Unintelligible dialogue

[Guy Rowland]

This is a continuation of a discussion in a legacy thread here - viewtopic.php?p=70037

I have Dolby Digital with the centre channel turned up and EQ'd to reduce muffle and Dialogue Boost turned on in the amp.

Exhibit J: The Last Of Us Season 2. The first scene in this show has around 6 characters. I don't think I understood a single word that was said.

So I screamed in despair and rewound. My dear wife, with perfect hearing, admitted she'd missed a ton of it too. We put on the subtitles and watched again. More than one line seemed to bear no relation to the mumbled noises coming out of the characters' mouths.

This is RIDICULOUS. Okay I'm a deaf old bastard, but I'll post this below from the legacy thread from November 2022:

There's a good blog post on the latest on this topic at Pro Tools Expert - https://www.pro-tools-expert.com/produc ... ogue-mixes .

A quite staggering 80% of 18-24 year olds in the UK now use subtitles some, or all of the time.



A complete inverse graphic to what you'd expect. While a lot of that must be linked to the ubiquity of subs on social media - so people can follow a video clip while scrolling their timelines without sound - it's not necessarily the case that these bright young things can actually understand dialogue okay without subs. In a US study:



What a savage indictment of the entire film and TV audio industry.

[Mike Greene]

Gotta agree that it keeps getting worse. That age chart is insane! I assumed it was reversed.

I checked out that Last of Us scene, and was surprised that I understood most (but definitely not all) of it. I say "surprised" because I doubt my hearing is better than yours. I suspect part of my advantage was that I'm American and these are American actors. (If I'm watching a British show, all bets are off!) But again, although I got most of it, I didn't get it all.

Also, I was playing it loud, plus I was concentrating hard. I don't like working that hard for something that's supposed to be entertaining me, so I would absolutely need subtitles if I were to keep watching.

To the Last of Us mixer's credit, I can't fault the audio treatment. EQ, compression and mix all sounded right to me. This was more a matter of the director and actors losing sight of the fact that the audience doesn't already know what they're all saying, so sacrificing clarity for "Oh, the emotion and despair is so real!"

[Guy Rowland]

Yes, agreed this was performance and not a technical thing.

I'm a big Craig Mazin fan (who both wrote and directed this episode). On his scriptnotes podcast today he was saying he is meticulous on sound, and thinks it's sometimes even more important than image. So this is likely an amazing example of over-familiarity with the material.

[playz123]

And if I may, I would like to expand on this topic as well. First, most of the shows and series I watch do seem to be fairly well mixed, BUT then there are some that I can't figure out what they did with not only the dialogue but the video as well. For example, I am currently watching The Wheel of Time on Prime, and why I don't claim to understand much of the story, I suggest it's due to dialogue overwhelmed by music and sound effects, I also find some the video so dark it's almost impossible to even see the characters sometimes. As a videographer, I do understand a director's desire to make the production in a 'cinematic; style', but for goodness sake, maybe back off the LUTs so we can actually see what is happening? I feel the series is a disaster when assessing both sound and video techniques, and I question my own sanity for continuing to try and watch it. Then there are a few TV shows where the rear speaker mix is so loud that it drowns out the dialogue from the front. Yet switch to the other 90% of broadcasts and things are fine. Anyway, I'm sure I've made my point and totally agree with the concern about unintelligible dialogue.

[Guy Rowland]

The trend to darkness does mirror the trend towards inaudibility, agreed. I gave up on Apple's Silo after an episode where I both saw and IIRC heard almost nothing at all for a full hour. I only have one life.

[Erik]

Wow ! It is that bad ?
I Watch films and series with subtitles on - 99% French subs.
I don’t go to cinemas anymore but I remember having an horrific Time trying to decipher what the astronauts were talking about in Interstellar.
I remember Charlie Clouser complaining as well on VIC and then dialing a bit back when Zimmer chimed in :-))

[Guy Rowland]

Wow ! It is that bad ?
I Watch films and series with subtitles on - 99% French subs.
I don’t go to cinemas anymore but I remember having an horrific Time trying to decipher what the astronauts were talking about in Interstellar.
I remember Charlie Clouser complaining as well on VIC and then dialing a bit back when Zimmer chimed in :-))

Interstellar is notorious! I remember laughing out loud in the cinema at one (possibly) crucial line totally drowned out by the score in an emotive moment.

I went to the greatest quiz of my life a few years ago, a very special film quiz. One round was Bollywood trailers of Hollywood remakes - guess the original film. Or 80s computer game movie adaptations. But the finest round was called What The Hell Is Tom Hardy Saying. 10 clips from his garlanded award winning films. The dialogue would go "arrgdh hssmggllllremfg sherycysh srrghamm". We had three runs at each line, trying in our little huddles to decipher what the hell Tom Hardy was saying. By the 3rd or 4th clip, the room would erupt in raucous laughter on hearing each new line. It was ABSURD. And I thought wow, in every case, a director said at the end of the take "that's great Tom, we got it".

[Erik]

Ahah ! Excellent !

[Guy Rowland]

Just saw this. Note the number of likes.



It's not just deaf boomers....