I thought the movie was well done, would not say I enjoy such depressing subject matter. I like the cinematic role of the RAF and Tom Hardy. Overall, made me sad. I watched it on Blu-ray so volume was not a problem. The DTS-MA audio quality seemed average, at least the dialogue was intelligible.
Dunkirk's "award winning sound"
- Thread starter Bruce Watson
- Start date
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
Well... I was on a big budget feature and they did a temp mix for the director and then on checking found the sub track was full of these reverse spikes on the peaks. A lot of mixers were using these subharmonic synthesizers to really deliver "thump" in the sub track and if overloaded they would do this weird clip/ backward spike thing. But the mixers never heard it because the sub goes through a low pass filter in the playback system.
So there may well be a lot of films with badly clipped subs. Nobody will ever hear it as long as the sub goes through the proper playback system. It is also not all that rare to intentionally clip some FX. Punches and such often benefit from a bit of clipping on the transient. Your ear will distort really loud sounds so adding a bit of distortion to things that you want to seem loud often helps with that illusion.
That said general clipping on the printmaster is going to be extremely rare. For one thing, while the film is mixed by ear the DolbyMaster is carefully monitored by Dolby engineers and so the track itself is not going to be clipped.
I haven't heard the entire film yet but skipping through the BluRay it seems OK, and that is not on a great system so?
Films in theatres are... Not reliably played back correctly. If you are going to an academy screening you are pretty assured of hearing as the mixers/ director intended. But any public theatre??? You just never know. Some times the speakers are shot, or not hooked up correctly, but more often they have messed with the levels. If they have an older crowd and have a lot of loud trailers they will turn it down, or if it's a quiet film they may turn it up. They hardly ever reset it to where it's supposed to be. From experience sound problems in public theatres are almost always the fault of the theatre not the film.
So when I say Matrix 2 was incredibly loud it's not just because I saw it (public theatre) but because a lot of people I know who saw it agreed. When I say 300 was the loudest film I have ever heard, that was at an academy screening at Dolby so I'm very confident that it was mixed that way.
For DVD's etc, the multi track surround track should be very close to the theatrical track. The stereo is often more of a crash down mix. They used to spend a fair amount of time doing a careful stereo mix because it's the fall back track if the DD fails and there used to be a lot of theatres that didn't do surround. By the late 90's the stereo mix was getting knocked out in a day or less.
AndreeOnline
Veteran
Yes. I would personally lean that way. I mean a film in a theater can be quite out of focus due to bad projection but that doesn't mean the film was delivered that way.
I am not a sound expert, but I'm just assuming that the competence level needed to land the job as the person overseeing the final mix on a $100.000.000 film, combined with modern monitoring tools, should be sufficient to not have the audio unintentionally clip.
combatentropy
Veteran
Normally I would assume that, but I thought opening post was saying otherwise:
Cary Knoop
Veteran
I would assume the quality of the sound is not measured against releases on consumer disks but against the master as is used in the theaters.
combatentropy
Veteran
Isn't it a digital transfer, from master to disc?
Cary Knoop
Veteran
I am pretty sure they will remaster the sound for the home environment.
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
Well not necessarily. Not a lot of people have a 400 seat theatre in their living room, so commonly home releases are remixed on a smaller stage and with a bit of thought to it playing in a noisier environment.
After the final mix a film generally spends another week or two doing "versions". Some of these may have dropped by the wayside with cable but we would do a D,M,&E for dubbing, a "TV" mix that is more compressed and an editor has gone in and replaced words you can't say on TV. An airline version that not only alters the TV words but a bunch of other things airlines don't want said (and possibly reworked to an altered picture because there are things airlines don't want customers to see) and more compressed so you can understand it over the much higher general ambience in a plane. We would also do a stereo/ 4.0 (LtRt) mix that is less compressed than the TV version and is what theatres that don't have Dolby Digital or SDDS or ... use. It's also the mix that is switched to if there is a problem with the digital stream. The later happens more than you think. The DD stream (and sync code for SDDS) are optically printed on the film so wear and tear can cause problems and dropouts. Back when there was also a different mix for VHS, now thankfully RIP, but I suspect that it got replaced by a streaming mix.
The versions by and large are not that different than the master mix, but they are not the same.
Batutta
Major Contributor
I saw this in the TCL Chinese IMAX theater, as good as you can get for sound reproduction. The low end was so overpowering, with a constant drone, that it made me physically nauseous and I could barely hear half of what was going on. I had to move further back in the theater, just to get as far away from the subs as I could.
GaryNattrass
Veteran
It made me feel that way too and my only other thought is that maybe it was deliberate as I felt shaken to the bone with the experience.
On a serious note what the soundtrack did achieve is actually as a humble viewer it gave me the closest sanitised version of war and whilst as a sound engineer it went totally against my professional judgement on a personal level it made me feel things I haven't before.
Those bullets going into the steel hull of the beached ship were sonically over the top but hey I got to walk away with just a sonic experience and an enhanced respect of those who were there and had to deal with the far worse emotional experience of losing friends and comrades.
As another side note we had a documentary on UK TV tonight that featured the restored spitfire that was beached at the end of the film and how that one aircraft and the valiant totally inexperienced pilots made a huge difference in protecting the evacuation.
It flew over the same beach a few years ago and I think they used that real footage near the end as when I saw the film I thought it looked a bit too real compared to all the other IMAX filming.
I need to see the film again as it probably needs far more than one viewing to truly appreciate what is really going on at numerous levels and the sound may have been just one aspect of the depiction of war and all it's horrific consequences?
Also I am also lucky to have a boat on the Thames in London and just half a mile from me is Steven and Michael Dennets boatyard who not only look after my steel tub but have the honourable task as the last wooden boatbuilders on the Thames of looking after all the little ships that also featured in the evacuation.
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Noiz2
Sound Ninja
Not an academy screening but yes that should be a theatre that is set up correctly.
there are kind of three points here.
1) the Oscars are not a real meritocracy, so don't think of them that way.
2) what an audience hears in a commercial venue has little direct correlation to what the film sounded like on the mix stage.
3) What a film sounds like has a LOT to do with the director. Editors and mixers are not independent "artists", but hired by producers and directors. Really good ones have relationships with certain directors and have clout ... but not always. The bottom line is the entire sound crew is hired hands. Sometimes very talented hired hands , but still hired hands.
I worked on a $$$ feature and the lead mixer had a LOT of Oscars (many more than the director) and a prior relationship with the director. I came in early during the final mix and he was sitting at the console banging his head into the wrist pad and repeating "I knew it would be like this" over and over.
It's the job. Sometimes it's magic, sometimes it's hell. Sometimes it's both. You do it and it goes out into the world and you go and see a showing and think "what the hell happened to the sound!". 99.9% of the time it's the theatre.
Now as a side note. I bought a bunch of tickets to the first showing of Titanic, first really big film I worked on, and the sound was fine BUT reel 2 they had a problem and got a replacement that was on a thinner stock. So reel 2 comes on and it all gets a bit soft focus. The projectionist fixes it. But then reel 3 comes on and he isn't around and it stays this slightly out of focus till the end credits. I wear glasses so I'm always assuming it's me but it wasn't. Sounded good though!
there are kind of three points here.
1) the Oscars are not a real meritocracy, so don't think of them that way.
2) what an audience hears in a commercial venue has little direct correlation to what the film sounded like on the mix stage.
3) What a film sounds like has a LOT to do with the director. Editors and mixers are not independent "artists", but hired by producers and directors. Really good ones have relationships with certain directors and have clout ... but not always. The bottom line is the entire sound crew is hired hands. Sometimes very talented hired hands , but still hired hands.
I worked on a $$$ feature and the lead mixer had a LOT of Oscars (many more than the director) and a prior relationship with the director. I came in early during the final mix and he was sitting at the console banging his head into the wrist pad and repeating "I knew it would be like this" over and over.
It's the job. Sometimes it's magic, sometimes it's hell. Sometimes it's both. You do it and it goes out into the world and you go and see a showing and think "what the hell happened to the sound!". 99.9% of the time it's the theatre.
Now as a side note. I bought a bunch of tickets to the first showing of Titanic, first really big film I worked on, and the sound was fine BUT reel 2 they had a problem and got a replacement that was on a thinner stock. So reel 2 comes on and it all gets a bit soft focus. The projectionist fixes it. But then reel 3 comes on and he isn't around and it stays this slightly out of focus till the end credits. I wear glasses so I'm always assuming it's me but it wasn't. Sounded good though!
When movie theaters are often giving such awful experiences it is no wonder ticket sales are declining.
If I'm forking out significant money for my GF and I to see a movie then I'm expecting a much better experience than I could just get at someone's home!
JPNola
Veteran
The quality of the sound and image projection in movie theaters today is of much higher quality than in the past, on the whole. A degradation of quality in movie theater sound and picture ( there is none ) isn't what is behind declining numbers in movie theater-going. It is the use of social media and youtube. When it was only tv, radio, video games, and your personal cd collection there was less to do for entertainment, so you went to the movies. The Youtube Generation doesn't go to the movies as often as previous generations because they are watching content on their tablets, smartphones, and laptops. It isn't because the quality of the sound and the image projection in movie houses has gone downhill. Sorry, but that is silliness.
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Cary Knoop
Veteran
I think the sound in the movie theaters is far too loud, and that makes it bad quality to me, I would not be surprised many more people have the same opinion.
The gap in relative quality of what you could have at home vs in the theatres certainly has decreased.
Noiz2
Sound Ninja
I partly agree. Most theatres sound systems are much better than they were in say the 1980's. Digital projection has eliminated worn out scratch prints, in many theatres. But to keep this all as a plus it has to be maintained and that has gone way down in the same time. Each theatre used to have a projectionist, now chains often share one who gets a film running and then leaves for another theatre. So problems when they happen are often uncorrected. You complain and get told there is nobody in the building that can fix it.
But I think the biggest change is that the experience has been downgraded in many theatres. General maintenance is not always great, the insulation between theatres in multiplexes is often lacking so you get to "enjoy" the battle scene in the next theatre over during your quiet RomCom. Audiences have way too many people texting or even talking on the phone during a film, theatres often a very lax about letting in very small children to films that should not be seeing.
The over all experience is lower than it was in many cases. An Atmos sound system properly tuned doesn't really help if you are sitting between crying children and someone live texting the experience.
And I am most certainly not part of "The Youtube Generation".
Run&Gun
Veteran
My girlfriend hates it, and I ended up going to the theater alone a lot because of it, but I like(d) to go in the middle of the week(Wed or Thur) for the last showing(after 9p or 10p). There would be maybe 1-5 other people in there besides me. I've seen a lot of movies that I had the entire theater to myself. No talking. No crying. No one sitting in-front of me or beside me. And no one sitting in "my spot" Lol. Unfortunately, the theater closest to me(less than 5 miles) has dropped "late shows" except on the weekends(Fri-Sun) and when 'school is out'(spring break, summer vacation, etc.). They are part of a large chain and I'm guessing they ran the numbers and having 10:00pm shows during the early part of the week didn't make financial sense. And it's a shame, because there are people, like me, where a 7:30pm or 8:00pm showing is too early to work with their schedules. By the time I usually get out of the gym and would eat, it'd be easily after 8:00pm.
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