4 ms·

It's fundamental to a story - I have to see the actors. I have to hear them say their lines. When they shoot dark scenes that leave me wondering who is talking

It's fundamental to a story - I have to see the actors. I have to hear them say their lines. When they shoot dark scenes that leave me wondering who is talking, what they're doing, why they said that, it's a profound failure of the Director to make a minimally funcitonal story. The other failure is mumbling actors. They whisper when they don't understand what emotion to show. They rush their lines to show passion but instead show lack of fundamental acting skill. They turn from the camera so I can't see their face, say something to the wall, leaving me without necessary facial clues, leaving me to puzzle out their accent or whatnot. I blame it on falling standards of professionalism, driven by an insatiable demand for content.

HonestOp001 4y ago
It is becoming the anime of the 90’s, pre cowboy bebop. Voice actors would not learn the nuance of the original delivery, the pay was too low to spend the time. Everyone was either yelling or just rushing through them. This is happening now, shows are rushed to deliver “content” and fill the airwaves, not actually do something good.
- b112 4y ago
  This is happening now, shows are rushed to deliver “content” and fill the airwaves, not actually do something good. This may be so, but shows used to have 22 episodes in the US, now series have 8 or 10. So far, far less work yearly, less cramming to get shooting/processing/writing done. You'd think this would give more time for better takes, directing, acting. Guess not.
  - saiya-jin 4y ago
    Hmm, at least those I watch, if they have less episodes than its often 40-60 minutes instead of 20. Or maybe its different type of show, dunno. I think the cost of complexity of shooting have skyrocketed, before for a scene you needed few good actors and very primitive generic setting. Now hunt for perfection is much bigger on both sides of screen, plus required digital changes afterwards. It stunned me to see ie what actors wore in Game of thrones in later series, when budget was high. A robe which was on screen for 1 minute max, and I focused on face of actress and scene so didn't notice it at all, had such details and beautiful ornaments sewed in by hand, crazy amount of work to create 1 unique piece just for that scene. Multiply by X actors there. Must have cost a small fortune to make, even for such a well oiled machine like Hollywood. Compared to ie Streets of San Francisco, guys wearing the same basic suit outfit over whole series.
    - b112 4y ago
      Games of Thrones is a very rare series. Almost all other series are not that complex. You're comparing one of the most expensive series ever, with low cost series. And even action series, in the old days, would film 60 min. episodes, with live action, explosions, car scenes, really things are very cheap now with CGI. Imagine having to retake a scene with real explosions?
  - Mindwipe 4y ago
    Generally speaking it just means more shows with fewer or singular writers, and without ensemble casts. A bit part of making shows with 22 -24 episode seasons was having a cast of circa nine main characters, so you could film three of them at once. Audiences generally respond better now there is not network pressure to deliver half a year's worth of new episodes per annum with shows where their favour characters are the main characters every week.
- vehemenz 4y ago
  I assume you are talking dubbed anime in English because Japanese voice-acting has been a mature industry since at least the 1970s.
  - zepearl 4y ago
    Honest question: have in general the (japanese) voices of female anime characters increased their pitch during the last years, or am I imagining things?
psychphysic 4y ago
Mumbling actors is more about the sound setup. Cinemas have enough speakers and processing to create dozens of virtual speakers. The result is that the speech is given it's own location and segment of frequencies. The brain can easily pick it out in this setting. Think hearing your partner speak at a dinner party. Then people watch movie on a two backwards facing speaker thin TV and think why can't I hear anything!? It's like watching a 3D movie with no glasses and wondering why it's blurry.
- dpkirchner 4y ago
  It's the movie viewers that are wrong, got it!
  - gryfft 4y ago
    If you don't have surround sound in your home theater, do you even deserve to watch a movie?
- JoeAltmaier 4y ago
  I imagine that can contribute. But then other videos don't have the problem. Old movies don't have the problem. Just this new shabby stuff. Does my sound setup know somehow?
  - psychphysic 4y ago
    Bottom line a good sound engineer with time and access to the raw audio could mix it to work well with stereo systems. But that ain't happening. > But then other videos don't have the problem. They likely would if they were intended for playback on a cinema system and just flattened to mono or stereo. Christopher Noland doesn't direct/produce movies thinking about how they'll look on a phone on netflix. And the sound engineer he hired doesn't care either. How much time and money was dedicated to the sound engineering to convert that 20 speaker maybe 100 virtual channel system to your 2 speaker system? Then they need to do it for 2.1, 5.1, Atmos... Whatever else is the new thing these days. And if you have 5.1 did you consider carefully the layout? Are there multipath effects you haven't dampened? Did you consider the path to each speaker relative to listener? > Does my sound setup know somehow? Well yes, kind of. Your TV if it is at all modern will do some processing to the audio. If it's connected to a 5.1 system it might just pass through a 5.1, what does it do with a stereo audio? Or 2.1? What if it gets 7.1 it must decide what to do likely you can control this in the settings. Let's say you have a 5.1 setup at home. And your TV sends it stereo? What does it do then how does it make 6 channels from 2? The subwoofer is easy, relatively non-direction a low pass filter sends all low end to it and high pass to the regular speakers. My TV has a decent "clear speech" setting which picks out speech boosts them and then suppresses no speech audio around them. Usually it works perfectly. Playing stereo audio on a stereo system will work fine.
benhurmarcel 4y ago
> I have to see the actors. I have to hear them say their lines. There are entire scenes where, if you watch it in the average person's living room, the only thing you get from the movie are the subtitles (that you set because you can't hear them talking).
- grugagag 4y ago
  Unintelligible speech is a big flaw of modern movies. Made me enjoy lots of movies less and less
  - dsr_ 4y ago
    We re-watched The Dark Knight (2008) a few days ago. There's darkness when it's appropriate. There's light to see what Nolan wants you to see. The fights are both well-choreographed and recorded and cut well -- not the flurry of a thousand ultra-tight cuts that waste the talent of everyone involved. But the dialogue is about 9 dB under what it should be, and only subtitling makes any of it understandable except for a few scenes. My sound system is well-calibrated and powerful: it's the movie's fault.
    - 6stringmerc 4y ago
      Nolan is such a bad offender the audio in Interstellar was, I am not kidding, painful to my ears. I saw it in a theater and I'll never ever watch it again ever. It...just...wrong on so many levels. Christopher Nolan is to cinematic audio what Chris Gaines is to rock and roll.
      - barrysteve 4y ago
        He chose it. The happy moments have roughened up speech and the sad moments it's smooth and legible. He also plays with Dr Brandt mishearing Cooper re-entering the spacecraft "I'm sorry / Mann was lying".
      - 93po 4y ago
        pro-tip: wear ear plugs to theaters. makes the experience ten times more pleasant for me and eliminates all of the sudden-surprise-audio volume explosions that hurt your ears. it's never impeded my ability to hear dialog in theaters.

HonestOp001 4y ago

It is becoming the anime of the 90’s, pre cowboy bebop. Voice actors would not learn the nuance of the original delivery, the pay was too low to spend the time. Everyone was either yelling or just rushing through them. This is happening now, shows are rushed to deliver “content” and fill the airwaves, not actually do something good.

b112 4y ago
This is happening now, shows are rushed to deliver “content” and fill the airwaves, not actually do something good. This may be so, but shows used to have 22 episodes in the US, now series have 8 or 10. So far, far less work yearly, less cramming to get shooting/processing/writing done. You'd think this would give more time for better takes, directing, acting. Guess not.
- saiya-jin 4y ago
  Hmm, at least those I watch, if they have less episodes than its often 40-60 minutes instead of 20. Or maybe its different type of show, dunno. I think the cost of complexity of shooting have skyrocketed, before for a scene you needed few good actors and very primitive generic setting. Now hunt for perfection is much bigger on both sides of screen, plus required digital changes afterwards. It stunned me to see ie what actors wore in Game of thrones in later series, when budget was high. A robe which was on screen for 1 minute max, and I focused on face of actress and scene so didn't notice it at all, had such details and beautiful ornaments sewed in by hand, crazy amount of work to create 1 unique piece just for that scene. Multiply by X actors there. Must have cost a small fortune to make, even for such a well oiled machine like Hollywood. Compared to ie Streets of San Francisco, guys wearing the same basic suit outfit over whole series.
  - b112 4y ago
    Games of Thrones is a very rare series. Almost all other series are not that complex. You're comparing one of the most expensive series ever, with low cost series. And even action series, in the old days, would film 60 min. episodes, with live action, explosions, car scenes, really things are very cheap now with CGI. Imagine having to retake a scene with real explosions?
- Mindwipe 4y ago
  Generally speaking it just means more shows with fewer or singular writers, and without ensemble casts. A bit part of making shows with 22 -24 episode seasons was having a cast of circa nine main characters, so you could film three of them at once. Audiences generally respond better now there is not network pressure to deliver half a year's worth of new episodes per annum with shows where their favour characters are the main characters every week.
vehemenz 4y ago
I assume you are talking dubbed anime in English because Japanese voice-acting has been a mature industry since at least the 1970s.
- zepearl 4y ago
  Honest question: have in general the (japanese) voices of female anime characters increased their pitch during the last years, or am I imagining things?

psychphysic 4y ago

Mumbling actors is more about the sound setup. Cinemas have enough speakers and processing to create dozens of virtual speakers. The result is that the speech is given it's own location and segment of frequencies. The brain can easily pick it out in this setting. Think hearing your partner speak at a dinner party. Then people watch movie on a two backwards facing speaker thin TV and think why can't I hear anything!? It's like watching a 3D movie with no glasses and wondering why it's blurry.

dpkirchner 4y ago
It's the movie viewers that are wrong, got it!
- gryfft 4y ago
  If you don't have surround sound in your home theater, do you even deserve to watch a movie?
JoeAltmaier 4y ago
I imagine that can contribute. But then other videos don't have the problem. Old movies don't have the problem. Just this new shabby stuff. Does my sound setup know somehow?
- psychphysic 4y ago
  Bottom line a good sound engineer with time and access to the raw audio could mix it to work well with stereo systems. But that ain't happening. > But then other videos don't have the problem. They likely would if they were intended for playback on a cinema system and just flattened to mono or stereo. Christopher Noland doesn't direct/produce movies thinking about how they'll look on a phone on netflix. And the sound engineer he hired doesn't care either. How much time and money was dedicated to the sound engineering to convert that 20 speaker maybe 100 virtual channel system to your 2 speaker system? Then they need to do it for 2.1, 5.1, Atmos... Whatever else is the new thing these days. And if you have 5.1 did you consider carefully the layout? Are there multipath effects you haven't dampened? Did you consider the path to each speaker relative to listener? > Does my sound setup know somehow? Well yes, kind of. Your TV if it is at all modern will do some processing to the audio. If it's connected to a 5.1 system it might just pass through a 5.1, what does it do with a stereo audio? Or 2.1? What if it gets 7.1 it must decide what to do likely you can control this in the settings. Let's say you have a 5.1 setup at home. And your TV sends it stereo? What does it do then how does it make 6 channels from 2? The subwoofer is easy, relatively non-direction a low pass filter sends all low end to it and high pass to the regular speakers. My TV has a decent "clear speech" setting which picks out speech boosts them and then suppresses no speech audio around them. Usually it works perfectly. Playing stereo audio on a stereo system will work fine.

benhurmarcel 4y ago

> I have to see the actors. I have to hear them say their lines. There are entire scenes where, if you watch it in the average person's living room, the only thing you get from the movie are the subtitles (that you set because you can't hear them talking).

grugagag 4y ago
Unintelligible speech is a big flaw of modern movies. Made me enjoy lots of movies less and less
- dsr_ 4y ago
  We re-watched The Dark Knight (2008) a few days ago. There's darkness when it's appropriate. There's light to see what Nolan wants you to see. The fights are both well-choreographed and recorded and cut well -- not the flurry of a thousand ultra-tight cuts that waste the talent of everyone involved. But the dialogue is about 9 dB under what it should be, and only subtitling makes any of it understandable except for a few scenes. My sound system is well-calibrated and powerful: it's the movie's fault.
  - 6stringmerc 4y ago
    Nolan is such a bad offender the audio in Interstellar was, I am not kidding, painful to my ears. I saw it in a theater and I'll never ever watch it again ever. It...just...wrong on so many levels. Christopher Nolan is to cinematic audio what Chris Gaines is to rock and roll.
    - barrysteve 4y ago
      He chose it. The happy moments have roughened up speech and the sad moments it's smooth and legible. He also plays with Dr Brandt mishearing Cooper re-entering the spacecraft "I'm sorry / Mann was lying".
    - 93po 4y ago
      pro-tip: wear ear plugs to theaters. makes the experience ten times more pleasant for me and eliminates all of the sudden-surprise-audio volume explosions that hurt your ears. it's never impeded my ability to hear dialog in theaters.