[Tech1] "Film" sound

[Chris Woolf]

So good that others agree!

Yes, age doesn't help, and hearing diminished somewhat, but the fall-off 
in intelligibility really is something different.

There's a vast amount of attention paid to signal levels and loudness 
(rightly) but almost none to intelligibility currently. As with 
listening to someone with a strange language cadence, it can take a 
while to grasp what is being said, so it is really hard for the brain to 
match an image of someone talking in wide shot, with a voice 6" from 
your ear.

I'm not against ADR, but it ought to be perfectly possible to put some 
distance (and faked atmos) into the sound for wider shots. rather than 
everything in one flat plane.

Chris Woolf


On 16/01/2023 12:18, Hugh Snape wrote:
> Yes, pretty much agree with all of that Chris, not a great plot, a bit muddled in the telling, and sometimes struggling with the dialogue.
>
> I’m often disappointed by film sound these days, but I generally check whether Judy agrees the intelligibilty’s poor as I have lost some of my “top end” and have a degree of tinnitus; she generally concurs, which is reassuring!
>
> I happened to see a bit of an old Morse the other day and it was interesting to hear the very obviously boomed sound matching the interior shots, quite a lively acoustic but dialogue still easy to understand. By way of contrast I also watched one of the Star Treks recently; all voices perfectly on mic. and very good quality but almost no variation in the acoustic; presumably mostly / all ADR.
>
> And then there’s the matter of VO’s in trailers and commercials pretty much drowned out by the M+E . . .
>
> Hurumph
>
> Best wishes
>
>
> Hugh Snape
>
>
>
>
>
>> On 16 Jan 2023, at 11:43, Chris Woolf via Tech1 <tech1 at tech-ops.co.uk> wrote:
>>
>> Watched the "Guernsey literary and potato peel pie society" the other evening - on a friend's recommendation.
>>
>> Besides the story being rather poorly put together - weak direction/writing - the sound was atrocious.
>>
>> Almost no acoustic for the spaces the actors were in - everything very close-miked - and gated to death. With modern actors the diction is often weak, but with decent sound pick-up one can get sufficient to grasp what is going on. However this suffered some gritty distortion on top of the other problems, and rendered most of the dialogue all-but unintelligible.
>>
>> You begin to wonder if it is your sound equipment (or your own hearing) and then you watch something else that is perfectly clean and clear - so it isn't - just incompetence somewhere in the sound chain of that programme.
>>
>> Chris Woolf
>>
>>
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