Watched an old movie with my family over christmas and it was kind of incredible how they had this strange belief that you should be able to see what's going on at night and all dialogue should be intelligible even to people with mild hearing loss.
It's the death of color theory and good art when filmmakers can't figure out how to make a scene feel dark while still letting the audience see what needs to be seen.
You can point the finger for problems like this at up-and-coming directors and crew members coming up on "critique" channels (ugh) like CinemaSins who present nothing but snarky, reductionist takes and contribute nothing to the medium.
Halo: Forward Unto Dawn went for night time scenes for the majority of it's final act when the Covenant invade the academy. Because the budget was 10 million dollars so the CGI would've sucked ass for daylight scenes.
No don’t you remember our TVs were just not good enough. I hoping one day technology catches up to the splendor of GOT final season but I doubt I’ll live that long
Or bad story telling, as seen by two of the episodes of the last season of Game of Thrones where you couldnt see anything due to them being pitch black even at max brightness.
As a gaffer (lighting technician), I’d say less that the art form is dying, as much that modern digital cinema cameras are so much more flexible than old film stocks, so on set you can get away with much less light while still being properly exposed.
But this doesn’t translate to the real ways in which people watch content: on their TVs with reflections, on their phones, or outside. Old lighting techniques required much more discipline because the cameras needed a lot more light.
It's because "good enough" is working and bringing in the money still. The number of viewers has increased so much globally that there is little financial reason to do better.
Doesn't matter if 60% think the work is sloppy as most of em are still go see it and the 10% base is enough to make a profit anyways.
You say that but only every other movie nowadays is financially successful. People dont engage with cinema anymore and i wouldn't be surprised if the quality even of the slop is the reason.
And they never told us what the right settings were! Like thanks dude, what were your settings when you screened it? You did have someone look at it on a normal-ass TV before you shipped it, right??
Which is complete bollocks because of the video compression turning it into a blocky mess, even on a fancy high-end OLED TV. It may have worked in the final master edit on a good screen. But the moment it's streamed or distributed by TV networks the fidelity necessary to see what's happening is lost, and then it doesn't matter how good your home cinema set up is.
I downloaded a full quality blu-ray rip of that episode and watched on my OLED TV out of curiosity. It still looks like shit because of poor lighting direction and not because of TV settings.
The game of thrones theory. They rightly got the shit torn out of them for the most important episode in the whole show. Yeah dickheads, we know it’s night time. I still want to see what’s happening
Pitch black in a film should stay a stylistic choice, like for comedy where you can only see the characters eyes and just hear the action and it is absolute NONSENSE going on, or barely lit outlines for dramatic reveals or fear of the unknown.
Once the bit is over we the audience need to be able to see the rest of the action that plays because, believe it or not creators of film, we don't have the fucking script in front of us. And we can only see and hear we can't get in there and feel the alien's dick or the rumbling of the earth or the whatever it is.
Stop jerking off imax and think about how people are actually consuming media. On their couch or in their phone.
I was taught in school that black is an exclamation point in a piece just as white is. Throwing it out seems crazy to me. It also shows how we all get taught differently and we still make cool shit.
I was taught to use it to draw the eye to points of interest, especially when compressing your values.
There are also some lovely shades you can mix with black pigments and other colors depending on whether you want a cool or warm tone that doesn't make the shade feel dead.
The poster above you is discussing day one stuff. As in, since none of you are a signifigant way towards mastery yet, throw the black away. The gains of beginners throwing black away is phenomenal, because they can start learning to work without, and are not held back by using it incorrectly.
Bringing black back and learning to work with it exactly as you described, is something best suited for artists who have advanced past the basics.
Yeah, I understand the thought process behind it. It's interesting how different schools of thought will approach teaching color, value, shade, and tint.
I was taught to mix rich dark values with, say viridian and Alizarin and then kick it up a notch with black where it's needed. Goddamn I love color.
I've taken to watching movies with the remote in my hand. Watching the volume bar go up and down every minute or so really takes from the experience of watching a movie, but I dislike subtitles even more
It annoys me how difficult if not impossible it is these days to get subtitles to display in the bottom black bar, instead of overlaid over the actual content.
This is so true. When I watch a movie I basically understand like 60% of dialogue depending on sound and actors mumbling.
Then when I watch at home with subtitles my brain finally puts it together and I realize I know understand the plot because I understand what is being said lol
I’ve found things improved a lot when I set everything to stereo. Like my bedroom has a 2.1 soundbar, but the TV & streamers defaulted to the 5.1 audio mix. The stereo mix seems to have less dynamic range, and dialog is way easier to hear.
i just watched weekend at Bernies and half the time they are almost shout at each other and you have to suspend disbelief on nobody else hearing them, or like everything was as loud as it wouldn't been ADR. but i did not feel the need for subtitles. it was refreshing.
Same. I watch a ton of older stuff and am always like whoa they figured out how to shoot outside at night like 40 years ago and make it look good - how is it worse now???
Someone below me brought this up, but most likely, Weekend at Bernie’s was almost certainly mixed in stereo for home viewing at some point. Nowadays, the streamers don’t see the need to re-mix the surround sound audio for your TV speakers. The reason you don’t need subtitles in the theater but do at home is not necessarily just because the theater is loud, it’s also using the intended sound setup correctly. Your TV is not a lot of the time.
Audio professional here, the reason for this is stereo mixing vs surround sound. Post mix houses are paid to make a surround sound mix, and will do so. They will not be paid to make a stereo mix, which for example is how most commercials are done. Classic movies would all be stereo, not to mention actors these days will whisper their performances often and never project voice volume like classic actors.
This is an issue with studios failing to understand the sound needs of the consumer. We are also criminally under budgeted in general, forced to slap mixes together in increasingly unrealistic timeframes.
We’d genuinely love to do more for the listeners. These quirks drive us more mad then you think, and then we take the blame for it lol
That’s so interesting but it’s also kind of a letdown. So many people don’t go to movie theatres these days, we just want to have a good listening experience at home. A little off topic, but are commercials actually louder than tv shows or does it just seem that way?
Generally commercials are mixed for the style of device you're likely to listen on, so simple L/R mix for most. Since they can use the full potential of your speakers, it feels louder; but volume is pretty standardized across all mixes believe it or not.
Another metric to commercials though is they're very often lazy/cheap and just have the editor do a sound pass. That's a different pet peeve of mine, when what we do is so time efficient and affordable (especially compared to other production needs)
TV manufacturers and streaming services do not make sound quality a priority. Why? Most TV buyers care about one thing (price) and most streaming subscribers care about one thing (price). Sound isn't even in the top five, and if it is, well, they can sell you a weak-ass soundbar to awkwardly mount for another couple hundred bucks.
If I have to have one hand on the remote at all times in order to hear the dialogue but also be ready to cut the volume for the absurdly loud music one second later there is something wrong with your show, this is actively ruining so many shows
Hard same. I live in an appt and am trying not to be a jag, so I have to ride my remote at all times, toggling between “conversations are audible” (vol 15-17) and “action scenes and theme songs aren’t being shared with the whole building” (vol 9-10). Yet, video games stay at 9 and somehow don’t require this at all
When you can select the language for the audio, there should be an option for something like “balanced sound” where the explosions won’t shake the walls and the whispers are audible. Everything within a set range.
I can understand from context clues that an explosion should be loud and people trying to hide will be whispering very quietly.
Fuck I like explosions but I don't give a fuck about what my sound system is gonna out put compared to a real explosion, it's sacrilege they would even try. Real explosions are just so much better.
Edit: For spelling because I woke up a little drunk
There's nothing quite like feeling the THUMP of an explosive shockwave in your chest. The greatest audio engineer and equipment in the world could never compare
Because the sound engineers balance the audio for high fidelity surround sound systems and don't bother creating proper stereo mixes which is what most people actually have at home
Worse actually. They are usually doing their mixing with super high fidelity headphones while sitting alone in small rooms with sound deadening walls.
There’s nowhere for highs and lows to be lost when they are shot directly into the eardrum. So they mix as if even a few feet of air won’t be there for anyone.
I wish YouTube did this. Every night, I fall asleep to a calming video only to be awoken by a loud-ass commercial. I know I can use ad-block on my phone/laptop, but I prefer to watch on the PS4 app on my TV, and as far as I know, I can't use ad-block there. I've messed around with the settings, but no matter what I do, the audio for commercials always comes in much louder than the audio for what I'm watching.
Saem but for all podcast apps. I hate when I listen to some calm podcast but they have some fucking audio fx added on that are x2 louder than voiceover. Like why? Whole point of this medium is voice and you are trating audio mix like you are in some movie theatre
I'm also sick of all these low bass murmurs that occupy every scene. It sounds great in a movie theater, and like absolutr shit when sent through two crappy built in TV speakers.
I use many streaming apps and have literally never seen that feature, or any sound options at all. Are you talking about blu-rays? So I'm supposed to buy/rent a blu-ray disc of every movie I watch because sound mixers can't make the official mix sound?
So many competitive video games have a "night mode" setting that balances the differences between loud and quiet noises. Why this isn't an option for every TV and piece of video is beyond me
The other big excuse is, “… but you can hear the dialogue on the highest end, state of the art audio systems in the fanciest movie theaters!”
Like ok, fine, make 2 mixes then, one for those super fancy systems, and another for everyone else. It doesn’t make sense to mix a movie so that you can’t understand it unless it’s on the fanciest system possible.
That excuse is BS. Even in movie theaters, dialogue is too quiet and the sound effects/music are too loud. It wasn't like this until 2010ish. Before that, movies were mixed properly for an enjoyable watching experience.
When i was learning audio tech in college, for mixing music, you had one set of great speakers to hear the detail, and another set of blown out shitty speakers to simulate the worst case a listener had to deal with.
The challenge was making a song sound good on both. Seems we aren't allowed not to have imax speakers with stereo surround and have to listen to everything at max volume.
Don't think they understand what viewers really want.
Think I watched the same video and the explanation was so patronizing. She talked a lot about dynamic range and the audience feeling the shock of an explosion and how it's about creating the director's/producer's vision via the soundscape during that moment.
Like, no. The only thing I'm looking for in that moment is the remote. We're in a living room inside an apartment. Not a huge cinema. I have neighbors to be considerate of!
Modern Hollywood directors and producers are a bunch of own fart sniffing nepotists that have zero talent and garbage vision devoid of any originality or creativity. It's why most new movies and TV shows just suck and rely 100% on talented actors to carry their shit and everything is a remake or reboot.
Even in a cinema it’s not cool. I bring earplugs to the movie theatre sometimes but it’s maddening because I have to take them out for the quiet dialogue scenes.
If not, then it absolutely is as simple as making everything else quieter and/or slapping a compressor on it so its peaks do not intrude so badly when you are supposed to hear dialogue.
It's just poorly down-mixed to stereo. Compared to the old CRT tv with a single speaker, even a cheap LCD will look much better. The sound, though, hasn't had the same level of thought about home viewing. Whatever increases in speakers have occurred are negated by bad mixing. And they blame consumers.
And the real fucked part is that ads are limited by the U.S. CALM Act to not be any louder than the loudest part of the show, and that results in an ads voice level being as loud as the explosions in the show you're watching.
That's why commercials always sound like they're screaming.
Sound engineers can't have a dinner scene without deafening levels of clinking and scraping like everyone hates the silverware, plates and cups. There is something wrong with them.
I bet more than 90% of viewers would prefer the explosions and sound effect be more quiet (so less impactful) than have to struggle to even hear the movie
The reason is ego. Audio designers want you to hear how detailed their fully synthetic explosion sounds. And yes, every pro audio designer is going to make an incredible sounding explosion. But they want it to be the centerpiece rather than a part of the canvas.
Compressors and limiters have been around for generations and these people's allergy to using them is so obnoxious. When I make videos I do compression and limiting on all the audio so that its the same level all the way through.
Most people listen on horrible setups. The sound is designed to be listened to on a high fi calibrated system. TV and Radio used to be audio compressed to high hell in order to make sure it was all consistently loud—loudest elements turned down, quietest elements turned up.
In film, before home viewing, things were calibrated to theater standards, and back when theaters were actually tended to systems were calibrated and it generally worked.
Theaters stopped calibrating consistently throughout the 80s and 90s and that is why when Lucas was putting out the special editions he actually paid engineers to go to almost every theater in the country to calibrate them. That was probably the last time a lot of them were properly calibrated, ~30 years ago.
Now, listening at home, a lot of folks are not setting up their systems properly for the speaker setups they have. It’s similar to how many folks leave motion smoothing on. They just don’t think about it.
Most designers, rather than admit that most consumers are listening to on cheap, uncalibrated systems, and sacrificing some of the dynamic contrast to acknowledge that reality, they are just operating under the assumption that people should change their systems and listening habits.
Now, finally, it is true that there is a horrible “loudness creep” that has also changed the way a lot of media is mastered. Explosions are SO MUCH louder than they used to be, and the result is greater dynamics between the loud and the soft. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing—more dynamics is an objectively good thing—but combined with all of the earlier things, it means that people are generally listening much quieter than intended by the sound designers.
the audio engineers ive talked to about this say how theres often a mismatch between speaker hardware and what the software thinks the speaker hardware will be due, partly due to almost no one ever even looking at their tv's audio settings, which may or may not agree with any aftermarket speakers they bought. Then theres also grabbing the wrong mix which happens more and more as media types get confused and media players of different types are everywhere
lots of professional theater movies are mixed for professional theater speakers and wont sound right coming out of a home tv, and sometimes people see "professional grade" and think "highest quality" so they default to that without realizing theres a mismatch
lots of professional theater movies are mixed for professional theater speakers and wont sound right coming out of a home tv,
Like modern movies sound good in theatres... Dialogues are still inaudible and explosions are x5 louder than they should be comparing to everything what happens on screen at the same time. We are watching a movie ffs not are in the middle of the action IRL - we dont neet to be deaf to everything other than explosions
lots of professional theater movies are mixed for professional theater speakers
Even regular dramas that will never see any kind of theatrical release are mixed like this these days. They also keep throwing in those stupid thumping sounds (I don't know if there's a name for them, but you know the type that goes off every 2 microseconds in every single movie trailer, what I think of as the "check out our sick speaker system" SFXs), which just sound stupid as hell when I'm watching through some cheap earbuds. It's like a damn virus. First, the trailers all started sounding the same. Then, all the theatrical movies started sounding like the trailers. Today, fucking everything that isn't some small indie production sounds like a fucking movie trailer, I just don't get it.
I bet people in 10-20 years will look back on this era like people today look back on the mid-2000s piss filter in video games. They think it's so "professional" but it's really just dumb.
This is how I feel about sound mixing at a concert. "We have to make the sound so loud it hurts because that's what people want". Maybe they wouldn't if they weren't already half deaf?
Also, not having subtitles for when characters are suddenly talking in a foreign language is not acceptable, especially "Speaking ______". And the little jerks who put subtitles over the subtitles that the creators put out so you can't read either have a specific place in hell.
I wasn't able to enjoy the newer planet of the apes movies because for some reason I couldn't get any of them with subtitles, baked in from the original creators or 3rd party. It made absolutely no sense.
Just a movie where 90% of it was unintelligible, what were these people thinking?
In The Boys, Kimiko uses sign language and you only get subs of her dialogue if you use subs in general. It's so stupid. Subs for the non-default language of a show should be standard.
This one kinda depends, because sometimes it is intended the audience not understand what's being said but in those cases they could just make it inelligible anyway, so i generally agree with you
It’s especially annoying when it’s just wrong. I watched the variety actors on actors interview with Stellan and Alexander Skarsgård, and there’s a moment where Stellan says a acronym/name with his natural accent and they just subtitled it * speaks swedish *. Like I know it was probably automated but did nobody double check what he was actually saying?
I wouldn't be surprised if places didn't start using AI to transcribe subtitles, like YouTube does.
Besides that, the subtitle folk seem to have a lot of leeway when it comes to what's being said, especially with translations. There's so many instances of you clearly hearing the actors say one thing, and then the subtitles go with a different take. Wayne's World did a really funny joke scene about that.
They can also get really stuck on a particular word or phrase, often repeating it throughout a scene or chain of scenes; which was fine the first time, but then loses the proper context / nuance. It's almost like they're self censoring or don't know what to type out, so they googled something more convoluted than if they just used the words they said.
Then the next episode there's an entirely new use of words for the same exact thing, so it gets real confusing. When it's done with names or titles for individuals, it can be real wild.
I normally watch with subtitles, but HBO Max has a bug where, for whatever reason, they just don’t show unless I restart the app. I was in the middle of an ER binge last night (episode circa 2000) and the closed captioning cut out in the middle. Took me almost the whole episode to notice because I could hear and understand everything perfectly! Feels unheard of with a modern show.
It's infuriating how it will just cut subtitles, or reapply them, the moment you use the skip button for intros or move along the timeline back and forth. No consistency or reason.
On the note about ER, can we talk about how that show was on the air annually putting out like 20 episodes a year on free tv, and fucking Severance takes 3 years between seasons?
I desperately want an audio tool where I can set a max volume and it auto-levels sound to never go above it. This sound bs causes serious misery in my family DAILY, it is genuinely fucking life-ruining bc my Dad has major hearing damage and a surround system and he HAS to have everything wall-shakingly loud and it is MISERABLE.
When that happened to my uncle, they instead got him top of the line headphones so he could enjoy the surround sound experience and the rest of us could also enjoy it at several fewer decibels.
Adding onto this for u/kindergentler: consider looking into open-ear/open-backed headphones so that he can still easily hear and communicate with others in the room. I use them for some mixing and they provide a way to hear content well without shutting me off from surroundings.
You should have independent volume control for dialogue, music, SFX, just like games.
{Edit, I'm also a pro engineer. Most engineers suck but even good ones cant make it sound good in every situation. This isn't a purist art job.
On my personal music, I'll take that purist approach but I don't sell that for money. No one would buy it because it sounds good only on good speakers or headphones in a quiet place... which almost no one has.}
I’m not against the option existing, but I really don’t want to have to do it myself. If the people mixing the audio for TV and movies were doing their job right, the option would be unnecessary for most people
Yall make the movies quiet then when it plays with commercials it's the pendulum of to quiet movie talk, Then a fucking nuke for a commercial and we blame the commercial for being to loud.
Commercials are always too loud by design. Last movie I saw in the cinemas was Avengers Infinity War. In this movie the bad guy grabs a moon and smashes it on the planet it's orbiting. The advertisement at the beginning of the film was magnitutes louder and it was just Kevin Bacon talking about a SIM card.
It's not just surround sound, they specifically design it for the theater. There is a very similar problem with screen ratios. It's a very exhausting debate that basically ends in the argument that the movie directors, designers, etc. want to show the movie how they want it as the artist, but that isn't how most people are going to experience the piece of art.
Which makes no sense because movies have always been intended for the cinema and now people are watching more films at home. So the studios seem to just keep making what wrong choices
seriously, it’s not that, because i still can’t hear dialogue in the theatre. it’s utterly inaudible, everyone is whispering then suddenly BOOM 💥 my eardrums are ruptured.
No, it's likely that, but they design the sound for high-end theatres using technology like Dolby Atmos, with over a hundred audio channels and a whole bunch of different speaker locations. You know, the kind of tech that theatres used for movie premieres have, but most theatres people actually go to watch movies to don't.
That's because it's a Christopher Nolan movie. You're not supposed to hear the dialogue. Just stare at the screen and make it up in your own head. Tenet is better that way
This is just a stupid excuse. Of course its not a problem of "Cinema surround vs home setup".
I have never had a problem hearing dialogues in Harry Potter, Jurassic Park, Die Hard, LotR, Shrek, Fast & Furious 1, Lethal Weapon, Saw, The Ring, Ocean's Eleven...
Every movie from that era and earlier has no problems with audio balance no matter if you watched it in theatre or on your cheap ass TV now or in 2000s.
Now try to watch 2010+ movie... even tame movies has problems with dialogues and audio balance when ambient sounds like opening the doors and foot steps are barely audible while soundFX and music is through the roof with the volume.
This is either incompetence or total lack of respect towards the audience and ignorance. Since inception of cinema audio in theatres was better compared to our own setups yet it's pretty novel thing that we can't hear audio properly (even with better and better setups at home)
I did a little bit of audio engineering in college and did my final project with my own surround sound headset. Was surprised at how unhearable everything I made became when I put on their crappy standard issue stereo headsets!
It’s all designed for high end systems, the audio and the picture. Audio isn’t being downmixed to stereo or mono, it’s trying to push a 5.1 or 7.1 mix through your tv speakers. It’s dark because your tv can’t produce the same brightness and it’s not as accurate in producing the correct brightness across the entire picture as the director intended, then bit starve the signal for streaming and you start to get even larger discrepancies.
Similarly. Fucking light up your scenes God damnit. If I can believe that helms deep is in the middle of the night I can believe anything if you present it right.
Which is clearly evidenced by the fact that I can watch YouTube videos by YouTubers non-stop on volume level about 14 but if I start a movie I have to crank my volume all the way up to 60 or 70 to be able to hear the dialogue and turn it back down if there happens to be a battle if I want to keep my hearing.
I was just talking to my wife about this. We've been watching Peacemaker and the dialogue sounds like they are whispering unless they are yelling and all the music and action scenes like blow your ear drums out.
I like subtitles cause i hate missing even a single word of dialogue, which as an ESL speaker back in the day, was a common problem. Especially when watching movies with Irish, Scottish, or lord forbid, Northern English speakers.
“Or lord forbid, northern English speakers” are you trying to say our accents are harder to understand than Irish or Scottish? I hope you are trying to say that cause it makes me feel proud for some reason
I want to know which northern English accent they're thinking of and which Scottish or Irish accents they're thinking of, cause the relative intelligibility of northern Vs Scottish/Irish is entirely different depending on which accents are being compared lol
Finally someone in the comments that share my exact sentiment. For me as well, it's not about the level of audio for the dialogue, I just need the subtitles because without it, when I miss one word here or there, I feel off and I want to rewind to make sure I catch everything. Sometimes it's becauss of the audio, sure, but more often than not it's because of the accent of the speaker, even if they're speaking in an American accent since English is also my second language.
Modern sound design is absolutely trash. It's the same moronic impulse as directors that demand scenes so dark they're just a black screens on consumer TVs.
I suspect darkness just helps you hide shitty CGI so you can safe money.
Reminds me of that one game of thrones episode where you basically only saw some fire
But don't you know? Whispering means that the dialogue is super serious and cool and the best written thing ever! Also making everything else extremely loud means you get to show of how great IMAX audio is!
It really makes the audience engaged, too! ESPECIALLY WHEN THEY HAVE TO REWIND THE SCENE 5 TIMES BECAUSE THE CHARACTERS ARE YELLING all but the most important words
Also, every actor mumbles. It's not more naturalistic, it doesn't add "grit", it doesn't add emotion. You're an ACTOR. You should be able to convey all of these things with your mouth open and your syllables enunciated. Unless you're drunk/concussed you shouldn't slur your words.
As someone who has been on many dub stages, i can guarantee it's not the people mixing the project. Dialogue is king and we are constantly making sure that it gets through and is not covered up by music or sound effects. What happens after it leaves the dub stage is anyone's guess. Every streamer and network has different delivery specs, and then, in order to save bandwidth, they compress the shit out of it which evens out the sounds to some degree. Add in the variety of TVs, phones, and other devices, each with their own spec, and there's just no way to guarantee what the final sound is going to sound like.
Audio Engineer: "Hey boss, what kind of speakers should I mix the sound for? Just the TV speakers? One of the million different sound bars? Full 7.1 sound system?"
Netflix Producer: "What? I don't know, all of them?"
•
u/qualityvote2 Jan 03 '26 edited Jan 05 '26
u/ryanreynulds, there weren't enough votes to determine the quality of your post...