As a filmmaker, getting distribution for your project can be the foundation of its success. Having a company facilitate putting it out to the world to be seen by the masses, both domestically and internationally, is quite an achievement. 

For films seeking an international distributor, it's common that the project will need to be dubbed in other languages. In order to achieve this, a film’s sound mix will need an additional version known as a “Fully Filled M&E”. This is basically a mix without original dialogue. However, it's not as simple as just removing that track — and it could even be a more costly process.

The Problem

Unfortunately, for many filmmaker’s budgets and schedules, a “Fully Filled M&E” mix is not always a consideration during the original sound mix of your film. And some post sound facilities may not even bother to ask due to these constraints.

This can become a big problem later when a distribution company requests an M&E mix. You thought post sound was finally done, but the mix has to now be reworked. Many times the distribution company will offer to fix it, but at very high rates. New budgets and timelines have to be established. Then follow the possible endless rounds of QC errors.

The M&E Process

A film is sound mixed into three main components or stems - dialogue, music, and effects. These three stems are commonly referred to as a “DME” mix. Subtracting the dialogue would result in a mix that’s considered just “M&E”, or “MnE”, for just music and effects.

When dialogue was first recorded on set, many underlying environmental sounds were also captured along with it. This includes movement from the actors and the objects they interact with. Oftentimes these production sound effects are left in the dialogue track and not separated out during the mix. If the dialogue were turned off, all these other sounds would go with it. 

In order to fix this problem, the production effects need to be “fully filled”. This process removes all of the effects from the dialogue tracks and onto the sound effects tracks. Additional sound effects and Foley would also be added to replace any other missing sounds. So now when the dialogue is switched off, all of the sound effects will remain.

The Solution

However, it's very easy to save money and headaches by being aware of this process from the beginning and talking to your post sound team about it.

At Enhanced Media, we approach all of our mixes with a fully filled M&E in mind from the start of your project. We do this to save filmmakers money and time down the road when it comes to distributing their film internationally. We routinely work with distributors and QC to make sure everything is correct the first time around. And because of our track record, we are often called on to fix other films that weren’t properly prepared for distribution.

If you’d like to learn more about how we can help cut your film’s distribution costs, please contact us.