Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten Harder to Understand

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EditorDavid posted on Saturday December 4, 2016 from the fading-lines dept.

Ben Pearson writes that he used to be able to understand 99% of the dialogue in Hollywood films. 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. The person refused to talk to me because they said it would be suicide. Under the condition that they remain anonymous, another agreed to talk. It became apparent that this is a subject that is familiar to the sound community since they are the ones who often have to contend with complaints about dialogue intelligibility. "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 a gumbo, an accumulate of problems that have been exacerbated over the last 10 years, and it's kind of this time span where all of us in the filmmaking community are noticing that dialogue is harder and harder to understand."

Christopher Nolan is the name that looms above all others when it comes to dialogue unintelligibility. One of the most successful filmmakers of his generation, he uses his power to make sure his films push the boundaries of sound design, often resulting in scenes in which audiences cannot understand what is happening. The director has revealed that other filmmakers have reached out to him to complain about the issue in his movies, and that it's not just audiences who have trouble with some Nolan films. Thomas Curley, who won an Oscar as a production sound mixer on "Whiplash" and previously worked on "The Spectacular Now," has seen this type of mentality at work. He tells me that not everything has a very crisp, cinematic sound to it in real life.

Curley says that there's also a "bit of a fad" with today's actors for soft delivery or under your breath delivery of some lines. A sound designer says that today's more-visual movies are more resistant to boom microphones, while a sound editor says that compressed shooting schedules are to blame. A high-profile Hollywood sound professional who wishes to remain anonymous blamed an abundance of new technologies, saying more tracks to play with, more options, therefore more expected and asked for from the sound editors... Hundreds of tracks are at our disposal. Movie theaters could also be showing the movie with volume set too low after all that.

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