OP
OP
TDKR is when I first started seeing him as an emperor with no clothes.
Then he got completely butt naked for Interstellar.
That TDK/Inception caché is probably going to carry his ass for his entire career though.
Christopher Nolan Says Fellow Directors Have Called to Complain About His ‘Inaudible’ Sound
- Thread starter jett
- Start date
Then he got completely butt naked for Interstellar.
That TDK/Inception caché is probably going to carry his ass for his entire career though.
I would have loved Batman or Gordon going "I'm sorry I didn't catch that. Could you repeat it please? Did you say something about darkness?"
Bane was the worst antagonist that I can remember in a very long time. Primarily because you couldn't understand half of what he was saying thanks to his echoing muffler mask. I actually just watched The Prestige again for the first time since I saw it at release, and didn't have any problems understanding them. But I was wearing headphones.
See, even there I never had any problem understanding Bane. For whatever reason The Prestige is the one I have issues with. Which is extra unfortunate cause it is a great fucking movie.
The first time I was actively annoyed with his mixing was with Michael Caine's character in Interstellar.
I completely understand what Nolan is saying with experimental sound mixing and mimicking real life situations where you have trouble hearing things clearly and I commend him for the idea.
However, the execution is a miss. Not understanding characters saying important things that the director actually wants the audience to hear is a problem, period.
I completely understand what Nolan is saying with experimental sound mixing and mimicking real life situations where you have trouble hearing things clearly and I commend him for the idea.
However, the execution is a miss. Not understanding characters saying important things that the director actually wants the audience to hear is a problem, period.
I had no problem understanding Interstellar and the sound was one of the high points for me when viewing it in theater.
Coming from the guy who insists on using celluloid because TRADITION this is fucking rich.
Imagine if a whole a scene was so out of focus that you couldn't see anything, but the blurry colours looked really nice.
You can either have your in-your-face disorientating sound mix of Dunkirk where the plot can be explained in two or three lines OR you can have your "cerebral" blockbuster sci-fi epic where it's vital the audience understands the plot so they can buy in. Its funny because this same director had an hour of exposition in Inception just so you could buy into the final act's spectacle without having to stop to fill you in. In tenet the most important exposition in the film is presented on a fucking yacht where you can't hear shit over the waves. Insane.
I don't think the sound mix is the problem itself. Tenet felt like Nolan was trying to make an experimental film that expanded on the show-don't-tell aspects of Dunkirk. The problem was one of those films was a simple movie about a famous event in one of the most well-known periods of modern history. The other was about time traveling eco-terrorists and assumed everyone knew what fucking entropy was and how it works.
The experimental aspects of Tenet, audio included, would have worked to its benefit if it was a much tighter and simpler film. Everybody understands how time works on a basic level, so you could just let that concept work with a simple premise (I guess the overall premise is simple) and simple story beats that anybody could follow without having to resort to literally endless inaudible exposition.
The experimental aspects of Tenet, audio included, would have worked to its benefit if it was a much tighter and simpler film. Everybody understands how time works on a basic level, so you could just let that concept work with a simple premise (I guess the overall premise is simple) and simple story beats that anybody could follow without having to resort to literally endless inaudible exposition.
I would love to know what was going through his mind when he filmed that scene.
Could you clarify what you think what disorienting about the sound mix? I didn't find it disorienting. I found the movie itself was, in how it jumps around repeatedly including events that are happening out of sequence.
I've never had a problem with the mixing in Nolan's films but I've also developed an ear for picking up dialogue through shocking phone quality and all manner of accents from a lifetime of phone work, that certainly helps. When you have so many complain about the practically of your mix it's time to reassess rather than crow you're against the status quo and 'conservative' sound mixes.
Also 'can shoot anything' is a BS argument. There were plenty of hard lessons about how to shoot 3D without people feeling sick etc, or use of strobe effects etc. Not to mention the industry itself, directors, DPs, cinematographer etc certainly place value on how scenes are composed.
Also 'can shoot anything' is a BS argument. There were plenty of hard lessons about how to shoot 3D without people feeling sick etc, or use of strobe effects etc. Not to mention the industry itself, directors, DPs, cinematographer etc certainly place value on how scenes are composed.
Revolutionizing cinema by giving a middle finger to the hard of hearing. Such brave. Much radical.
In a way, this is why i'm probably okay with missing Tenet at the cinema since I know the home video mix will be watchable.
I've watched three movies in the time this thread has been active.
The first was the original cut of Red Cliff. There are a fair number of sequences in this film portraying large scale (208 AD) epic warfare. A decent portion of these sequences feature little to no dialogue. The sweeping soundtrack with a repeated iconic main theme is always presented at a noticeably low volume. It rarely seems to shift in the mix, as if it were kept at a steady volume in order to avoid any potential issue in cases where dialogue would be present. This lack of shifting (always the same volume regardless of context) in the mix is a fairly serious detriment to these important scenes. They come across somewhat emotionally distant even despite the film spending much of its near five hour runtime on (excellent) characterization and all of the necessary ingredients to make the big action moments meaningful. The sequences themselves are fairly complex and generally packed with interesting structure (tactics) and individual character moments. But the low volume of the soundtrack has already limited the emotional payoff of these sequences before they even get started. It doesn't seem to be a matter of sound being deemphasized as a creative decision, as far as I can tell. Everything aside from the volume suggests an intent of a big sweeping sound carrying you into battle, as is typically the case with films like this. The mix itself is simply crippling the moment, with little noteworthy gained in the tradeoff.
The second was a rewatch of the first Die Hard, a film I hadn't seen in many years. Two things stand out about it here. The first is the general low volume of many films of that time compared to the norm of today. Not talking about mixing. Many films were simply comparatively quiet, in general. I'm generally of the opinion that it isn't really the films themselves that are at fault here, regardless of which direction your preference goes. When I was younger it was generally considered normal for a user of sound hardware to maintain a volume somewhere in the middle of an overall scale. If the player went from 1 to 10, you might listen at somewhere between 5 and 7 as a standard. Today, the top end of that range is cut off, presumably due to regulations (whether legal or self-imposed) designed to protect you from yourself. Prolonged listening at max volume could damage your ears. People old enough to remember portable cassette and CD players (and even early MP3 players) should remember this. I don't entirely agree with the changes, but baseline audio norms are probably a lot healthier these days. The tradeoff is that many mainstream devices simply don't output what you need. I'm not talking about equipment that is designed with the requirement of an amp to function. I'm talking about people who would've listened to music at a volume of 7 out of 10 (such as myself) needing to buy an amp to listen to music on almost any equipment because maximum volumes are just so fucking low now a lot of the time. In 1988, you could've turned Die Hard up if you had trouble hearing anything. In 2020 I've got everything maxed out, the film is at least 2 notches lower than what I'd like, and the only thing I can do to fix it is buy more audio gear. My hearing hasn't changed much. I wasn't one of those people who cranked everything to max. I am now though, because changing norms have forced me into that position.
The second thing about Die Hard that stands out is the fairly significant amount of non-english language that isn't subtitled. I have no idea if there are other versions of the film that feature subtitles but what I watched didn't feature any as the standard. I didn't bother looking into it because it simply wasn't a problem. Understanding what the bad guys were saying wouldn't have enhanced any of those scenes. Most of the dialogue that could have mattered (mostly coming from the good guys) would've been easy to pick up from context even if I didn't think understanding 'hola' was a perfectly reasonable thing to expect from an audience even in 1988. I think it's fair to classify motherfucking Die Hard as a beloved hyper-mainstream film today, regardless of how it may have been perceived in its day.
The third film was a rewatch of No Country for Old Men. The thing that stood out to me here is how a number of tense showdown-inspired scenes used near-silence pared with extremely quiet (and image heavy, image as in directional audio) breaking of silence to capture the perils of breaking silence in the moment. I'm not as big of a fan of the film as some are, but the film's use of sound is fucking incredible. It's a film that really takes advantage of decent audio gear. I'm not sure how these moments came across in a theater, but if you're listening with the equipment many (if not most) people listen to movies with, I'm going to be a bit skeptical if you tell me you got everything I got out of these scenes.
Three movies, three very different audio experiences. All in the few days this thread has been active. All entirely normal experiences of the sort I expect to get out of the next three movies I watch. I haven't said anything at all about Nolan so far, but if you're still bothering to read all of this, you've probably picked up on a number of things. A film with a weak mix that goes in the opposite direction Nolan tends to go. I'll accept that there may be technical flaws with Nolan's audio mixes. The flattening of dynamic range that someone brought up sounds like a reasonable criticism to me. But I'll take the flaws of the Dunkirk mix over the flaws of the Red Cliff mix almost every time. Both extremes aren't particularly uncommon. They certainly aren't Nolan or Woo specific issues. Sound design operating in often specific sociopolitical contexts independent of technical ability or preference makes claims like 'he must be deaf' come across as particularly reductionist. I wouldn't bother going to the theater if they didn't crank the living shit out of everything. I can't add my own amp, I don't trust audio norms to give me what I want. Has nothing to do with my hearing. It doesn't really matter how much emphasis he places on the theater experience in interviews either. No one working in film in 2020 ignores the home experience. It also doesn't matter if the very specific example I provided doesn't mesh well with your preferences. Like I said, shit like this is totally normal. If you disagree with my example, it ain't hard to think of some others you may agree with more.
But the really big thing, the primary reason why I'm bothering to type all this out, is the frankly insane emphasis some people place on content over form, in this case dialogue over sound. I have absolutely no idea why someone would care so much about a few lines of dialogue in a fucking Christopher Nolan film. I'm not even meming over his bad dialogue. Yeah, a lot of his scripts are pretty bad. Yeah, I wish I could unhear love is quantifiable. But the guy consistently pushes some of the most iconic sound in at the very least mainstream cinema. That should be easy to understand no matter how much you hate the Inception horn. Or the Dunkirk clock. Or the Dark Knight Rises chant. As incredible as the docking scene from Interstellar is, it would almost certainly be better without all the 'come on tars' and such. If anything, his characters talk too damn much, and his movies would be better with even more blaring sound than they already have. Complicated plots don't change this. I haven't seen Tenet for obvious reasons, but you could cut three quarters of the dialogue from Inception and I would have no trouble understanding the film. I don't recall any lines I would consider to be particularly important being difficult to understand in any of his films.
If you think dialogue is more important than everything else, a sentiment I very strongly disagree with, why would you care about a movie like Interstellar to begin with? Outside of dogpiling Nolan because you don't like his movies, where does all this sound mix stuff even come from? At best, it's a totally normal problem movies made for even slightly diverse audiences (ie all movies) listening using often (and increasingly) wildly different audio equipment (among so many other things) always have to find ways to deal with. At worst, do you really want to hear about how time in represented as a physical dimension (as a plot point first appearing at the very end of a three hour long blockbuster) in excruciating detail? Because if you do, hey, ignore me and dogpile away. But I find that a little hard to believe.
The first was the original cut of Red Cliff. There are a fair number of sequences in this film portraying large scale (208 AD) epic warfare. A decent portion of these sequences feature little to no dialogue. The sweeping soundtrack with a repeated iconic main theme is always presented at a noticeably low volume. It rarely seems to shift in the mix, as if it were kept at a steady volume in order to avoid any potential issue in cases where dialogue would be present. This lack of shifting (always the same volume regardless of context) in the mix is a fairly serious detriment to these important scenes. They come across somewhat emotionally distant even despite the film spending much of its near five hour runtime on (excellent) characterization and all of the necessary ingredients to make the big action moments meaningful. The sequences themselves are fairly complex and generally packed with interesting structure (tactics) and individual character moments. But the low volume of the soundtrack has already limited the emotional payoff of these sequences before they even get started. It doesn't seem to be a matter of sound being deemphasized as a creative decision, as far as I can tell. Everything aside from the volume suggests an intent of a big sweeping sound carrying you into battle, as is typically the case with films like this. The mix itself is simply crippling the moment, with little noteworthy gained in the tradeoff.
The second was a rewatch of the first Die Hard, a film I hadn't seen in many years. Two things stand out about it here. The first is the general low volume of many films of that time compared to the norm of today. Not talking about mixing. Many films were simply comparatively quiet, in general. I'm generally of the opinion that it isn't really the films themselves that are at fault here, regardless of which direction your preference goes. When I was younger it was generally considered normal for a user of sound hardware to maintain a volume somewhere in the middle of an overall scale. If the player went from 1 to 10, you might listen at somewhere between 5 and 7 as a standard. Today, the top end of that range is cut off, presumably due to regulations (whether legal or self-imposed) designed to protect you from yourself. Prolonged listening at max volume could damage your ears. People old enough to remember portable cassette and CD players (and even early MP3 players) should remember this. I don't entirely agree with the changes, but baseline audio norms are probably a lot healthier these days. The tradeoff is that many mainstream devices simply don't output what you need. I'm not talking about equipment that is designed with the requirement of an amp to function. I'm talking about people who would've listened to music at a volume of 7 out of 10 (such as myself) needing to buy an amp to listen to music on almost any equipment because maximum volumes are just so fucking low now a lot of the time. In 1988, you could've turned Die Hard up if you had trouble hearing anything. In 2020 I've got everything maxed out, the film is at least 2 notches lower than what I'd like, and the only thing I can do to fix it is buy more audio gear. My hearing hasn't changed much. I wasn't one of those people who cranked everything to max. I am now though, because changing norms have forced me into that position.
The second thing about Die Hard that stands out is the fairly significant amount of non-english language that isn't subtitled. I have no idea if there are other versions of the film that feature subtitles but what I watched didn't feature any as the standard. I didn't bother looking into it because it simply wasn't a problem. Understanding what the bad guys were saying wouldn't have enhanced any of those scenes. Most of the dialogue that could have mattered (mostly coming from the good guys) would've been easy to pick up from context even if I didn't think understanding 'hola' was a perfectly reasonable thing to expect from an audience even in 1988. I think it's fair to classify motherfucking Die Hard as a beloved hyper-mainstream film today, regardless of how it may have been perceived in its day.
The third film was a rewatch of No Country for Old Men. The thing that stood out to me here is how a number of tense showdown-inspired scenes used near-silence pared with extremely quiet (and image heavy, image as in directional audio) breaking of silence to capture the perils of breaking silence in the moment. I'm not as big of a fan of the film as some are, but the film's use of sound is fucking incredible. It's a film that really takes advantage of decent audio gear. I'm not sure how these moments came across in a theater, but if you're listening with the equipment many (if not most) people listen to movies with, I'm going to be a bit skeptical if you tell me you got everything I got out of these scenes.
Three movies, three very different audio experiences. All in the few days this thread has been active. All entirely normal experiences of the sort I expect to get out of the next three movies I watch. I haven't said anything at all about Nolan so far, but if you're still bothering to read all of this, you've probably picked up on a number of things. A film with a weak mix that goes in the opposite direction Nolan tends to go. I'll accept that there may be technical flaws with Nolan's audio mixes. The flattening of dynamic range that someone brought up sounds like a reasonable criticism to me. But I'll take the flaws of the Dunkirk mix over the flaws of the Red Cliff mix almost every time. Both extremes aren't particularly uncommon. They certainly aren't Nolan or Woo specific issues. Sound design operating in often specific sociopolitical contexts independent of technical ability or preference makes claims like 'he must be deaf' come across as particularly reductionist. I wouldn't bother going to the theater if they didn't crank the living shit out of everything. I can't add my own amp, I don't trust audio norms to give me what I want. Has nothing to do with my hearing. It doesn't really matter how much emphasis he places on the theater experience in interviews either. No one working in film in 2020 ignores the home experience. It also doesn't matter if the very specific example I provided doesn't mesh well with your preferences. Like I said, shit like this is totally normal. If you disagree with my example, it ain't hard to think of some others you may agree with more.
But the really big thing, the primary reason why I'm bothering to type all this out, is the frankly insane emphasis some people place on content over form, in this case dialogue over sound. I have absolutely no idea why someone would care so much about a few lines of dialogue in a fucking Christopher Nolan film. I'm not even meming over his bad dialogue. Yeah, a lot of his scripts are pretty bad. Yeah, I wish I could unhear love is quantifiable. But the guy consistently pushes some of the most iconic sound in at the very least mainstream cinema. That should be easy to understand no matter how much you hate the Inception horn. Or the Dunkirk clock. Or the Dark Knight Rises chant. As incredible as the docking scene from Interstellar is, it would almost certainly be better without all the 'come on tars' and such. If anything, his characters talk too damn much, and his movies would be better with even more blaring sound than they already have. Complicated plots don't change this. I haven't seen Tenet for obvious reasons, but you could cut three quarters of the dialogue from Inception and I would have no trouble understanding the film. I don't recall any lines I would consider to be particularly important being difficult to understand in any of his films.
If you think dialogue is more important than everything else, a sentiment I very strongly disagree with, why would you care about a movie like Interstellar to begin with? Outside of dogpiling Nolan because you don't like his movies, where does all this sound mix stuff even come from? At best, it's a totally normal problem movies made for even slightly diverse audiences (ie all movies) listening using often (and increasingly) wildly different audio equipment (among so many other things) always have to find ways to deal with. At worst, do you really want to hear about how time in represented as a physical dimension (as a plot point first appearing at the very end of a three hour long blockbuster) in excruciating detail? Because if you do, hey, ignore me and dogpile away. But I find that a little hard to believe.
Well, congratulations, you don't actually disagree with any of us. It's just that it is ALSO important. No need to complain about dogpiling on Nolan either, when you stress repeatedly how garbage you consider his dialogue to be.
While I do think that it's probably the case that many perceptions of disagreement are really just details that get lost in the shuffle, it's also the case that the primacy of dialogue is very heavily implied in many of the posts in this thread, just as it is in many places elsewhere. I'm not going to call them out, I've already said my piece.
Dogpiling has little to do with having or not having a particular opinion.
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So i watched Interstellar last night and, i had no issues understanding what anyone said. And the sound was amazing, the docking scene after the explosion is visual and audio candy.
i do wonder what people are watching movies on, equipment wise. We have comics of people with blaring explosions scrambling to turn the volume down and complaining they can't hear the dialogue. So this isn't just a nolan thing. IF you're watching on crappy tv speakers, yea its not going to sound great. I'm not sure how you even fix that when movies are mixed for theaters with discrete channels, short of putting out a completely separate made for tv mix with basically just the dialogue.
one thing i have noticed and even commented to my wife about since building out a new home theater, i haven't had to do the whole oh shit this is way too loud let me turn the volume down, oh now i need to turn it up because we can't hear what they're saying. Usually my wife would ask to turn things down cause its too loud for her. Even on our regular tv setup which uses a AVR and 5.1 sound this would happen.
i do wonder what people are watching movies on, equipment wise. We have comics of people with blaring explosions scrambling to turn the volume down and complaining they can't hear the dialogue. So this isn't just a nolan thing. IF you're watching on crappy tv speakers, yea its not going to sound great. I'm not sure how you even fix that when movies are mixed for theaters with discrete channels, short of putting out a completely separate made for tv mix with basically just the dialogue.
one thing i have noticed and even commented to my wife about since building out a new home theater, i haven't had to do the whole oh shit this is way too loud let me turn the volume down, oh now i need to turn it up because we can't hear what they're saying. Usually my wife would ask to turn things down cause its too loud for her. Even on our regular tv setup which uses a AVR and 5.1 sound this would happen.
My recollection of No Country was no music and minimal dialogue. The contrast was so stark that it left you paying close attention when anyone bothered to talk, and extremely attentive when things got loud. Sadly, part of the reason it works so well is because that's so rare.
But what a treat.