Director 'Forgot' to mention that he has multiple sources of audio after i sent off the rough cut

How much time will this take? Estimate it. Be direct about the amount of rework this will take and how tedious it is. Quote a price.

Make it clear that you did what you were asked to do already. Editing all the audio would be a totally different job. He should either pay for the extra work or take what he's got.

Edit: you won't accidentally be paid double for a job, so you shouldn't accidentally do double work.

It's going to be a pain no matter how you do it. Definitely don't do it for free unless you have a contract with absolutely no wiggle room. Even then, I would try to renegotiate an additional fee for the added work.

Although it is obviously the director's fault for not giving you all the media, you certainly should have asked once you realized the audio was sub-par. Once I realize something is wrong (missing footage, bad audio, etc), I often ask right away even if I know it wasn't shot or recorded, that way everyone is aware there is an issue well before I deliver anything. And once in a while I actually am surprised when some key piece turns up that was initially not given to me.

As an editor, if there is something that I feel will make the project better, it is my job to ask for it. Directors and producers can't read minds, and the worst that will happen is they will say no.

People here have already given good advice, i’ll give you one more:

If the director says he can’t afford to pay you or anyone else to do it, have him over, show him how to replace the audio on one clip, then ask him to do it by himself over a weekend. Odds are that a director that recognizes his own mistake would own up to this and take the time to do it.

being paid for the finished product rather than hourly.

Ouch. NOT a great idea for larger projects.

Any contractual stuff about the director failing to supply you with the required files in time for your rough cut?

I'd like to see the look on his producers face when they get told this mistake, if they agree to pay you more

Since others are commenting on the politics around this, here’s my two cents on the workflow in case you end up doing the work.

I just went through exactly this on a similar job, producers couldn’t locate the audio files from the shoot so I edited 90% of a feature film with camera audio before they found them.

Hopefully your people shot with a slate and clap so you can use pluralize or something that assists you in the sync process, but either way when you marry the audio/autoclip do it to the main takes and not subclips. Then add each synced main clip in full length (one at a time) to the end of your edited master sequence and use ‘detect dupe files (video)’ function. The colored lines that appear from dupe detection will tell you what sections of each take are being used in your edit and where, then overcut manually based on that. Tedious, I know, but ‘fastest’ way I’m aware of in Avid.

If he didn’t provide these files at the beginning, when the Avid project was being set up... it’s hardly the Editors fault for not asking, “Do you have better secret audio that you’re hiding.” In other scenarios, the dialog would have to be ADR’d in a sound session. I’d present the option to have a sound editor lay these better tracks in, or that he can pay you to do this tedious work. In the future though, never agree to a flat rate for work like this. It protects idiots who can’t make up their mind, or forget to provide all assets at the beginning of a project, and puts editors in a terrible position.

Reading this makes me want to hug an AE. Thanks, AEs. I love you all.

Presuming this production has a chain of command, take this up with the producers ASAP. Then get said producers to cover the cost of hiring an Assistant Editor to do this. Stuff like this makes my brain melt but a competent AE will go in and win this war for you. Reward them with praise and money.

Is there any time code on the audio (or the video for that matter? Maybe simply take the time to cut the audio into the sequence if you think you’re sort of close to a decent cut? In any event, your director is an idiot and you should def charge him for every second you have to work on this correction. In Chicago, going rate is $600-$800 per day. I’d charge the guy at least an extra $1000 for his ridiculous mistake that should’ve been communicated clearly at the beginning of post.

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Don't assume, always confirm.

Besides the suggestions made by others in this thread I would like to offer a suggestion for the future. When in doubt of any asset whether be picture or audio you should always ask to confirm. Many times both video and audio are left out of the project for many reasons. Do your due diligence and confirm before getting too deep into a cut.

Try the advice about sending him a quote for the extra time. But in the future, estimate the amount of days you’ll be working and calculate what you need as an hourly rate and give them that instead of a package deal.

If you can present the hours and sell that without giving them room to say “oh but do you need THAT part?” then this would, as you probably know, be easily handled as it was his mistake that made you do extra work.

if the camera audio and external audio have timecode (matching, hopefully), you can conform the external audio in protools using the Field Recorder workflow. If you were not planning on going to audio mix for this project, the alternative is more painful and described thoroughly in this thread.

That sounds awful. But it’s also the sort of challenge I love to tackle.

This really should have come up earlier.

It should have been a question from you earlier.

I’m guessing your dude didn’t jam sync did he? If so and you properly transcoded proxies syncing everything by timecode, while extra time to replace in your sequence, should be too hard.

If not ask for more money.

Have you tried plural eyes by red giant? It is 300 bucks, sometimes on sale. It will sync all your sound in the sequence to the camera audio. Usually this is done before you edit and I am not sure how it will work when you sync if after an edit. But worth looking into...