[BC] Re: Loud movies (was: Digital Intgerference)

[Robert Orban]

At 08:20 PM 12/21/2005, you wrote:
>From: "Jim Wood, C.P.E.W." <electrojim at sbcglobal.net>
>Subject: [BC] Re: Loud movies (was: Digital Intgerference)
>To: <broadcast at radiolists.net>
>Message-ID: <00b601c60665$f71722f0$6401a8c0 at JIMSDESK>
>Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
>         reply-type=original
>
>With regard to film sound, seems to me it's gone downhill over the years, as
>experienced both in theater presentations and with DVD rentals.  Oh, sure,
>I'm getting old(er), but watching any film made before, say, the '70s, every
>word of dialog is still crystal clear.  Take a contemporary film, and my
>wife (who is younger!) and I both comment, "what did he say?", sometimes
>backing up the DVD a couple of times, or even turning on the Closed (Eh,
>what's that, sonny?) Captioning.  Dialog/music/effects ratios don't seem
>right, and diction doesn't seem as important as it once was in film making.

I agree -- it used to be that the "first commandment" in film post 
production mixing was that "dialog must be intelligible." No longer. I 
asked Tom Holman (of THX fame) about this a while back and he said that he 
was unaware that there was a problem.

My theory is that mixes used to be done in large dubbing theaters that 
approximated the acoustics of an actual movie house, including substantial 
reverberation due to the size of the room and the treatment of the walls, 
floor, and ceiling. Nowadays, I believe that some films are mixed in 
smaller facilities with excellent acoustic treatment and excellent detail 
in the monitor speakers. So post-production mixers may misjudge the 
potential loss of dialog intelligibility when their tracks are played under 
less ideal conditions.

Bob Orban