It’s frankly amazing that it managed to make it to release. Who the fuck thought the mix was acceptable? Scene 1 I had no clue what was happening because I couldn’t hear! Ridiculous.
Ugh, I hate that so much! Especially since I sometimes like to fall asleep to a movie I’ve seen many times before and at the end just drift off to the sound of it.
“Whisper whisper whisper EXPLOSIONS AND YELLING whisper whisper whisper” is probably my least favorite style of sound mixing.
I like to be able to hear the quiet parts without the loud parts bursting my ear drums, thank you very much!
You may want to see if your TV has a “night mode” in the audio settings. It’s basically just an audio compander, (combination of compressor and expander.) It expands the quiet parts to be louder, and compresses the loud parts to be quieter. It destroys any kind of dynamics that the director intended, and can cause some difficulty with intelligibility if there’s lots of background noise, (because the noise is getting expanded too!) But for watching things at night, it’s almost a must for dynamic movies.
Some brands call it headphone mode, because headphone users also frequently complain about dynamic audio too; They turn up to hear the quiet parts, then get their ears blown off during the loud parts.
You’re talking about a regular compressor with make up gain. An expander makes the quiet parts even quieter. Compressors compress the dynamic range (which is what you’d want in this scenario), expanders expands the dynamic range.
I watched it in Dolby Atmos and still couldn’t understand shit. It was simply very, very badly mixed. I don’t think I’ll watch another film from Nolan.
Not being able to hear the dialogue is an artistic choice Nolan has been intentionally making since around The Dark Knight Rises. I know that sounds dumb but, I’m not joking. I have been baffled by this choice and have refused to see any of his films until Oppenheimer. Which was a major improvement.
You want to hear things well, though? You’ll need surround sound system and to turn up the center speaker. That’s where they generally mix the voice audio.
I kept hearing this complaint but when I finally watched it there was only one scene where I couldn’t hear the dialogue (when Neil is scoping out the airport bank vault) and it seemed very much intentional. Did you find this to be an issue throughout the entire film?
Same. The moment you don’t understand the dialogue then it’s not important, that moment it’s about atmosphere. Worked great for me. I enjoyed the sound mixing in this movie!
Just like modern plots, modern audio editing spoonfeeds the audience: https://youtu.be/XOXJLwzIOoA?si=XY-0mUmwx9_V51Tl. We need to be told each and every detail about the security system in order to understand that it’s extreme, even though those details wouldn’t add to the plot in any way (as I recall, the last thing you can hear is the risk of suffocation - which is the last aspect of the security system that was relevant later on).
Next thing you know, audiences will start complaining that depth of field/camera blur is obscuring in unimportant details in the background.
Part of the issue for me was the audio is mixed so that you can barely hear the dialogue.
I watched in on a plane and didn’t have the audio issue I’ve heard everyone talk about.
I did however have the issue of not understanding the flick.
It’s frankly amazing that it managed to make it to release. Who the fuck thought the mix was acceptable? Scene 1 I had no clue what was happening because I couldn’t hear! Ridiculous.
That would be Christopher Nolan, who I believe is trolling people with his sound design choices at this point
Ugh, I hate that so much! Especially since I sometimes like to fall asleep to a movie I’ve seen many times before and at the end just drift off to the sound of it.
“Whisper whisper whisper EXPLOSIONS AND YELLING whisper whisper whisper” is probably my least favorite style of sound mixing.
I like to be able to hear the quiet parts without the loud parts bursting my ear drums, thank you very much!
You may want to see if your TV has a “night mode” in the audio settings. It’s basically just an audio compander, (combination of compressor and expander.) It expands the quiet parts to be louder, and compresses the loud parts to be quieter. It destroys any kind of dynamics that the director intended, and can cause some difficulty with intelligibility if there’s lots of background noise, (because the noise is getting expanded too!) But for watching things at night, it’s almost a must for dynamic movies.
Some brands call it headphone mode, because headphone users also frequently complain about dynamic audio too; They turn up to hear the quiet parts, then get their ears blown off during the loud parts.
You’re talking about a regular compressor with make up gain. An expander makes the quiet parts even quieter. Compressors compress the dynamic range (which is what you’d want in this scenario), expanders expands the dynamic range.
I’ve heard it’s because it’s mixed for surround sound
Optimized for peak surround sound, allegedly. I have a $5000 system and it still sounds like shit. I can understand it, but it’s shit nonetheless.
Snobby ≠ good, methinks.
I heard it was mixed specifically for high-end theatre speakers. I think Nolan was just too far up his own ass on this one.
I watched it in Dolby Atmos and still couldn’t understand shit. It was simply very, very badly mixed. I don’t think I’ll watch another film from Nolan.
Not being able to hear the dialogue is an artistic choice Nolan has been intentionally making since around The Dark Knight Rises. I know that sounds dumb but, I’m not joking. I have been baffled by this choice and have refused to see any of his films until Oppenheimer. Which was a major improvement.
I had subtitles on and it made sense
I find that with a lot of movies lately
Normally that’s due to poor mixing work. I’m tenet’s case it was a deliberate choice by Nolan.
It was worse around 15 years ago.
You want to hear things well, though? You’ll need surround sound system and to turn up the center speaker. That’s where they generally mix the voice audio.
I kept hearing this complaint but when I finally watched it there was only one scene where I couldn’t hear the dialogue (when Neil is scoping out the airport bank vault) and it seemed very much intentional. Did you find this to be an issue throughout the entire film?
Same. The moment you don’t understand the dialogue then it’s not important, that moment it’s about atmosphere. Worked great for me. I enjoyed the sound mixing in this movie!
Just like modern plots, modern audio editing spoonfeeds the audience: https://youtu.be/XOXJLwzIOoA?si=XY-0mUmwx9_V51Tl. We need to be told each and every detail about the security system in order to understand that it’s extreme, even though those details wouldn’t add to the plot in any way (as I recall, the last thing you can hear is the risk of suffocation - which is the last aspect of the security system that was relevant later on).
Next thing you know, audiences will start complaining that depth of field/camera blur is obscuring in unimportant details in the background.