TODAY'S MOVIES.

[Pink5Frills]

Does anyone else here become so irate when watching a film on TV; these days? The dialogue is quiet and the music so loud, that you cannot hear what they are saying. Then if there is no loud music, the dialogue with the actors, is so quiet, that you strain your ears to listen. Of all the technology these days, it seems they do not use it. I watch old movies with my mom, and really enjoy them of that era. I also like Black & White films.

 

[RoperTrace]

Does anyone else here become so irate when watching a film on TV; these days? The dialogue is quiet and the music so loud, that you cannot hear what they are saying. Then if there is no loud music, the dialogue with the actors, is so quiet, that you strain your ears to listen. Of all the technology these days, it seems they do not use it. I watch old movies with my mom, and really enjoy them of that era. I also like Black & White films.

I've been saying that for decades, especially on television shows. I blame Don Johnson's Miami Vice for starting that trend: loud rock music throughout the show while they're talking. And I ask my wife, why are the characters almost whispering at times? British shows tend to have better dialogue without music all the time. People with perfect hearing, it's not as a big of a problem.

 

[Pink5Frills]

I've been saying that for decades, especially on television shows. I blame Don Johnson's Miami Vice for starting that trend: loud rock music throughout the show while they're talking. And I ask my wife, why are the characters almost whispering at times? British shows tend to have better dialogue without music all the time. People with perfect hearing, it's not as a big of a problem.

Thank you kind Sir.

 

[burgwad]

Movies like Tenet jump to mind as recent offenders in this department. There are settings you can fiddle with on your TV and in your sound system to tweak dynamics to your liking/comfort level, though, if that's a route you haven't traveled yet. A lot of TVs and sound systems' default audio settings are designed to wow in-store shoppers, and so feature boosted bass and treble settings that really fill space and grab your ear; fun for the store, but not for home use. Look for settings that shrink the dynamic range, boost the mid-range, or sometimes you can even find one that's called something like "Voice Boost" or "Dialog Enhance."

 

[Pink5Frills]

Movies like Tenet jump to mind as recent offenders in this department. There are settings you can fiddle with on your TV and in your sound system to tweak dynamics to your liking/comfort level, though, if that's a route you haven't traveled yet. A lot of TVs and sound systems' default audio settings are designed to wow in-store shoppers, and so feature boosted bass and treble settings that really fill space and grab your ear; fun for the store, but not for home use. Look for settings that shrink the dynamic range, boost the mid-range, or sometimes you can even find one that's called something like "Voice Boost" or "Dialog Enhance."

Oh thank you, but my mom would not be very pleased with me, if I messed-up the TV.

 

[coffeelover5]

Does anyone else here become so irate when watching a film on TV; these days? The dialogue is quiet and the music so loud, that you cannot hear what they are saying. Then if there is no loud music, the dialogue with the actors, is so quiet, that you strain your ears to listen. Of all the technology these days, it seems they do not use it. I watch old movies with my mom, and really enjoy them of that era. I also like Black & White films.

Both me and my wife hate the newer sound mixing on movies and television, then if commercials come.on they are ear splitting!

 

[stxjimmy]

Oh thank you, but my mom would not be very pleased with me, if I messed-up the TV.

B&w films do tend to rely more on plot and dialogue than on special effects. So the background noise always needed to be at a lower level.

 

[Pink5Frills]

Both me and my wife hate the newer sound mixing on movies and television, then if commercials come.on they are ear splitting!

Commercial sounds are more louder, and not only on TV ;but also on the radio.

 

[Dr_Strabismus]

I'm with the O.P, I like the old B/W stuff, specially with the 3X4 aspect ratio (or whatever it was) that was more square. I have a wall projector instead of TV, and the wide movies don't look great on my wall.

But I saw three new movies of Xmas, and to my surprise I enjoyed all of them! Not for everyone, but what is?

Triangle of Sadness
Avatar Way of Water
Glass Onion

 

[sadimgnik]

That's why I have subtitles / closed captions on - you not only get to follow the main dialogue - but you also often get to follow 'background' dialogue you would never be able to hear, plus the titles of songs, etc

 

[Bramblethorn]

Good article about why this has become such a problem with recent films: https://www.slashfilm.com/673162/he...icult-to-understand-and-three-ways-to-fix-it/

 

[Kumquatqueen]

The first sign of hearing loss is difficulty picking out desired sounds from background noise. Especially if you're over 40, worth getting that checked out.

Loads of people leave it 10 years or more before getting their hearing checked, by which time their brain has forgotten how to decode certain frequencies, so getting hearing aids to amplify them doesn't help so much.

Captions should be available for all films nowadays, at least on TV and streams (don't get me started on cinemas and refusal to show captioned films in evenings...)

Glass Onion was a wonderful film. Like Knives Out, it feels like Agatha Christie only while being completely up to date.

 

[alohadave]

I watch everything with closed captioning/subtitles turned on. Makes it much easier to follow with the messed up audio levels.

 

[Bramblethorn]

Physically my ears are in pretty good condition but for me focussing on speech for more than a few minutes gets mentally fatiguing, especially against background noise. So I'm very fond of human-generated CCs. (Auto-generated CCs are trash.)

 

[Pink5Frills]

Physically my ears are in pretty good condition but for me focussing on speech for more than a few minutes gets mentally fatiguing, especially against background noise. So I'm very fond of human-generated CCs. (Auto-generated CCs are trash.)

__ Another irritating practice on TV; is the applauding when the presenter is talking, and you cannot hear what he is saying. This happens when a contestant answers the question correctly, and the audience claps. It is so annoying.__

 

[SimonDoom]

I'm glad to read that it's not just me. My hearing is just fine, but I often have difficulty disentangling the words from the background noise. The article was interesting. For some directors like Christopher Nolan it's deliberate. That's unfortunate, because some of his movies, like Inception, are not easy to follow to begin with. I watched it with my dad and talked to him afterward and he obviously had no idea what happened in the movie.

There's a vaguely related phenomenon that younger moviegoers, unaccustomed to pre-Internet days, may be unaware of. Nowadays there are extensive Wiki and other fan pages relating to every popular movie and TV franchise, and they often provide extensive background info that no casual TV or movie watcher can possibly know. I wonder if filmmakers feel less obligated to explain things because they know confused but Internet-savvy watchers can just get up to speed by going on the Internet. The recent LOTR series (Rings of Power) and GOT series (House of the Dragon) suffered from both these problems--being hard to hear at times and often difficult to follow if one did not have extensive knowledge of the backstory.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

I might be more upset if I cared about Hollywood and it’s ilk anymore. IMO, they’ve abandoned the hard work required to offer good acting, engaging storylines and jaw-dropping cinematography in favour of an over-reliance on special effects, gratuitous violence and sycophantic catering to current social dogma. The few I’ve been dragged to have proved irrelevant, preachy, formalistic and shallow enough that a wade through the oceans of modern movie talent would scarcely get one’s ankles wet. Whatever happened to being able to watch a movie and leave feeling better? A plague on the whole industry.

 

[alohadave]

There's a vaguely related phenomenon that younger moviegoers, unaccustomed to pre-Internet days, may be unaware of. Nowadays there are extensive Wiki and other fan pages relating to every popular movie and TV franchise, and they often provide extensive background info that no casual TV or movie watcher can possibly know. I wonder if filmmakers feel less obligated to explain things because they know confused but Internet-savvy watchers can just get up to speed by going on the Internet.

I was totally lost watching Cloud Atlas until I read the plot summary on Wiki. Now it's one of my favorite movies and I've rewatched it several times.

 

[SimonDoom]

I might be more upset if I cared about Hollywood and it’s ilk anymore. IMO, they’ve abandoned the hard work required to offer good acting, engaging storylines and jaw-dropping cinematography in favour of an over-reliance on special effects, gratuitous violence and sycophantic catering to current social dogma. The few I’ve been dragged to have proved irrelevant, preachy, formalistic and shallow enough that a wade through the oceans of modern movie talent would scarcely get one’s ankles wet. Whatever happened to being able to watch a movie and leave feeling better? A plague on the whole industry.

Tell us how you feel, TP!

I often feel the same way, especially about the popular movies. I don't get the popularity of superhero movies. They're all the same, the stories are juvenile, the characters mostly flat and silly (with a few exceptions, like The Dark Knight).

I saw The Third Man, a noir film made in 1949, for the first time a few weeks ago. It was in black and white and had almost nothing that we would call "special effect." But the cinematography was amazing, with an emphasis on camera angles, sound, and the use of light and shadow -- illustrating that there's a huge difference between special effects and cinematography.

 

[Blind_Justice]

When I saw the topic, I thought it would be about cheap, shitty CGI, flat, one-note characters, dialogue so bad it would make fanfic writers cringe and that particular brand of female empowerment which results in all male characters being either stupid, inept, cruel or all three at once.

Apart from the above, my two pet peeves with (semi) current movies are of a visual nature. Night scenes are too damn dark and many action scenes are so fast nowadays, my nearly sightless eyes can't follow.

The issue with music/effects vs. dialogue is easily explained. Most movies and many TV shows are mixed with 5.1/7.1 surround sound systems in mind. Most TVs are stereo only and - to compound the misery - due to their cases being so slim, the speakers have all the definition and clarity of your average phone. So, the surround mix is collapsed into stereo and pumped out through shit speakers.

Oh, and while we're on the topic of audio: Am I the only one with a massive hate boner for the trailer trope of timing loud noises and gunshots to the beat of the underlying music? It was irritating AS FUCK in the original Suicide Squad trailers and has only gotten worse.

So yeah, fuck modern movies.

 

[Pink5Frills]

When I saw the topic, I thought it would be about cheap, shitty CGI, flat, one-note characters, dialogue so bad it would make fanfic writers cringe and that particular brand of female empowerment which results in all male characters being either stupid, inept, cruel or all three at once.

Apart from the above, my two pet peeves with (semi) current movies are of a visual nature. Night scenes are too damn dark and many action scenes are so fast nowadays, my nearly sightless eyes can't follow.

The issue with music/effects vs. dialogue is easily explained. Most movies and many TV shows are mixed with 5.1/7.1 surround sound systems in mind. Most TVs are stereo only and - to compound the misery - due to their cases being so slim, the speakers have all the definition and clarity of your average phone. So, the surround mix is collapsed into stereo and pumped out through shit speakers.

Oh, and while we're on the topic of audio: Am I the only one with a massive hate boner for the trailer trope of timing loud noises and gunshots to the beat of the underlying music? It was irritating AS FUCK in the original Suicide Squad trailers and has only gotten worse.

So yeah, fuck modern movies.

What does irate one here, is seeing a scene, where the person on the horse is galloping in the dark. How on earth can you see in the dark when walking, let alone galloping on a horse? Why don't these film makers make it more realistic. Has anyone of them walked home in the dark with no artificial lighting near by? I live down a country lane, and it is narrow, and if someone was one the other side of the lane, you be unable to see them, unless it be a full moon and a clear night so it illuminates the lane.

 

[Blind_Justice]

Irate? Me? Irritated more likely.

I remember one of the '70s James Bond movies. It had an extended car chase in the night and everything was visible enough, even when the headlights were not visible.

In comparison to that, the home invasion during the first John Wick is pitch black on dark gray, super hectic and (for me at least) almost incomprehensible.

 

[Bramblethorn]

I'm glad to read that it's not just me. My hearing is just fine, but I often have difficulty disentangling the words from the background noise. The article was interesting. For some directors like Christopher Nolan it's deliberate. That's unfortunate, because some of his movies, like Inception, are not easy to follow to begin with. I watched it with my dad and talked to him afterward and he obviously had no idea what happened in the movie.

There's a vaguely related phenomenon that younger moviegoers, unaccustomed to pre-Internet days, may be unaware of. Nowadays there are extensive Wiki and other fan pages relating to every popular movie and TV franchise, and they often provide extensive background info that no casual TV or movie watcher can possibly know. I wonder if filmmakers feel less obligated to explain things because they know confused but Internet-savvy watchers can just get up to speed by going on the Internet. The recent LOTR series (Rings of Power) and GOT series (House of the Dragon) suffered from both these problems--being hard to hear at times and often difficult to follow if one did not have extensive knowledge of the backstory.

Season 1 of The Witcher was particularly bad in that. It jumps around between three major time periods, covering about 60 years of history; there are no explicit cues e.g. captions to mark those time jumps, and while there are some characters who appear in more than one of those periods, most of them don't visibly age due to magic. (And every time Geralt's black horse Roach dies, he replaces it with another black horse and names that one Roach too...)

I don't usually have a problem with nonlinear narrative, but I really needed the wiki to make sense of that one. It was enough of a problem that the second season lampshaded it: the bard Jaskier runs into a fan who mentions how difficult it was to follow Jaskier's latest epic until the fan realised there were multiple timelines going.

What does irate one here, is seeing a scene, where the person on the horse is galloping in the dark. How on earth can you see in the dark when walking, let alone galloping on a horse? Why don't these film makers make it more realistic. Has anyone of them walked home in the dark with no artificial lighting near by? I live down a country lane, and it is narrow, and if someone was one the other side of the lane, you be unable to see them, unless it be a full moon and a clear night so it illuminates the lane.

Like @Blind_Justice, I find some modern shows make things so dark one can't see what's going on. I'm willing to sacrifice a little realism for the sake of being able to follow the action there.

 

[TadOverdon]

I saw the new Avatar this afternoon. It's better than the first one and also was easier for me to follow.

Most of the action in these movies takes place CG outdoors, during CG daylight. So not so hard to see what's happening.

I enjoy them. They are so unlike the "Stars" - Wars and Trek.

My partner suffers significant hearing loss at this point. So we watch everything with captions, and it helps me almost as much as him.

 

[RoperTrace]

Movies like Tenet jump to mind as recent offenders in this department. There are settings you can fiddle with on your TV and in your sound system to tweak dynamics to your liking/comfort level, though, if that's a route you haven't traveled yet. A lot of TVs and sound systems' default audio settings are designed to wow in-store shoppers, and so feature boosted bass and treble settings that really fill space and grab your ear; fun for the store, but not for home use. Look for settings that shrink the dynamic range, boost the mid-range, or sometimes you can even find one that's called something like "Voice Boost" or "Dialog Enhance."

Thanks for advice. I'll have to get my 16 y.o. techie-granddaughter or 10 y.o. gamer-grandson show me how to make those adjustments. My 92 year-old sister advised me to get those wireless, t.v. hearing devices that hearing-impaired older people wear, so we're not imposing on other viewers.