8 ms·

I enjoyed this quote: "I was at a matinee with a lot of elderly people because I took my mom, and I'm like, 'None of these people can hear what's happening.' T

I enjoyed this quote: "I was at a matinee with a lot of elderly people because I took my mom, and I'm like, 'None of these people can hear what's happening.' The manager, who was probably all of 22 years old, said, 'Well, that's how the film was done.' And I said, 'No, I did the sound on the film. That's not how it was done.'" I've been in a meeting where a third-party vendor was explaining how I was incorrect about how some particular functionality in an application worked, and I had to stop him and inform him that I was the one who developed that functionality and knew exactly how it worked.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago
I had the same sort of experience with a third party IT solution who was in on a call with my client and I... he started babbling on how his company had years of experience dealing with this exact piece of software and it would be no problem at all to take over the development and maintenance for it. I was the ONLY developer who had ever touched a line of code in that software. Which is just as funny as the recruiter who wanted to recruit me for a position and said I'd be a great fit and a shoe-in for the interview because he had years of experience working with the company in question as a partner. ...I wrote the job description. It was literally an open position for my direct subordinate. I was the hiring manager and had never heard of the recruiter before. So I replied with "interest," we went through the interview process, I submitted my resume, and then he called us up to speak to the person hiring for the position saying that he had a GREAT candidate. This guy hadn't even read the resume, because my current employer was on it as it was obviously my current job. I let him in on my secret, and also let his manager know about my experience with him too. She used to work for me on my team as a recruiter before taking the job to start the firm's New Orleans office.
cosmodisk 5y ago
We have this very famous writer in our country whos works are in the secondary school curriculum. So one day a teacher is giving a lesson to the kids and off she goes into the wilderness about the man. One girl in the class quickly points out that she's wrong about this and that and in fact it happened this way. Teacher quickly goes into a meltdown accusing the girl of being out of her place. The she asks who is she to tell these kind of things to her. "I'm his granddaughter"- replied the girl...
- thih9 5y ago
  I’d love to hear more details; who was the writer if you don’t mind sharing?
  - georgecmu 5y ago
    This is the actual (likely apocryphal) story: https://www.livelib.ru/articles/post/44654-za-chto-kataev-poluchil-trojku https://www.livelib.ru/articles/post/44654-za-chto-kataev-po... This is the writer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Kataev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Kataev This is the granddaughter: https://www.facebook.com/tina.kataeva https://www.facebook.com/tina.kataeva This is the book: http://www.sovlit.net/sonofregiment/ http://www.sovlit.net/sonofregiment/ The story is that Tina's friend got help from Kataev on the school essay about his book. The essay was graded 3 (C) by her teacher. Kataev was very amused.
  - cosmodisk 5y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardas_Brazd%C5%BEionis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardas_Brazd%C5%BEionis Also, a correction to my initial post: he was girl's grand grandfather.
- kayodelycaon 5y ago
  I took a class on religion in college and had a professor tell me what the rituals in my religion were and what they meant to me personally. I don't think she understood the difference between Catholic and Protestant because she argued I was wrong when I brought it up after class.
  - bobthechef 5y ago
    What was the point of disagreement? Your average Catholic, for example, isn't going to be especially knowledgeable about liturgy, much less theology. Ask your average Catholic what the mass fundamentally is and chances are he won't be able to tell you in any "academic" sense. So the situation isn't quite analogous. Now had she contradicted Jesus about the meaning of the last supper...
ethbr0 5y ago
It's curious that when the memetically-preferred version of this story is told, it's always the person in power who is revealed to lack expertise and the person without power who has hidden, superior expertise. There never seem to be versions of this story shared where, to use the link's example, the movie manager turns out to be a semi-retired audio engineer. But statistically, surely that happens at least equally?
- thatguy0900 5y ago
  I don't think it matters which is more likely to happen because almost always these stories are considered apocryphal, like this one is mentioned as being by another comment, which is a nice way of saying probably made up
- afiori 5y ago
  That version exists in two forms: subordinate complaning about or bad mouthing a colleague or a colleague's work before discovering that they are are actually criticizing the boss they are talking to or someone of higher rank (boss' spouse, boss' boss); or the analogous of a child teaching their pokemon expert parents to play pokemon
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Good example! Forgot about that one. I guess that's a bit more of hidden identity than expertise though.
- jayd16 5y ago
  If the movie manager was a retired audio engineer, wouldn't the sound be correct? How would the story fit?
  - ethbr0 5y ago
    Per the article, an example would be if the movie were incorrectly mastered (overly loud or quiet) and therefore the movie manager took it upon themselves to correct for that via theater settings.
EvanAnderson 5y ago
There's a fun story about David Korn, author of the Korn shell, embarrassing a Microsoft presenter at a USENIX Windows NT conference. The presenter was making assertions about a Korn shell that Microsoft licensed being a "real" Korn shell. Question 5: https://slashdot.org/story/01/02/06/2030205/david-korn-tells-all https://slashdot.org/story/01/02/06/2030205/david-korn-tells...
SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago
I like how that quote actually reflects the hubris and disconnection to reality of the sound engineer. That is exactly "how it was done", how he mixed it, the fact that it didn't sound good in a real life matinee (as opposed to the ideal conditions of his sound lab) is a fact of life. That is the target he should be mixing for, for the real life matinees with imperfect equipment and acoustics (or for the even worse real life living rooms with crappy sound system and acoustics), but instead he mixes to sound perfect in his perfect lab. He is doing it wrong, optimizing for the wrong metrics, but he can't fathom being wrong, so he will keep screwing up and people will keep not being able to understand movies. It is the sound engineer version of "You're holding it wrong".
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- thaumasiotes 5y ago
  > I like how that quote actually reflects the hubris and disconnection to reality of the sound engineer. That is exactly "how it was done", how he mixed it, the fact that it didn't sound good in a real life matinee (as opposed to the ideal conditions of his sound lab) is a fact of life. That is the target he should be mixing for, for the real life matinees with imperfect equipment and acoustics This... has absolutely nothing to do with the quote. You're hallucinating a meaning that is pretty much the opposite of what's written. Here's more: > Mann says this isn't a new problem — it's actually been happening for decades: >> what's happened is, particularly in the '90s, because that felt like the time when they were doing the loudest mixes – I didn't mix in those times, but the stories were that mixers and maybe directors would want stuff mixed at a level that was just ear-bleeding. And what would happen is, that would get to the theater, there would be complaints from the patrons, and the theater would be compelled to turn down the mix. And when the next feature came in the next week, the level was never reset, and now that level is playing way low for the regularly mixed movie. That's a problem that vendors have been dealing with for many years. I know [it's still happening]. For example, the Landmark Theater chain does not play their theaters above 5.5 on the cinema processor, where the set standard is supposed to be 7 on that processor. > The idea that a significant theater chain would purposefully ignore industry standards for something as crucial as sound is genuinely shocking. [1] > "I did a film that was [played] at a 4 [out of 7 on the processor scale]," [Baker Landers] says, still appalled by the memory. "I was at a matinee with a lot of elderly people because I took my mom, and I'm like, 'None of these people can hear what's happening.' The manager, who was probably all of 22 years old, said, 'Well, that's how the film was done.' And I said, 'No, I did the sound on the film. That's not how it was done.'" > When sound pros encounter those dumbfounding levels of separation between the mixing stages and theaters, Mann says there can be a schism about the best way to move forward: > "You're going to have some people on the mixing stage who want to turn [up that volume higher than the standard of 7] to compensate for the fact that theaters are playing it low. But [if you do that,] when you go to those theaters that are calibrated correctly, you're going to blow the doors off that theater because it's going to be ripping loud. So one thing we always try to tell our people is that you have to be happy with the mix in the properly calibrated environment, and when you go down to your local movieplex, the speaker could be blown, the level could be low, God knows what's going to happen when you're out in the wild, and we can't control all of that." There is no issue with the equipment or the acoustics. The problem is that some movies decided to cheat on volume, theaters were forced to respond by lowering volume, and now movies that don't cheat are too quiet. [1] I can't agree with the author that this is shocking. The theaters' role is to play each movie at an appropriate volume. If a movie is too loud, of course it should be turned down. This problem came from movies wishing they could be louder than the competition.
malshe 5y ago
Your story reminds of a research seminar I attended where one of my finance professors pointed out a flaw in the economic argument made by the speaker. The speaker, who is a noted finance researcher, confidently said that the professor was wrong because a paper by A, B, and C had shown otherwise. My prof replied that perhaps the speaker was misinterpreting A, B, and C's results. At this point, another professor chimed in and gently informed the speaker that he was talking to B who is a co-author on the paper by A, B, and C! I don't remember the reaction of the speaker much but I recall that he handled it in a dignified way and backtracked from his claim.

MisterBastahrd 5y ago

I had the same sort of experience with a third party IT solution who was in on a call with my client and I... he started babbling on how his company had years of experience dealing with this exact piece of software and it would be no problem at all to take over the development and maintenance for it. I was the ONLY developer who had ever touched a line of code in that software. Which is just as funny as the recruiter who wanted to recruit me for a position and said I'd be a great fit and a shoe-in for the interview because he had years of experience working with the company in question as a partner. ...I wrote the job description. It was literally an open position for my direct subordinate. I was the hiring manager and had never heard of the recruiter before. So I replied with "interest," we went through the interview process, I submitted my resume, and then he called us up to speak to the person hiring for the position saying that he had a GREAT candidate. This guy hadn't even read the resume, because my current employer was on it as it was obviously my current job. I let him in on my secret, and also let his manager know about my experience with him too. She used to work for me on my team as a recruiter before taking the job to start the firm's New Orleans office.

cosmodisk 5y ago

We have this very famous writer in our country whos works are in the secondary school curriculum. So one day a teacher is giving a lesson to the kids and off she goes into the wilderness about the man. One girl in the class quickly points out that she's wrong about this and that and in fact it happened this way. Teacher quickly goes into a meltdown accusing the girl of being out of her place. The she asks who is she to tell these kind of things to her. "I'm his granddaughter"- replied the girl...

thih9 5y ago
I’d love to hear more details; who was the writer if you don’t mind sharing?
- georgecmu 5y ago
  This is the actual (likely apocryphal) story: https://www.livelib.ru/articles/post/44654-za-chto-kataev-poluchil-trojku https://www.livelib.ru/articles/post/44654-za-chto-kataev-po... This is the writer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Kataev https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentin_Kataev This is the granddaughter: https://www.facebook.com/tina.kataeva https://www.facebook.com/tina.kataeva This is the book: http://www.sovlit.net/sonofregiment/ http://www.sovlit.net/sonofregiment/ The story is that Tina's friend got help from Kataev on the school essay about his book. The essay was graded 3 (C) by her teacher. Kataev was very amused.
- cosmodisk 5y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardas_Brazd%C5%BEionis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernardas_Brazd%C5%BEionis Also, a correction to my initial post: he was girl's grand grandfather.
kayodelycaon 5y ago
I took a class on religion in college and had a professor tell me what the rituals in my religion were and what they meant to me personally. I don't think she understood the difference between Catholic and Protestant because she argued I was wrong when I brought it up after class.
- bobthechef 5y ago
  What was the point of disagreement? Your average Catholic, for example, isn't going to be especially knowledgeable about liturgy, much less theology. Ask your average Catholic what the mass fundamentally is and chances are he won't be able to tell you in any "academic" sense. So the situation isn't quite analogous. Now had she contradicted Jesus about the meaning of the last supper...

ethbr0 5y ago

It's curious that when the memetically-preferred version of this story is told, it's always the person in power who is revealed to lack expertise and the person without power who has hidden, superior expertise. There never seem to be versions of this story shared where, to use the link's example, the movie manager turns out to be a semi-retired audio engineer. But statistically, surely that happens at least equally?

thatguy0900 5y ago
I don't think it matters which is more likely to happen because almost always these stories are considered apocryphal, like this one is mentioned as being by another comment, which is a nice way of saying probably made up
afiori 5y ago
That version exists in two forms: subordinate complaning about or bad mouthing a colleague or a colleague's work before discovering that they are are actually criticizing the boss they are talking to or someone of higher rank (boss' spouse, boss' boss); or the analogous of a child teaching their pokemon expert parents to play pokemon
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Good example! Forgot about that one. I guess that's a bit more of hidden identity than expertise though.
jayd16 5y ago
If the movie manager was a retired audio engineer, wouldn't the sound be correct? How would the story fit?
- ethbr0 5y ago
  Per the article, an example would be if the movie were incorrectly mastered (overly loud or quiet) and therefore the movie manager took it upon themselves to correct for that via theater settings.

EvanAnderson 5y ago

There's a fun story about David Korn, author of the Korn shell, embarrassing a Microsoft presenter at a USENIX Windows NT conference. The presenter was making assertions about a Korn shell that Microsoft licensed being a "real" Korn shell. Question 5: https://slashdot.org/story/01/02/06/2030205/david-korn-tells-all https://slashdot.org/story/01/02/06/2030205/david-korn-tells...

SkeuomorphicBee 5y ago

I like how that quote actually reflects the hubris and disconnection to reality of the sound engineer. That is exactly "how it was done", how he mixed it, the fact that it didn't sound good in a real life matinee (as opposed to the ideal conditions of his sound lab) is a fact of life. That is the target he should be mixing for, for the real life matinees with imperfect equipment and acoustics (or for the even worse real life living rooms with crappy sound system and acoustics), but instead he mixes to sound perfect in his perfect lab. He is doing it wrong, optimizing for the wrong metrics, but he can't fathom being wrong, so he will keep screwing up and people will keep not being able to understand movies. It is the sound engineer version of "You're holding it wrong".

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
thaumasiotes 5y ago
> I like how that quote actually reflects the hubris and disconnection to reality of the sound engineer. That is exactly "how it was done", how he mixed it, the fact that it didn't sound good in a real life matinee (as opposed to the ideal conditions of his sound lab) is a fact of life. That is the target he should be mixing for, for the real life matinees with imperfect equipment and acoustics This... has absolutely nothing to do with the quote. You're hallucinating a meaning that is pretty much the opposite of what's written. Here's more: > Mann says this isn't a new problem — it's actually been happening for decades: >> what's happened is, particularly in the '90s, because that felt like the time when they were doing the loudest mixes – I didn't mix in those times, but the stories were that mixers and maybe directors would want stuff mixed at a level that was just ear-bleeding. And what would happen is, that would get to the theater, there would be complaints from the patrons, and the theater would be compelled to turn down the mix. And when the next feature came in the next week, the level was never reset, and now that level is playing way low for the regularly mixed movie. That's a problem that vendors have been dealing with for many years. I know [it's still happening]. For example, the Landmark Theater chain does not play their theaters above 5.5 on the cinema processor, where the set standard is supposed to be 7 on that processor. > The idea that a significant theater chain would purposefully ignore industry standards for something as crucial as sound is genuinely shocking. [1] > "I did a film that was [played] at a 4 [out of 7 on the processor scale]," [Baker Landers] says, still appalled by the memory. "I was at a matinee with a lot of elderly people because I took my mom, and I'm like, 'None of these people can hear what's happening.' The manager, who was probably all of 22 years old, said, 'Well, that's how the film was done.' And I said, 'No, I did the sound on the film. That's not how it was done.'" > When sound pros encounter those dumbfounding levels of separation between the mixing stages and theaters, Mann says there can be a schism about the best way to move forward: > "You're going to have some people on the mixing stage who want to turn [up that volume higher than the standard of 7] to compensate for the fact that theaters are playing it low. But [if you do that,] when you go to those theaters that are calibrated correctly, you're going to blow the doors off that theater because it's going to be ripping loud. So one thing we always try to tell our people is that you have to be happy with the mix in the properly calibrated environment, and when you go down to your local movieplex, the speaker could be blown, the level could be low, God knows what's going to happen when you're out in the wild, and we can't control all of that." There is no issue with the equipment or the acoustics. The problem is that some movies decided to cheat on volume, theaters were forced to respond by lowering volume, and now movies that don't cheat are too quiet. [1] I can't agree with the author that this is shocking. The theaters' role is to play each movie at an appropriate volume. If a movie is too loud, of course it should be turned down. This problem came from movies wishing they could be louder than the competition.

malshe 5y ago

Your story reminds of a research seminar I attended where one of my finance professors pointed out a flaw in the economic argument made by the speaker. The speaker, who is a noted finance researcher, confidently said that the professor was wrong because a paper by A, B, and C had shown otherwise. My prof replied that perhaps the speaker was misinterpreting A, B, and C's results. At this point, another professor chimed in and gently informed the speaker that he was talking to B who is a co-author on the paper by A, B, and C! I don't remember the reaction of the speaker much but I recall that he handled it in a dignified way and backtracked from his claim.