Sound Department Responsibilities - Whose Fault Is It Anyway?

O

OldCorpse

Rockin the Boat
I recently watched "It Follows" - which is a pretty decent movie, and I liked it overall. The technical aspect was pretty hit and miss though, especially sound. There were many occasions when the dialogue was not easy to understand - I suppose mostly due to mixing - but by far the worst were the lines by the lead actor... very frequently I found myself unable to understand what she was saying... basically she mumbled, slurred, and her diction was extremely indistinct with odd volume drops. Now, clearly she was very bad in that respect, because in any dialogue, you could usually understand the other person, but not her.

So granting the fact that the actress was just really bad at delivering her lines in an understandable way, I am left wondering where the responsibility for the final product lies. Yes, she was at fault, but isn't the sound department there to solve problems? What do you do as a production sound person? I suppose you can alert the director to the fact that the actress is making sound very hard to pick up - or maybe if you get permission from the director you can address the actor yourself, giving pointers as to how to project your voice etc.. But assuming that the director basically says "it is what it is", or otherwise the actor is incapable of giving a better vocal, doesn't it then become your responsibility to perhaps place the mic closer to the problem actor, or wire them with a lav somewhere very close, or take other measures to make sure that you get something usable (in addition to titanic work in post, of course - but if you don't have the original materials, you can't create them in post).

Now we end up with sh|t sound from the lead actor in the final product. Whose fault is it? And what to do to avoid such a problem in the future?
 
NO EXCUSE.

Bad audio - ESPECIALLY unintelligible dialog can and WILL kill your film.
It takes work yes, but it's NOT hard.

MUST HAVES:

Decently skilled on-set audio person DOING THEIR JOB.

A director and Producers that know when it's time to replace dialog in the studio.

A VERY good dialog engineer.

A good-to-very-good mix engineer.


Poor and uneven audio will make me HATE the experience of watching your movie... and I know I am not alone on this.

I think there can even be more poor shots and still have the film work as 'an experience'. But not audio.
 
This happens a lot on tv and features. It isn't the fault of the production sound mixer or anyone in the sound chain. I've talked with production sound mixers that work on these things. They talk with the 1st AD and even the director.

On a feature, it ultimately comes down to the director. Actors can be told to project more on set, and either they will or they won't. It's the directors job to get the performance they need. On television, it comes down to the producers. The director usually isn't on the dub stage.

It's an ongoing problem that seems to be getting worse. I've even noticed it on shows that used to be fine but are now impossible to understand after a few seasons.

Just know that the sound department isn't to blame. They know what's going on and they try to address it, but it ultimately isn't their call how it gets addressed to the actors.

BTW, you notice how actors that are classically trained stage actors don't have this problem?
 
davefisk said:
BTW, you notice how actors that are classically trained stage actors don't have this problem?
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Oh, I'm totally with you on that - clearly, if the actors were trained to project their voices, this wouldn't be happening... but, unfortunately, that doesn't help us. I mean, when that's the actor you get, that's the actor you get. So my question is rather, given that we can't control the choice of the actor, and sometimes we can't control what the actor does, what options does a production sound person have, purely technically? I would think it would come down to having a lav artfully hidden as close humanely speaking to the lips of the actor as possible, and hoping that whatever you get that way would be enough to massage in post into something intelligible. I guess I was just shocked by how badly they did on that film, and wondered what kind of nightmares they faced... and unfortunately a challenge they did not meet successfully... so I want to learn how to prepare for similar circumstances, as, lets face it, classically trained actors are a minority and you'll deal more and more with "naturals" with little to no training, chosen purely for their look or whatever other considerations, sound being the last on the list, sadly.
 
Like I said...directors and producers that know when it's time for ADR.
if either of those types on this film had made that call then it would have been better.

If ALL of Andie McDowell's dialog in Greystoke: The Legend of Tarzan could be dubbed by a different person, then surely even a mumbling actress can be improved in looping.
 
I tend to find that most Producers and Directors seem to think they know more about audio than me these days so I don't even have the argument and in the end it is their fault if complaints are made. Generally they need me more than I need them!

Do they work to the best of my ability under their direction and send the invoice in, if they can't hear the actors due to poor diction then that is not my problem.
 
GaryNattrass said:
I tend to find that most Producers and Directors seem to think they know more about audio than me these days so I don't even have the argument and in the end it is their fault if complaints are made. Generally they need me more than I need them!

Do they work to the best of my ability under their direction and send the invoice in, if they can't hear the actors due to poor diction then that is not my problem.
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Although I obviously sympathize with the predicament, I cannot in good conscience simply say "that is not my problem". It is the responsibility of the sound person to capture good sound, period - film is a collective enterprise and we're all in it together; we shouldn't have the attitude that we just do our bit and don't care about the outcome. The final film speaks to the efforts of everyone and it's a collective responsibility. I care about the final product, because that's what it's all about ultimately. And besides, when the sound is bad and we can't hear the dialogue, people are not going to ask "why", they'll conclude that the person who did the sound is at fault. We owe it to ourselves as well as to the entire film crew to get the job done.
 
Don't get me wrong I always do my best on every job but bad diction, bad direction and lack of understanding of the whole process is a lot of the time beyond our control.

I used to do an hour long TV drama and I sat every week doing the dub with director and generally we were always happy with the final results. It would then go to the producers and the committee of production secretaries and hangers on who then ripped it all apart and changed things to the extent that scenes would be re-written and re-shot. At no stage did any of them even have the courtesy to discuss this with the post dept and in the five years I did the show none of them ever came to the edit or dub suite and just sent a ream of notes!

There was a recent drama on the BBC called Jamaica Road and the sound dept were initially slammed for the poor sound but as it transpired it was the performance and direction that was at fault, that linked with everything deemed to be needed to have huge dynamics these days mixed for cinematic release means that as I said there seem to be far too many people who think they know best and at the end of the day they control the finances and therefore it is their responsibility if they over-rule or dismiss the expertise of the sound department.

Getting the job done these days is a totally different process to what it used to be and at times there is too much flexibility in the production process to the detriment of the final product in my opinion.

We used to put notes on the old nagra report sheets stating that production audio was "recorded under protest" or director advised that ADR will be required but a lot of the time you are deemed at being awkward on set but then the same people will be the first to lay blame when the s*%t hits the fan!
 
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There are really two different parts to this, who's fault it is and who takes the blame.

On the second sound every time. A lot of post sound people have never worked on a set so even post sound people will tend to blame production sound people for bad dialog. For fault... It could be a lot of people. This was not a low budget film so I'm going to go out on a very short limb and say it probably wasn't an incompetent production mixer. It was probably a "we will fix it in post" director problem. Now the director may have gone that way because the actress was such an issue that he was doing all he could just to get a decent performance out of her and adding speaking advice was just not a decent option. Possibly this IS the improved version of her dialog??? She may also be just terrible at ADR. Some are some are naturals. If she can't deliver a performance on an ADR stage you are kind of hosed. Replacing the voice with another actress can be a mine field and may not even be contractually allowed.

It's also possible that the director has no problem understanding her. I know when we were watching "The Wire" I had to turn on subtitles for a number of episodes before the slang and dialect was familiar enough that we could actually understand what a lot of the actors were saying. I'm not that white bread (grew up in East Oakland) but it was close to a foreign language at first.

So if production is trash and ADR is not an option you do what you can, but contrary to the PR there is no magic in post that will fix really bad dialog.

Oh the other option is that the director actually wanted that way. The absolutely atrocious sounding "production" tracks on PUBLIC ENEMIES, was not bad production but deliberate manipulation by the director. It really made the sound department look incompetent, but it was not them.
 
Noiz2 said:
It's also possible that the director has no problem understanding her. I know when we were watching "The Wire" I had to turn on subtitles for a number of episodes before the slang and dialect was familiar enough that we could actually understand what a lot of the actors were saying. I'm not that white bread (grew up in East Oakland) but it was close to a foreign language at first.
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The Wire is a special situation (although I personally had no problem understanding dialogue there - but then, I watch a lot of low budget crime films), you hear the words but don't understand them - but I'm talking about a situation where you simply can't make out what the words are. And you are 100% right that it's possible - even likely - that the director understood her perfectly well... BUT THAT'S A WELL-KNOWN TRAP! Actually I'm grateful for the opportunity to talk about this trap, because it's notorious for tripping up directors not just when it comes to sound, but to action as well. Here goes: The Known Expectation Trap.

Basically, if you know the lines, and have the script in front of you, and maybe even it's your number 2, 3, or more take, you as director already know the line perfectly well - so when you hear the actor mumble, your brain sort of fills in the gaps and makes you "understand" the dialogue and find no fault there - even though had it been the first time you heard this, and not known the line, you would NOT understand the line at all... which is the position of the audience! This trap is so insidious, that even sound people can fall into it - you are doing take #5 and you don't realize that while you can understand the recorded line BECAUSE YOU'VE JUST HEARD IT 5 TIMES, the audience is not in that position!

This trap, btw. applies to many other things as well. For example, a screenwriter thinks some plot point is perfectly clear, but it's "clear" only to him/her because they wrote it, while an objective reader is NOT clear at all! This is notorious for directors who also wrote the script - they think something is perfectly clear as shot, when in fact it is NOT to the audience, and the only reason the director thinks it's clear, is because they know the script inside out. Hitchcock was famous for constantly saying that you have to make things EXTREMELY CLEAR to the audience, because they miss things you think are clear - and he went to fanatical lengths to make sure that every development in his films was clear to the audience.

In other words: don't fall into the Known Expectations Trap - just because you were prepped doesn't mean a person off the street (audience) will have the same experience and comprehension as you do!


Noiz2 said:
Oh the other option is that the director actually wanted that way. The absolutely atrocious sounding "production" tracks on PUBLIC ENEMIES, was not bad production but deliberate manipulation by the director. It really made the sound department look incompetent, but it was not them.
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I don't think it's the case in It Follows, because there is no reason why the director would want just this one actress' dialogue to not be understood, while we have no problem understanding the rest of the actors in the very same scene (except when in some group settings the echoes and background noise makes the recorded dialogue just bad - I blame the mixer in this case).

Anyhow, that makes me wonder why the sound was so poorly recorded. For example in that film, we have the group of kids sitting around and it sounds as if the mic was too far away and we can hear all the background noise but the words of dialogue are getting lost - or they're sitting in a room and the reflections of sound against the walls creates echoes and makes it hard to understand what's being said. I mean - isn't that classic bad sound recording and mixing??
 
"group of kids sitting around and it sounds as if the mic was too far away and we can hear all the background noise but the words of dialogue are getting lost - or they're sitting in a room and the reflections of sound against the walls creates echoes and makes it hard to understand what's being said. I mean - isn't that classic bad sound recording and mixing??"

yeah..and perhaps entirely against the wishes of the soundmixer. Shot(s) too wide for boom, no time to wire actors, poorly chosen room with no time or option to treat surfaces...lots of possible factors.
Personally, I worked on a low budget indie as a one person sound "department". But..that was less of a problem than the fact that they felt comfortable spending loads of time with their lighting and blocking, only to call in sound when ready to roll. I could have at least been in the room watching what was going to transpire, but they clearly didn't want that..was once blocked from entering by an AD. Hard to know what led to the scenes you had trouble hearing. But the sound folks are probably still trying to forget it.

Regarding Depp's alleged manipulation of Public Enemy, I'd like to hear more about that..
 
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Depp? The Director was Michael Mann. He was having the mixers make volume moves on individual syllables and other weir stuff. Also he is deaf in one ear, so probably not the best person to be making sound decisions...

The "trap" is a good point. I have experienced this a couple of times. I shot a short many years ago and just didn't shoot coverage worth the word. It made it basically impossible to cut. I "saw" how it all worked, but of course it didn't. On a feature I was the designer for I watched them shoot this dramatic scene and I thought it was a great performance. Even the director though it was good. But it didn't come across on screen at all. They went back and reshot. The "trap" in this case was getting wrapped up in the live performance instead of paying attention to the recorded performance. Really surprised me and I had been doing stage and film for over twenty years by then. In recording you can fall into a similar kind of trap. You can be so focused on the sounds you want that you tune out those you don't. This happens a lot with new FX recordists. They get back and are surprised by the plane on top of the sound they wanted, or the lawn mower in the quiet "forest" recording. Once you know you are getting a good sound you almost need to spend more time listening for what you don't want.

RE: classic bad mixing...

Maybe. I mean yes that would be the sound of bad mixing BUT with out knowing the on set details you can't tell if it's bad and could have been good or it was just awful and this is actually great mixing to get what is there. I have seen both so it is really impossible to say with out knowing more. It could even be bad post? Probably not since post folks are gods who's feet never touch the water but?
 
More often than not it's not the fault of the production sound mixer.

This has been covered ad nauseum over on JWSound. Guys that have worked on these shows and films have actually spoken about it. Production sound mixers always mention it to the director or 1st AD, but it isn't the job of the sound mixer to make sure the actors enunciate. It's the job of the sound mixer to record clean sound. If an actor is mumbling through the day, no amount of good mic placement is going to save that.

The story I've seen repeated time and time again, by every production sound mixer that had encountered this goes like this..and I'm paraphrasing, but they're all the same:

"So I was working on this feature and the main actor was mumbling and couldn't be understood. I brought it up to the director, and he mentioned it to the actor, and we got maybe one good take, but then the actor went back to mumbling, and no amount of telling them to speak up would work. The director just looked at me and shrugged".

I've literally seen that from lots of sound mixers. All you can do on production as a sound mixer is bring it up to the director and make a note of it in your sound reports (you are taking sound reports, aren't you?). Make sure you note that you mentioned it to the director. Cover your ass so the person doing dialogue pre-dubs doesn't throw you under the bus because the director is breathing down their neck on the dub stage.
 
Yup and totally agree with Dave there.

One other thing to add is location multi track recording and whilst with best respects to all location mixers it is mainly there as a safety net it has now become the norm for most larger on set recordings.

That is great for feature films where things are under more control but it is now the de facto for doco and other production sound but I still say that it is nigh on impossible to monitor multi channel and give a call on a take.

What then seems to be more prevalent is the just put radio mics on everyone and we can sort it in post syndrome but as usual by the time it his there it is too late or there is minimal budget left to sort out the mess.
 
I watched the show Gary mentioned and there was a lot of very negative public opinion in the papers. I often wonder if the problem is the huge range of kit people have at home now that varies so much in performance. If I'm home in the evenings and want to watch TV late at night, I have to turn off the home cinema system and use the tint tv speakers because so many programmes have decent amounts of low frequency stuff going on, cinema style. I watched Jamaica Rd on just the TV speakers and it was ok, but with the cinema system you could here lots of atmosphere, and the naff diction of the actors made it difficult to hear, probably exactly as it was in real life. In a real cinema, the size of the room and the acoustics help no end, but it's just not the same at home. I feel for people like Gary who are presented with a set of requirements for speech music and effects and can't make them sit well together. I guess that individually, every person in the chain thought it was just ok, nobody thinking it bad enough to call a stop, but just good enough at every stage produces a poor end result, and then blame gets shared around.
 
Someone alluded early on to: "What if that "bad" dialog was how it sounded after it was improved." ...I've seen that happen. Someone says: "why didn't you fix that?" and we say: "we DID! You should have heard it before we fixed it!". To which they invariably reply: "nah...that's okay...I'd rather punch myself in the taint."

Yikes.
 
Sadly it is more a culture of being overuled by production due to time and cost (and bad planning)

We can sort it in the dub as we have it muti tracked or can do it as ADR is all too easy an option for non tech production people or even can you just EQ it to make it sound better than it is? They assume too much but then apportion blame to others for their own failings and lack of experience.

if you put your point forward then you are being awkward and obstructive to their creative process!

As for doco's it is all too easy to record everything that moves and then make up the story afterwards but 35 years ago I was asking directors and researchers if the questions they ask are going to be used to be told NO and we still hear off mic interview questions being used today.
 
OldCorpse said:
I recently watched "It Follows" - which is a pretty decent movie, and I liked it overall. The technical aspect was pretty hit and miss though, especially sound. There were many occasions when the dialogue was not easy to understand - I suppose mostly due to mixing - but by far the worst were the lines by the lead actor... very frequently I found myself unable to understand what she was saying... basically she mumbled, slurred, and her diction was extremely indistinct with odd volume drops. Now, clearly she was very bad in that respect, because in any dialogue, you could usually understand the other person, but not her.

So granting the fact that the actress was just really bad at delivering her lines in an understandable way, I am left wondering where the responsibility for the final product lies. Yes, she was at fault, but isn't the sound department there to solve problems? What do you do as a production sound person? I suppose you can alert the director to the fact that the actress is making sound very hard to pick up - or maybe if you get permission from the director you can address the actor yourself, giving pointers as to how to project your voice etc.. But assuming that the director basically says "it is what it is", or otherwise the actor is incapable of giving a better vocal, doesn't it then become your responsibility to perhaps place the mic closer to the problem actor, or wire them with a lav somewhere very close, or take other measures to make sure that you get something usable (in addition to titanic work in post, of course - but if you don't have the original materials, you can't create them in post).

Now we end up with sh|t sound from the lead actor in the final product. Whose fault is it? And what to do to avoid such a problem in the future?
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It's the director's fault.

A similar problem happened in the UK last year with "Jamaica Inn" - the dialogue was mumbled with a Cornish accent and the BBC got thousands of complaints.

The sound recordist at the time had flagged this up with the director and was overridden.

A sound recordist cannot compensate for poor acting ability.

The problem is that the director has the script and knows what the actor is saying, forgetting that the audience will have no script and has to rely solely on the spoken word.

Definitely a production fault and not in any way down to the sound recordist.
 
I know it can itself be a far from perfect representation of what's truly being recorded, but how does on set monitoring (comtek etc) by the decision makers fare? In my lowly flick, I had to run a hard line back to video village..but I never knew how much anyone was listening. I just wonder if there is ever an audio replay of a take or do directors ever critically listen with what's available. And hey..thanks for increasing my international slang vocabulary too ;)
 
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Good point John and to think of it I rarely read the scripts when dubbing drama as they tend to just be there for shooting notes at my stage.
 
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