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legal responsibility


beartrax

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posing a question here for discussion ...

 

i'm curious about members experience with liability in the legal sense to deliver a sound product on a production ...

 

i'm sure most theatrical release big budget features have in depth contracts outlining deliverables, expectations, and even punitive action... however there are many productions which do not even have a contract, just a string of emails & phone calls ... i have heard of situations where a sound mixer was threatened with legal action to cover post production costs because the location sound product was not delivered as the client expected, some scenarios have been such as missing even as little as a few seconds of hours of recordings, or noisy locations prohibiting "clean" audible lines, and so on

 

there are many elements on productions out of the sound department's control... from noisy locations to rf interference, and media which sound is recorded on, and of course almost any piece of gear used to mix and record is a basically a computer and software driven, and computers and software are known to have errors and fail all the time

 

i'm looking for others' insight, experience, and any methods folks use to protect them selves such as contracts and so forth ... i expect some serious and possibly some humorous antidotes 

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...I have heard of situations where a sound mixer was threatened with legal action to cover post production costs because the location sound product was not delivered as the client expected, some scenarios have been such as missing even as little as a few seconds of hours of recordings, or noisy locations prohibiting "clean" audible lines, and so on...

 

I've never been hit with a lawsuit or an angry producer like this, but after almost every job, I'll email them a PDF of the sound report (usually within a couple of hours of wrap) plus a short memo of any problems or issues. 

 

Even if my email basically says, "hey, we had a lot of air conditioning noise on these takes -- some iZotope might be able to minimize this, but there was nothing the crew could do, because the office building management couldn't turn it off. The director was aware of this on the set," I figure that at least establishes a paper trail and gives the editor and post crew a head's up. Once I do that, I can sleep soundly at night. [soundly = pun.]

 

But to me, this is an overly-paranoid concern. I think even without a contract, there's an "implied" performance agreement that basically says we agree to do the best job possible under the circumstances. That does not mean perfection. 

 

I've never heard of a camera operator being sued for shooting scenes out of focus or something like that. I know of one who was fired an hour after the production was told there were hairs in the gate all day, visible in dailies (and the fixes on that cost about $50,000), but realistically, insurance will cover accidents like this.

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Thanks for the post marc, I agree....

Does anyone have any experience or opinions on equipment failure situations beyond the sound departments control even if the failure was not realized until post has a chance to review the deliverables ?

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I can't imagine a scenario as described by the OP. if you are completely negligent and screw up a shoot, I suppose someone could attempt to recover their cost to fix your mistakes. But I've never heard of such a thing happening, and doubt it ever will.

The likely scenario is that it gets fixed at whatever expense, and you are never hired again by them or possibly by anyone they know.

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I should probably say, I don't mean this person directly or this situation...

I would think if they wanted to take legal action against someone they may start by going after the person who hired the technician who had the issue.  Themself..LOL..  They should of hired a qualified person. If that qualified person had an issue, as Crew says, then Insurance should take care of the damaged data, equipment or mishap.... simple enough.

 

As has been said, shi* happens.... everyone has had an issue over the years including the producer..

 

The term "expected" above in the OP is so vague, no court would ever have a starting point on what "expected" meant in regards to the audio. Expected you could hear words.. not the quality..It could be argued that under noisey situations it is expected that the audio would be poor... Where is their argument now....

 

There are NO guarantees.... only people doing the best they can... this is normally understood in this business..  This is why there are so many fine people doing magical things in regards to post production.. You just can't get it all the time....  but you can try the best you can.... They can stick their expectation in their Arse....

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Anybody can sue you for anything, legal or not right or not.   Since I've never had a clause in any agreement with any producer that "guaranteed" results of any kind, I don't see what grounds they'd have, but that might not keep them from threatening you if they were pissed enough.  Many of us have worked on shoots where something went wrong--usually re camera or media that resulted in a reshoot, and I don't recall hearing about any lawsuits, even when big money was up.

 

philp

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You are being hired by them to help them create a product. The product is their responsibility, and I'm not sure how far a lawsuit would go against an employee.

I've heard stories of people really Fucking up on set, they get fired and production looses a lot of money, but you can't sue your employee because you hired someone incapable if doing the job. That's your fault for not vetting them. Honestly I would think you couldn't sue a company for getting burned from spilling hot coffee on yourself since you bought the hot coffee, and you spilled it on yourself, so what do I know?

http://wanderingear.net

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