I finally got around to renting "Inception". I didn't find it confusing, or
surprising. Dream within a dream within a dream within a dream. *yawn* Makes me
sleepy.
What was really horrid was the atrocious audio mix. The voices were so quiet I
had to turn on subtitles to know what was being said. It would've been far more
enjoyable with no background music at all.
There was a constant droning LOUD background "music" running 99.9% of the time.
It was overdriven with lots of clipping, I had to turn it down to save my
speakers.
Did this turkey get any award nominations, or *gasp*, win any awards for its
crappy audio? It's far worse a mix than what I've heard in "mockbuster" films
from The Asylum.
An example of badness from The Asylum's "Allan Quatermain and the Temple of
Skulls"... A long shot of the three main characters walking down a gravel road.
Their crunchy footsteps sound like one pair of feet REALLY LOUD and up close
while their dialog is barely audible.
In extreme contrast, I rented "Scott Pilgrim VS The World" the same day. Life
as a video game, hmmm. The only bit that made me laugh was when Scott grabbed
the 1UP icon out of the air and Neal asks "What are you doing?" to which Scott
replies "Getting a life!". Too much dull, deadpan dialog the rest of the time.
Do I want to find and read the graphic novel it's based on? Meh.
As for the audio on it, the mix was excellent. 100% of the dialog was crystal
clear. None of what may charitably be considered "music" in it was constructed
with a mission to trash as many home entertainment system speakers as possible,
unlike the entire audio track of "Inception". Was it that bad in theaters?
I have gone to movies in theaters with very expensive THX certified audio
systems, only to hear the same sort of garbage audio as is on the "Inception"
DVD. Other movies in the same theaters sound great, because the people who
mixed the audio plied their craft well, unlike the flash and bang tin ears who
seem to get the lion's share of the big money work.
Dialog is *extremely important* in a movie. What the characters say is how the
story gets told. If your audience cannot hear every word, you've FAILED to get
the story told.
Volume for the sake of volume is just showing you don't know WTH you are doing,
no matter how long you've been doing audio mixing for movies. Amping it up so
loud that it clips and distorts only irritates people and can damage speakers.
The waves should rise and fall smoothly without slamming into the boundaries
and getting their peaks cut off.
Getting the volume right for the distance of the action from the camera will
greatly add to the illusion of depth. Putting the mic right next to the feet of
the foley artist for people 100 meters away walking on a gravel road just
doesn't work, but turning up the dialog does work for such a scene because it
needs to be heard.
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