My movies are supposed to sound that way, grumbles Christopher Nolan over abrasive background noise
Listen up: Christopher Nolan’s movies are hard to hear by design
Aux News Christopher Nolan
Audiences have never been quiet about Christopher Nolan’s sound design. They hate it. Between Tom Hardy’s masks and the barrage explosions, both hallmarks of the Nolan experience, the director’s blockbusters are noisy and raucous affairs. Considering his work has been hard to hear for over a decade, we all assume this is a stylistic choice. Noise, distortion, and static are all atmospheric sounds that help create the type of film the director wants. As they say in Tenet, don’t try to understand it; feel it.
Nolan, who is so into analog recording that he made IMAX figure out black-and-white 65mm film for the first time, likes to use the audio recorded on location rather than ADR. Nevertheless, Mr. Nolan is much more secure in his decision and the fact that some disagree with his choice than others.
“I like to use the performance that was given in the moment rather than the actor re-voice it later,” Nolan told Insider. “Which is an artistic choice that some people disagree with, and that’s their right.”
When The A.V. Club investigated recent audio issues in film and television, sound professionals told us that filming on location creates variables that make audio harder to capture. As opposed to a soundstage, which is much more conducive to producing clean audio, filming in the wilds of New Mexico means actors must compete with lots of background noise. Most directors opt to re-record the dialogue in a studio, but not Nolan, who prefers the authenticity of the location. On top of all that, those IMAX cameras Mr. Nolan loves so much are loud as hell. However, Nolan says that “certain mechanical improvements” might make his movies easier to hear in the future.
“IMAX is building new cameras right now, which are going to be even quieter,” he said. “But the real breakthrough is in software technology that allows you to filter out the camera noise. That has improved massively in the 15 or so years that I’ve been using these cameras. Which opens up for you to do more intimate scenes that you would not have been able to do in the past.”
Maybe, one day, hopefully, there will be an even more significant breakthrough, and someone will develop software that can digitally remove the masks from Tom Hardy’s face. Either way, noisy audio hasn’t hurt Nolan’s box office. Oppenheimer, a three-hour movie mainly consisting of dialogue scenes backed by an ever-present score, has grossed over $400 million worldwide. Not bad for a movie some consider unintelligible.
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I didn’t really have a huge problem with the dialogue in the theater.Although I expect home viewing to be abysmal like most movies these days.
I didn’t notice anything weird about the sound in Oppenheimer. Tenet, however, mxzade zme txzuzrn oxn thzxe suxbtxxitlzes anzd znozt zxloxok bxackzz.
I struggled with some early scenes (which were sound stage scenes, not New Mexico wilderness scenes, incidentally) but it was mostly OK for the dialogue.
At least with Tenet it makes about as much sense regardless of if you do or don’t hear the dialogue.
I would never go as far as saying, “Nolan’s sound mixing is good actually,” but I will shyly admit I have a hard time understanding dialogue in almost everything. Doesn’t matter if I see it in a movie theater, with headphones, or on a nice sound system, I regularly have trouble understanding certain lines of dialogue in almost everything that isn’t being spoken directly to the camera. The thing I like about Nolan’s films is that yeah, I might miss every other word, but he often repeats lines of dialogue (which is helpful for me) or he finds visual ways to show the exposition the characters are saying at the same time, so I end up getting the gist at least 99% of the time. Clearly though, it bothers a ton of people, so that’s all I have to say about that.
Considering his “characters” mostly exist to spout exposition, you’d think this clown would use the cinematic tools available so viewers can actually hear his terrible dialogue.
Might be a reason for that
Hello, fellow old person. Mrs Lizardo hears better than I do and might disagree with us, but I have the same problem you do.TV tends to be really bad at this. Even worse than movies. The music is often mixed to loud and the dialogue too low. I thought it was my sound system, but I’ve found it to be true with a 2.1 soundbar, 5.1 surround system, and the TV speakers on several TVs. I always turn on whatever dialogue enhancing software the TV or AV receiver comes with and that helps a little, but not much. To make matters worse, they like to pummel your ears with special effects in show and the commercials are broadcast louder than the program, so I am constantly riding the volume buttons on the remote.Every network and show does it differently and few of them do it well. BBCA seems to be the worst offender, not made easier by the accent. I have to rewind Doctor Who a lot to catch all the dialogue and I am too stubborn to turn on closed captioning and admit my age.
lol! I wish I could blame my age but honestly I’ve been struggling with this problem for most of my life. I’m probably making it sound worse than it actually is but I have vivid memories of turning on closed captioning as a child. But I definitely agree that TV shows are even harder to understand!
Same, I’ve also used CC and subtitles for as long as I can remember. Some people don’t get it and think that making it louder is the solution.
You may have an auditory processing disorder. This is common in autistic and ADHD folks, but not exclusive to those groups.
There is, of course, an easy, simple, and incredibly cheap way to fix this, but of fucking course the TV makers won’t do it. A simple loudness (been around forever) function, a compressor (like “night mode” in PC sound cards) would take absolutely zero (or near enough as to be statistically insignificant in the scheme of Sony’s/Samsung’s/LG’s/whoever’s multination billion-dollar business) effort to do.You could do some basic compression in software, piece of piss. But then again, Doc: if they add that $0.0001 per unit cost to their manufacturing process…you wouldn’t be out there looking for a $500 soundbar or $2000 surround system to fix these problems, would you? Preferably, of course, the same brand as your TV.
All my equipment has that stuff and I turn it on. Maybe their algorithms are bad. Or maybe I’m just old.
This is the part where I’d go into my “Fuck Dolby” rant but, frankly, I’m worried that since you’re a medical professional you’d use it as evidence to have me sectioned.
So I’m not alone. The reason I watch streaming on my phone because I can use a headset. On tv, even if I change the sound setting, sometime I couldn’t heard what the actor said. And nowadays every actor think that serious acting equal low voice. Like grinning their teeth or whispering.Having loud background music or sound effect on certain scene definitely didn’t help.
Yuo might take a look at the Pol MagniFi soundbar, it’s not cheap, though not crazy expensive, it’s center channel, it’s a 3.1 or 5.1 with “wireless” surrounds, is specifically designed for speech. They call it VoiceAdjust, and you can adjust it’s level compared to the other channels separately. I have had one for yeas and love it. I don’t have hearing issues I just got it because I was looking for a better soundbar for my room.
Same here – dialogue and especially song lyrics can be unintelligible due to an auditory processing problem.
Holy shit, I am SO BAD and understanding song lyrics. It’s worse for me when it comes to music than dialogue in film/TV because I use context to retroactively decipher what people say. Song lyrics tend to be too abstract and poetic for my usual coping mechanisms.
If it’s any consolation, no one’s quite worked out the lyrics to this one let alone who the artists are.
This is actually a documented phenomenon. It’s due to a combination of things, like streaming and sound systems. But the main thing is dynamic range, as in the range between the low stuff and the high, so between whispers and explosions. Sound editing has gone a long way toward more dynamic range, so it’ll sound better in theaters. They mix it specifically for that, so you have really loud explosions and really soft dialogue. That’s the main reason people have to use subtitles now and/or constantly turn the volume up and down. Basically Nolan is saying he wants it that way, so too bad for the vast majority of the audience who just wants to hear dialogue like we used to.
My problem is there’s never really been a “used to” for me. I’ve had trouble understanding lines of dialogue regardless of the environment, playback equipment, mono, stereo, 5.1, Atmos, etc. for as long as I can remember.
I bashed Nolan today already, but if you can’t deliver intelligible dialog and understandable plotting, that’s your failure as a film maker, not the audience’s for not getting your fucking “vision” or whatever. All it means is that your ambition outstrips your ability.
I think his statement is both a perfectly valid artistic choice AND a ridiculous excuse for being shit at his job, which is to tell a f’ing story.
Well said.
Stunning and brave.
That’s a super pass ag way of saying “I don’t agree” but you do you.
Not as stunning and brave as recycling an old South Park “joke”.
Says the person who just recycled an old Oprah Winfrey bit in a different thread.
Considering that basically everything he creates since the dark night trilogy is oscar bait, he’s probably just fine with you thinking he’s a failure.
Noise, distortion, and static are all atmospheric sounds that help create the type of film the director wants.None of those aspects of sound design were an issue for me in Oppenheimer, happy to say. I would suggest that he turn down Göransson’s score a skooch here and there, though.
Yeah, I personally thought the dialogue sound differences in the wilderness with the imax shots were a little jarring and crappy and could have been easily re-recorded, but I didnt find them hard to understand. I did think the never ending music was a little much and sound, but I also thought the speech scene after the bomb test was one of the best scenes in a long time, and the shocking silences of that scene may have been made more so by that contrast, so what do I know.
It’s a horrible score; I will never understand the Göransson love. All low-end and mid, no forward momentum, no understanding of dynamics.
BWWWAAAAMMMMPPP
I still say the Bane voice was a purposeful comedic choice. Hardy and Batman doing silly voices at each other is comedy gold and the absolute highlight of that film.
Yup- not to mention they chose that over just hiring a Latino actor and having him do like a regular accent
David Lynch does it so much better. Better drones, better ambience, dialogue you can hear.
I love how Lynch uses sound.
He does pretty much all of his sound design and mixing himself! I feel like I don’t need to see Oppenheimer, having watched Twin Peaks S3:E8 several times. No one could make the Trinity test more awe-inspiring and terrifying than that.
Lynch also builds that part of the story around the idea that people lived near the Trinity site, and the bomb test had a direct impact on them. It’s ironic that Nolan couldn’t find room in that 65mm frame for a New Mexican.
And sound you can feel?
I accidentally bought tickets for a closed caption performance. It was in a smaller theater and there was no need to blast the speakers because it was intended for a hearing impaired audience. My experience was fantastic. I may seek out that type of experience for future films of his.
Was it a theater chain? If so, which one?
It was an AMC, but the theater itself was one of the smaller venues at that location.
Me too. I’ve made that mistake for other films and regretted it, but no regrets with Oppenheimer.
I was watching his take on Dunkirk, and Jebus, that man does not know when to just let a story speak for itself. Between the magical Spitfire that glides with no engine for eons, and the wholesale theft of Elgar’s greatest music playing to let you know “this is momentous”, it just never shuts up trying to sell you. I’m thinking, the overbearing soundtrack / sound design is just the most obnoxious issue with his story telling.
Oh, I dunno. I think his lunkheaded dialogue is the most obnoxious. But hey, I appreciate any knocks on the egomaniac and his legion of stans.
Good thing Dunkirk is light on dialogue.
To be fair I haven’t given that one a shot. I might actually enjoy it since it’s not a “genre” story. I find that the more world-building he has to do the worse the dialogue.
Hey, you like a good aerial WWII dogfight, right? Right?You know, men in their wonderful flying machines, the gripping tensions of fighting in a space where there’s nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, up close, bullets whizzing by, the strained exertion on the faces of the pilots as both the G-forces and enemy rounds threaten to tear both them and their aircraft apart. Excitement, drama, a life and death strug-“WRONG, YOU FUCKING PLEB!” says Chrissy Nolan. “WRONG! THAT’S NOT WHAT CINEMATIC AIR COMBAT SHOULD BE ABOUT AT ALL.” See, proper dogfights, according to St. Nolan, should be as sterile as a eunuch surgeon in the operating theatre. You should have naught but a couple of planes floating dully over an expanse of blue-grey water, under a blue-grey sky. Make sure these highly-trained professional pilots do some nice info- and exposition-dumps even though they should already know this and have no reason to discuss it.Make sure you show have them do something as a exciting as checking their fuel gauge – and especially make sure they read out the number of gallons left – nerds, the only audience worth targeting, fucking love that shit. Even if this is just baffling for the audience, since the chances of anyone knowing the fuel-consumption rate of an early Spitfire for this to be relevant – but aren’t checklists and rigmarole like this really what gets the audience’s dicks hard (I would also add “and vaginas moist” but we know there’s no women watching this). Make sure you only have no more than three (3) aircraft onscreen, lest you overwhelm your audience.Make sure you have them pull their O2 masks up, because realism. Sure, you can’t see their faces, you can’t tell who’s who, but who cares? People, and thus characters, make his audience uncomfortable, and human interaction scares them. When combat does kick off, make sure it is handled with all the drama of opening the fridge and realising you’ve got enough milk left for today, but might have to go out and get some tomorrow – maybe the next day, if you don’t have cereal for breakfast tomorrow. All communication should have the same tone as if you’re talking about whether you want Coke or Sprite with your McDonald’s order.And, finally, meh, just have one of the three aircraft disappear off screen for no shown reason.
Is this supposed to be an example of a bad scene? They pull their masks up to talk to each other, because that’s where the mic is, and I guess it would be different if they were shouting out quips and spraying endless bullets to knock down dozens of enemy fighters, but I don’t think it’s more true to life. I think this might be more what you’re looking for:
Ah, neckbeards: the retreat to realism is their one and only artistic argument.
My observation is that it’s no coincidence that a lot of gamers love him. They genuinely think Nolan’s work is high artistic genius.
I’m starting to think that Nolan is being a bit of an asshole.
As an aside, the use of black-and-white proved an interesting logistical challenge, and when it was all said and done, it still had to be printed onto color stock for the projection prints, because the thickness between color and black and white emulsions varies just enough to where you can wind up with serious focus issues in a projector if you attempt to cut between the two stocks (not to mention you’re introducing splices which inherently increases the risk of a print failure).
I do like how he got Kodak to cut him up some Double-X in Imax format…although that’s less impressive when you realise how much kodak needs the business (though I find it hilarious Fuji had to get them to make film for them).
Can we stop humoring him yet?
You’re free to make your own choices.
He should probably get better mics for his actors than the 50-pack of lavaliers for $19.99 from Amazon.
Because of the $99 annual pass I bought at the beginning of the year, I’ve seen every theatrical movie I’ve seen this year at the same place (LOOK Cinemas Glendale, although it has 10 auditoriums so I’m not always in the same physical space; I checked back through my confirmation emails and have seen at least one movie in each auditorium this year, except #6). I’ve gone there 27 times this year, and Oppenheimer is the only movie I’ve seen there this year where I had substantial trouble understanding the dialogue.
Mainly I blame the incessant music, which, combined with the (generally) relatively muted dialogue (e.g. Murphy gave a great performance but he was dramatically whispering a lot of his lines), meant that I was straining to make out what characters were saying during a lot of the movie. The few scenes with no music were a godsend, as I could always clearly make out the dialogue.
I really enjoyed the movie despite the dialogue problem, and I probably would have enjoyed it even more if I wasn’t distracted by constantly trying to figure out what people were saying. I generally like Nolan’s movies, and aside from Bane in TDKR, this is the only one of his films that I personally noticed the dialogue being hard to understand, even though I’m aware that people have been complaining about this for years.
I’ve been saying this since The Dark Knight. Christopher Nolan is likely hard of hearing but also obsessed with controlling every aspect of his films. In the mixing bay, he may have no idea what the dialogue is, but he’s right there upmixing all of the music and sound effects to be as loud as possible so he can have an emotional response to it.
I would love to see subtitles/captioning in all movies shown in theatre. I know that some people hate that, find it distracting. Maybe watching and reading is a skill that you learn, because I have no problem missing the visual subtleties while there is text superimposed. It’s frustrating when everything sounds mumbled or when the big IMAX score booms away, drowing out the dialogue. I had to watch Everything Everywhere All At Once at home before I could understand what was going on
Bet anyone who could develop AR subtitles for life in general would make a killing and be a godsend to the deaf community. Someone needs to get on that. a pair of specs that translate dialog that you’re face is pointing toward and focusing on.
Seriously. That’s a brilliant idea and very necessary. My SO is losing his hearing and it’s a constant challenge. I considered learning sign language but I know he won’t.
There is so much good we could be doing with our tech but instead we’re surveilling everyone 24/7 and creating a disabling level of parnoia. And making ‘better’ weapons, of course.
In a good world, real-time lip reading AI would be massively assistive to the deaf. In our world it’d be on a litany of cameras wherever they already are and would gather up everything you say and give you targeted McDonald’s ads because you said burger while in the grocery store. Meanwhile, the cool lip reading glasses for the deaf would cost $5,000 per lens and wouldn’t be covered by insurance.
It would take almost zero effort to install a text bar above every screen. It’d work the same way translations do for opera performances.
My problem with subtitles is that I can’t not read them, and they pop up before the dialogue is finished, so I basically am spending a good chunk of the movie waiting for the characters to say things that I already know they are going to say.
Same. I try not to have them on for comedy especially because it ruins the delivery of jokes. I also find it difficult for me not to focus on that part of the screen, at the expense of the rest of the picture.
Every theater near me provides closed-captioning for every movie. You just need to request the required device. And some theaters provide open-captions for some movies, usually one showing per day.
I’ll call my theatre. Maybe it will be a low volume audience!
Some theaters do already have a captioning device available for people with hearing disorders- though I’m not sure how many they have so I might worry about too many people using them
I’ve been wondering how those work. I just read that the text can be transmitted to a “device.” I think I’d have trouble looking at the device and the screen at the same time. But another one describes a pair of glasses that you wear and the captioning appears inside the lenses. That sounds very cool.
I think it varies a lot from theater to theater and they don’t advertise them usually either so you have to either call ahead or ask and risk whatever they have
I saw someone getting the caption devices at a theater recently. I’m sure it varies by location/chain, but at this one (an AMC in a large metropolitan area), it looked like they were mounted on long bendable neck thing that you stick in the cup holder, so you could possibly have it in your line of vision while looking at the screen.
I finally just Googled for images and tried to upload it. Fail. I think I found what you’re describing. That look workable. I suppose I would worry that the lighted text might bother someone else – the way a cell phone does. I would alter the design by wrapping the text screen with a kind of plastic ‘shield’? So that I’d be the only one seeing the light.
Yeah uploading images in Kinja is kinda wonky. I was curious how well the devices worked in the theater too. Maybe it’s small enough or lit in a certain way that’s not too noticeable to others.
I side with Nolan on this. You don’t need to hear every word on screen that’s not the point of film. It’s just the odd culture where some people feel theyre missing something. Like if a character is crying to their lover while speaking some deep truth I’d rather hear a bunch of garbled words masked by tears than what they’re actually saying. Thinking you need to hear every word on screen is a fallacy.
Yeah, why would you want a communicative art to communicate effectively?
communication isn’t necessarily verbal
Yeah, but this is not that. We’re not talking about an actor struggling to enunciate because they’re overcome with emotion. These are technical problems, caused by choices Nolan makes.
“You don’t need every shot to be in focus in your movie. That’s why 30% of the shots in every movie I make are completely out of focus.”
I actually have a drawing I made that perfectly illustrates your point:
I agree
Except for a few scenes in Tenet and Dunkirk, I’ve never had a problem understanding Nolan’s movies. Oppenheimer is as clear as any movie I’ve seen recently (possibly more so). Perhaps theaters with poor sound just don’t react well to the way his are mixed? I’m in greater LA, where theaters are probably better maintained than most places.
“Nolan, who is so into analog recording that he made IMAX figure out black-and-white 65mm film” and then spent three hours proving himself a poser who couldn’t make the black and white footage look any better than an instagram filter because he didn’t know how to light, stage, or set-design in such way as to play to B&W’s strengths.
From the the greys dungeon but I’ve been using CC for everything since probably 23(I’m 35) and I think it’s mostly my fault for rocking to hard and also my fault for not caring for my hearing. Saying it’s any one of those is disingenuous because I also didn’t care to care for my hearing with some what loud job places. They didn’t either. I just run Subs because I’ll rather not hear things than not see any kinda subtle emotion that the actor brings. I read fast enough that it doesn’t bother me.
Christopher Nolan should really take the AV Clubs advice and fix his abrasive movies, then maybe one day he’ll grow out of being a struggling little director and people will see his films
This is why I only watch non-English movies with subtitles.
Nolan has a tin ear. I really like the dude’s movies but around Dark Knight he decided “Turn everything up to 11″ was an artistic choice rather than him being bad at managing sound. Not hearing the dialogue when it seems like you’re supposed to (as opposed to an actual artistic choice where it’s unintelligible for a story reason) takes you OUT of the cinematic experience.
If your audio is crap, your movie is crap. Pretty much a hard rule since they started putting sound in movies.