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https://www.slashfilm.com/673162/heres-why-movie-dialogue-has-gotten-more-difficult-to-understand-and-three-ways-to-fix-it/>
"I used to be able to understand 99% of the dialogue in Hollywood films. But
over the past 10 years or so, I've noticed that percentage has dropped
significantly — and it's not due to hearing loss on my end. It's gotten to the
point where I find myself occasionally not being able to parse entire lines of
dialogue when I see a movie in a theater, and when I watch things at home, I've
defaulted to turning the subtitles on to make sure I don't miss anything
crucial to the plot.
Knowing I'm not alone in having these experiences, I reached out to several
professional sound editors, designers, and mixers, many of whom have won Oscars
for their work on some of Hollywood's biggest films, to get to the bottom of
what's going on. One person refused to talk to me, saying it would be
"professional suicide" to address this topic on the record. Another agreed to
talk, but only under the condition that they remain anonymous. But several
others spoke openly about the topic, and it quickly became apparent that this
is a familiar subject among the folks in the sound community, since they're the
ones who often bear the brunt of complaints about dialogue intelligibility.
"It's not easy to mix a movie," says Jaime Baksht, who took home an Oscar for
his work on last year's excellent "Sound of Metal" and previously worked on
Alfonso Cuarón's "Roma." "Everybody thinks you're just moving levers, but it's
not like that."
This problem indeed goes far beyond simply flipping a switch or two on a mixing
board. It's much more complex than I anticipated, and it turns out there isn't
one simple element that can be singled out and blamed as the primary culprit.
"There are a number of root causes," says Mark Mangini, the Academy
Award-winning sound designer behind films like "Mad Max: Fury Road" and "Blade
Runner 2049." "It's really a gumbo, an accumulation of problems that have been
exacerbated over the last 10 years ... that's kind of this time span where all
of us in the filmmaking community are noticing that dialogue is harder and
harder to understand."
Join me and these industry experts as we sort through that "gumbo" and identify
some of the most prominent reasons it has become more difficult to, in the
paraphrased words of Chris Tucker's Detective Carter in "Rush Hour," understand
the words that are coming out of characters' mouths."
Via Casey Johnston and Hank G.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
