Maybe Amir should review movie theaters

[delta76]

Awesome! I love Sheldon

who doesn't love Sheldon? maybe except his childhood "friends", and the cock that used to chase him down?

 

[JSmith]

who doesn't love Sheldon?

... bazinga.


JSmith

 

[techsamurai]

Here's Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult To Understand (And Three Ways To Fix It) - SlashFilm

/Film spoke with several Oscar-winning sound designers, editors, and mixers to learn why it has become tougher to understand what characters are saying.

www.slashfilm.com

JSmith

Shocking to see that 57% of people use subtitles and I really think the other 43% is simply ok not understanding parts of the movie or are using a medium that facilitates dialogue intelligibility.

I have to use subtitles but I always believed that's because I have a compromised center channel in a cabinet which I do as TV speakers (usually designed for dialogue) and headphones are definitely clearer and I can pick out almost everything but there's no home theater center channel speaker that can probably do that in a living room.

 

[techsamurai]

Here's Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult To Understand (And Three Ways To Fix It) - SlashFilm

/Film spoke with several Oscar-winning sound designers, editors, and mixers to learn why it has become tougher to understand what characters are saying.

www.slashfilm.com

JSmith

AMC, the largest movie chain in the world, is apparently in complete denial and responded that their dialogue is loud enough and clear. The article is really interesting - it's true, in the US you're usually relying on a young inexperienced person that doesn't know anything about volume and sound but that's also the case when they make your $5 coffee at Starbucks, your meal at many places etc, etc. I'll never forget one person making our cafe latte at a Starbucks who happened to be young. He seemed to make it so much better than anyone else using the same machine or at any other Starbucks - night and day, literally. My wife and I were actually watching him make it to understand why he excelled where others clearly failed and it seemed ordinary but the result was nothing but which goes to show you that, in any profession, the difference between good and average is very noticeable and requires both talent and experience.

 

[techsamurai]

who doesn't love Sheldon? maybe except his childhood "friends", and the cock that used to chase him down?

I love the one with the bird where he overcomes his fear of birds and then it flies away and he screams "Love Dovey, how could you do this to me? Get back, you stupid bird, so I can love you!"

 

[Ricardus]

Whenever I watch something on Netflix, I find myself having to insert an EQ into the audio chain, and I have to cut 200 hz (lots of mud lives down there) and boost 4-5k. About 3 dB each.

It's so baffling to me that the "audio professionals" mixing these shows can't hear how bad their mixes are.

I have the same problem at the movies as everyone else here. It's bad.

 

[raif71]

Shocking to see that 57% of people use subtitles and I really think the other 43% is simply ok not understanding parts of the movie or are using a medium that facilitates dialogue intelligibility.

I have to use subtitles but I always believed that's because I have a compromised center channel in a cabinet which I do as TV speakers (usually designed for dialogue) and headphones are definitely clearer and I can pick out almost everything but there's no home theater center channel speaker that can probably do that in a living room.

I have a center channel connected to an AVR and the family still need subtitles. Of course english is our 2nd language.

 

[ElectricKoolAid]

Not sure I understand all the issues people are having, if you have a fully calibrated system, including a center channel, I've never had any dialogue issues. Nolan's movies intentionally obscured dialogue with SFX, music, etc, but that was an obvious create choice and are outliers. Most other films I have not had any issues with. Now if I'm watching on a TV with just the TV speakers, I have to turn it up for dialogue, but that's just the nature of a system that is not ideal.

 

[Herbert]

Normally theaters are calibrated and the sound level in which a movie has to be screened is documented by the dustributor.
But when I screened my documentary, that I also mixed

KEEP MOVING - IN BEWEGUNG BLEIBEN - MAIN MOVIE / HAUPTFILM

German with subtitles in English, 中文简体, Español, Français, Ελληνική, Polski.Deutsch, mit Untertiteln in Englisch, Chinesisch, Spanisch, Französisch, Griechisch, Polnisch.KEEP MOVING, made over a period of 12 years and filmed on two continents,premiered at the Berlin International Film Festival...

fishermansframe.gumroad.com

in several theaters, none did it right: The premiere was in an open air theater at Berlin International Film Festival. They mixed everything down to mono, music was half as loud. In the next venue, there was a delay in the surrounds the projectionist could not fix. In the next venue, the left front was about -3dB lower. The „winner“ was a small arthouse theatre with broken suspensions in the surround channels. They used JBL Control 1 for this and probably overloaded them all the time. I mixed stereo and surround versions of my film, with high dynamics for cinema (29dB RMS), and low dynamics (21dB RMS) for streaming. But I also used the stereo streaming variant (The master is still 24/48) for some cinemas. So the real winner became a venue in a film festival, normally a music theater. They wanted the 21 RMS stereo mix and we took 10 minutes to check the loudest and lowest passages for convenience. Audio-wise the best screening I attended.

 

[Pe8er]

Instead, you've just got these guys like Tarantino and Nolan who are obsessed with clunky and expensive film formats. It's an interesting mirror of the resurgence of vinyl.

Respectfully disagree. This comparison doesn't make sense because vinyl and vintage film formats are fundamentally different categories of entities.

Vinyl is an inaccurate reproduction of a master recording. It's a copy of an existing work of art. Whereas vintage lenses and analog film are used to create a particular look and feel, to execute a (hopefully original) vision, not reproduce anything. Vinyl is an engineering endeavor, whereas film is art. Art has always indulged in the impractical, illogical, difficult or clunky in order to help the artist express themselves.

Personally I'm a huge fan of analog film and photography (not to mention painting, graphic design, architecture or sculpture) simply because the scope of creativity possible, the organic nature of it and most importantly the physicality of it all make an impact on me that digital art never could.

To learn more than you can handle, I invite you to check out this thread:

Can anyone explain the vinyl renaissance?

I'm a member of a couple of reddit audiophile threads where people post pictures of their rigs and most of the time they include turntables and every time I see one my mind is blown because I outgrew vinyl only a few years after buying my first CD player in the '80's. Back then I had a tape...

www.audiosciencereview.com

There was an exhaustive debate on this topic around post #3,500

 

[Herbert]

Respectfully disagree. This comparison doesn't make sense because vinyl and vintage film formats are fundamentally different categories of entities.

Vinyl is an inaccurate reproduction of a master recording. It's a copy of an existing work of art. Whereas vintage lenses and analog film are used to create a particular look and feel, to execute a (hopefully original) vision, not reproduce anything. Vinyl is an engineering endeavor, whereas film is art. Art has always indulged in the impractical, illogical, difficult or clunky in order to help the artist express themselves.

Personally I'm a huge fan of analog film and photography (not to mention painting, graphic design, architecture or sculpture) simply because the scope of creativity possible, the organic nature of it and most importantly the physicality of it all make an impact on me that digital art never could.

To learn more than you can handle, I invite you to check out this thread:

Can anyone explain the vinyl renaissance?

I'm a member of a couple of reddit audiophile threads where people post pictures of their rigs and most of the time they include turntables and every time I see one my mind is blown because I outgrew vinyl only a few years after buying my first CD player in the '80's. Back then I had a tape...

www.audiosciencereview.com

There was an exhaustive debate on this topic around post #3,500

The look and feel of film can be created digitally. I do not find the source any more, Im think it was an article in American Cinematographer where a show (maybe Sopranos or Mad Men) transitioned from Film to Digital between two seasons. The company that was reasponsible for the dailies as well as the color correction (a final step in post) put grain on the footage so that the crew was not irritated by the clean look. Filming and editing on celluloid was awful - dailies on screen neverv looked like the video prints for editing. When cutting up a take, I had to spare at least two frames needed for glueing the camera negative (research "A-B Checkerboard for this). One lab once scrtached a whole finished reel of a Super 16 documentary, on another movie, an important take was scratched by a dust particle in the camera.
Also, the noise of CMOS-Sensors looks like grain. This is why pros shoot without a logarythmic curve, to retain detail in the blacks and keep the noise / grain, that can be reduced later if desired.
Still film is great - for archiving. Digital formats may come and go, but a technicolor three strip (which is dye and only BW emulsion) is the papyrus of the moving image.

 

[Spkrdctr]

I don't go to any movie theaters anymore. Sound at most of them is so screwed up it is very hard to overlook. I watch the movie when it comes out on Netflix/Hulu or Prime. If it has messed up vocals, I can increase my center channel and like magic it is fixed. I have no patience with idiots in the film industry making a movie with messed up sound. They "claim" that is art and intended by the director or whoever. It is a big lie. Like taking you car to a repairman and he gives it back to you half fixed and says, there I made it even better for you and I just added that it in for free. No one would tolerate that BS. Getting sound right at theaters IS NOT rocket science. It has been done for over 60 years. How people of today can take an inferior product and try to say "that is how it is supposed to be" is beyond me. If enough people stop going to the theaters, they will shut down and home theaters will become more important and give better sound. I'm not trying to be a grumpy old man but come on! We are not reinventing the wheel here. Make the dialogue intelligible or lose people wanting to watch the films. The free hand of the market will in the end work its magic. Only Hollywood would think that it is "art" to not hear the actors dialogue. Unbelievable.

 

[Pe8er]

The look and feel of film can be created digitally.

Let's agree to disagree. Some aspects of film can be emulated using digital, but it's not the same thing because, well, it's not in physical realm anymore. To me, it's a deal breaker. I like a little noise, I love to touch and smell a book, I enjoy vinyl (despite its sonic shortcomings) because I get to play with a physical object.

Don't get me wrong - I love digital arts too. I just think each does certain things best and emulating one with another usually leads to inferior results.

(And on the flip side, combining one with another can be powerful and fun IMHO)

Also, there are situations that can't be emulated in digital: like weird old tilt-shift lenses; an imperfect lens with an irregular depth of field but beautiful color reproduction that can create incredible results in the right hands; highly irregular visual noise or other artifacts resulting from the tape being damaged and so on.

I'm a graphic designer by trade and I used to love to try to replicate these things in Photoshop, but I eventually realized a technique divorced from its original tool is hollow to me.

And this is where you and I seem to differ - I value the role of the tool in the process, you may not. Which is totally fine by the way.

where a show (maybe Sopranos or Mad Men) transitioned from Film to Digital between two seasons

A popular TV show shifting to a more cost effective and easier technology? Sure, that makes complete sense. However, we were talking about a very different situation. Nolan, Wes Anderson or Tarantino don't have to do that because they usually have sufficient budgets and timelines, so they can indulge in their love to the analog medium.

By the way, coming back to the topic - I can't handle today's cinemas either. It's too loud and too crowded. And yeah, I usually watch movies that were shot on film, from a digital file in the highest resolution / bitrate I can get my hands on. I believe that gets me the closest to director's and cinematographer's original intent. Kind of like FLAC usually gets me the closest to musician's original intent.

 

[scruffy1]

Instead, you've just got these guys like Tarantino

late to this thread, but apart from tarantino's fetish for anachronistic music tracks like some timewarped mtv experience, he just has to embellish his movies with a whole lot of "side missions" to the story that add little to the plot, but a whole lot to the total length which i think detracts (and distracts) from the overall experience

over 2.5hours for stories that might be better told in an hour and a half with some discretionary editing

 

[Descartes]

I stopped going to the movie theater over five years ago for several reasons:
1. Obnoxious patrons
2. Sound too loud and sometimes distorted
3. Uncomfortable seats
4. Bad smells, onions, hot dogs, popcorn with fake butter smell (vomit smell), cheap perfume
5. Sticky floors
6. Rude people
7. Way to expensive for the service

 

[EWL5]

I stopped going to the movie theater over five years ago for several reasons:
1. Obnoxious patrons
2. Sound too loud and sometimes distorted
3. Uncomfortable seats
4. Bad smells, onions, hot dogs, popcorn with fake butter smell (vomit smell), cheap perfume
5. Sticky floors
6. Rude people
7. Way to expensive for the service

2) Heartily agree w/this! I'm convinced the average American is deaf! I always look forward to watching the movie again in the comfort of my own home and Dirac-corrected system!

7) Believe it or not, theaters just about break even on the ticket prices because of what they pay to the studios for the movies. Theaters make most of their money off the concessions like popcorn, soda, etc.!

All the other factors are heavily location-specific as theaters in my area are clean and folks are polite for the most part.

 

[Peewee12]

My local theater is the unique outlier. It's newish, and therefore hasn't been broken down by years of horrible patrons and uninterested employees. The picture and sound are always top notch and accurate. Every other theater in my huge metropolis is bad in some way. The only thing mine doesn't have is IMAX. Not even LieMax. I don't use subtitles at home. I've never had a problem hearing dialog in movies. I've always used a center channel.

 

[Herbert]

Let's agree to disagree. Some aspects of film can be emulated using digital, but it's not the same thing because, well, it's not in physical realm anymore. To me, it's a deal breaker. I like a little noise, I love to touch and smell a book, I enjoy vinyl (despite its sonic shortcomings) because I get to play with a physical object.

Don't get me wrong - I love digital arts too. I just think each does certain things best and emulating one with another usually leads to inferior results.

(And on the flip side, combining one with another can be powerful and fun IMHO)

Also, there are situations that can't be emulated in digital: like weird old tilt-shift lenses; an imperfect lens with an irregular depth of field but beautiful color reproduction that can create incredible results in the right hands; highly irregular visual noise or other artifacts resulting from the tape being damaged and so on.

I'm a graphic designer by trade and I used to love to try to replicate these things in Photoshop, but I eventually realized a technique divorced from its original tool is hollow to me.

And this is where you and I seem to differ - I value the role of the tool in the process, you may not. Which is totally fine by the way.


A popular TV show shifting to a more cost effective and easier technology? Sure, that makes complete sense. However, we were talking about a very different situation. Nolan, Wes Anderson or Tarantino don't have to do that because they usually have sufficient budgets and timelines, so they can indulge in their love to the analog medium.

By the way, coming back to the topic - I can't handle today's cinemas either. It's too loud and too crowded. And yeah, I usually watch movies that were shot on film, from a digital file in the highest resolution / bitrate I can get my hands on. I believe that gets me the closest to director's and cinematographer's original intent. Kind of like FLAC usually gets me the closest to musician's original intent.

Celluloid only smells when you load a camera with it or edit it, like I did. And watching the same take digital emulated analog or “true“ analog, you won‘t be able to tell them. And there is too many top notch DOP‘s (Like the members of the ASC) coming from Film who embrace digital and never want to go back.

 

[Barrelhouse Solly]

I agree about the sound. A mid-fi home system is often better.

 

[Pe8er]

Celluloid only smells when you load a camera with it or edit it, like I did. And watching the same take digital emulated analog or “true“ analog, you won‘t be able to tell them. And there is too many top notch DOP‘s (Like the members of the ASC) coming from Film who embrace digital and never want to go back.

That's okay, more power to them. There's probably an equal number of DOP's who prefer actual analog tools.