfolio work


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## Patrick de Caumette (Sep 22, 2007)

Best of luck with the pitch Ned!
(I hate pitches since there's always a guy in there who's a buddy of someone on the team...)


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## Scott Cairns (Sep 22, 2007)

Hi, for Jackass the Game, I charged a flat fee of $75 per effect, regardless of complexity.

The flat fee kind of protects both you and the client - you wont get into an argument about which sounds are 'small', 'medium' or 'complex' (the client has no idea how hard some sounds are to create)

It also can help you in the sense that you get the same amount regardless whether its a simple button click, or a sound that involved you going on location for. Just let the client know, the sound list can pile up very quickly. For me, JA ended up having over 600 sfx in it.


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Oct 6, 2007)

I nailed the gig! o-[][]-o 

Now for a question: Is it OK to buy and use a sound effects library, like Sound Ideas, from ebay? I'm hoping to explore making hybrid soundfx out of synthesized and acoustic sounds.


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## Patrick de Caumette (Oct 6, 2007)

Congrats Ned, that's great! =o 

I'd say: give Sound Ideas a call and clear out the issue with them: 1-800-665-3000 (Canada)

Best of luck with the gig! o-[][]-o


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## Christian Marcussen (Oct 6, 2007)

Congrats! 

Bids can indeed be bitches!


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Oct 6, 2007)

Thanks for the kind words, friends. I've already found a very cool resource for rolling your own... http://www.epicsound.com/sfx/


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## Christian Marcussen (Oct 6, 2007)

So aren't you going to share with us what range you ended up getting? I mean that's what the thread is about, and quite a few different suggestions and experiences emerged


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## Patrick de Caumette (Oct 6, 2007)

The site you linked to included this other link but I'll post it here anyway:

great film sound resource: http://www.filmsound.org/


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Oct 6, 2007)

Christian Marcussen @ 6/10/2007 said:


> So aren't you going to share with us what range you ended up getting?


There are still negotiations to be had, price is not finalized yet. I figure it'll end up around 35-40K for music and sound design.


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## Christian Marcussen (Oct 6, 2007)

Sweeeet! 

Better than 2k :D


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## Stevie (Oct 25, 2007)

very impressive.
now the question is, how does one get such jobs?


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## Ned Bouhalassa (Oct 29, 2007)

Update:

The fish slipped out of my hands. It turned out that the US producers changed their mind, a few days before negotiating the contract. Man, was I pissed!!!

Update II: just found out today I got a US MOW* gig. Horror! Sci-Fi!... fun.

=o 


* Movie-Of the-Week


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