Oppenheimer (2023) (2 Viewers)

[Mark Booth]

I had no trouble with dialogue in "Oppy".

I'm pleased you (and others) were able to follow along. But even Christopher Nolan agrees with me...

Christopher Nolan on Why Dialogue in 'Oppenheimer' Is Hard to Hear at Times: It's 'an Artistic Choice'

'Oppenheimer' director Christopher Nolan explained that he avoids re-recording dialogue with actors in post-production: 'I like to use the performance that was given in the moment rather than the actor re-voice it later'

people.com

Mark

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I'm pleased you (and others) were able to follow along. But even Christopher Nolan agrees with me...

Christopher Nolan on Why Dialogue in 'Oppenheimer' Is Hard to Hear at Times: It's 'an Artistic Choice'

'Oppenheimer' director Christopher Nolan explained that he avoids re-recording dialogue with actors in post-production: 'I like to use the performance that was given in the moment rather than the actor re-voice it later'

people.com

Mark

Actually, he doesn't (necessarily) agree w/ you, but merely acknowledge that some/many might take issue w/ his choices. IF he actually agreed w/ you, he might do things differently to appease you, et al.

I tend to agree w/ him. Dialog shouldn't necessarily be easily audible depending on the actual intended goal(s). Still, I (and various others here) haven't found the dialog in his films too problematic to understand nonetheless. In some cases, it could also be inferior setup or (degraded) personal hearing on top that may be part of the issue...

_Man_

 

[Mark Booth]

I freely admit to partial loss of hearing. But it is all high frequency loss, WELL above the range that human voices can produce. I can easily hear even the shrillest of sopranos.

Mark

 

[Jake Lipson]

Dialog shouldn't necessarily be easily audible depending on the actual intended goal(s).

The vast majority of filmmakers make films with dialogue that is audible. I see Nolan's point about using the dialogue as delivered on the day. However, I also think it takes the viewer out of the movie if you can't hear the dialogue. You start to think "What did they say?" and it breaks the immersive quality that Nolan works so hard to achieve with his filmmaking. If you're wondering what it is you haven't heard, that is a distraction.

If Nolan is okay with that, that's his right. It is his film.

I don't remember having this problem with Oppenheimer. But I think being annoyed by it would be a valid response. I should also note that I saw the film once during its opening weekend and not since. So I'm sure people who have seen it several times and/or saw it more recently have more of a recollection than I do of any issues they might have had with the sound.

 

[mskaye]

Actually, he doesn't (necessarily) agree w/ you, but merely acknowledge that some/many might take issue w/ his choices. IF he actually agreed w/ you, he might do things differently to appease you, et al.

I tend to agree w/ him. Dialog shouldn't necessarily be easily audible depending on the actual intended goal(s). Still, I (and various others here) haven't found the dialog in his films too problematic to understand nonetheless. In some cases, it could also be inferior setup or (degraded) personal hearing on top that may be part of the issue...

_Man_

Having trouble understanding the dialog? Subtitles. I wouldn’t want Nolan - or Altman or Welles or any director for that matter - to change their style to make the dialog “clearer.” It would take away from the performances and the overall effect that Nolan wanted.

 

[Carlo_M]

A couple of other things to add, just for consideration.

1. Overall listening levels. I run my movies pretty quiet at home (average 68-70db, peaks in the high 70s). If Nolan's mastering for higher (theatrical) levels that may suffer when it's reduced for home viewing. I saw Oppy at the TCL Chinese IMAX and didn't have a problem with dialogue intelligibility, as opposed to say when I saw The Dark Knight and trying to figure out Bane's dialogue at times. In fact I had the same issue with Hardy's dialogue in Dunkirk, so maybe Nolan has a thing for masking up Tom and making him hard to hear .

2. Center channels are often the weak link in our front soundstage, even when dialed in through Audyssey or other room correction software. There are other online speaker reviewers/sources that will cover it in greater detail but in short, the different driver array and speaker orientation can and often do degrade audio quality in comparison to the mains. In my ideal world (which I don't live in currently) I will have 3 identical full range speakers for the L/C/R mains. This would involve mounting my TV/screen higher though as I like to have tower speakers for 2ch music playback.

3. Our own personal hearing...and no not just classic "hearing loss or frequency loss". My own personal experience is this. I can still hear down to 25hz and up to 16khz. In my youth I was able to hear the 18khz tone (when I first got into this hobby as well as high end headphones). So even though I can still hear pretty far into the upper frequency spectrum (certainly well above where dialog sits) what I've found as I've gotten older is I have more difficulty when multiple sounds are competing with each other. In my youth, at parties, even with a large crowd of people all talking, I generally had no difficulty picking up my friends' voices through the din. As I get older, that's gotten considerably more difficult. I'm not a brain or hearing expert, so I can't offer an explanation why, but it's just something I notice. I rarely, in my 20s, asked people in a crowded setting "what did you say?". Now in those same situations, I find myself asking it more often. If there are any audiologists out there, would love to learn more about why this is.

This is not to say Nolan's dialogue isn't unintelligible at times, there's enough people complaining that I think the empirical evidence is out there to back up that claim. Just offering some additional food for thought.

 

[mskaye]

Having trouble understanding the dialog? Subtitles. I wouldn’t want Nolan - or Altman or Welles or any director for that matter - to change their style to make the dialog “clearer.” It would take away from the performances and the overall effect that Nolan wanted.

And I understand that w Welles he had budget limitations on certain films so the level of professionalism of the re-recording of dialog was compromised. But Welles approach to sound and dialog was pretty consistent his entire career. And it was singular.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

The vast majority of filmmakers make films with dialogue that is audible. I see Nolan's point about using the dialogue as delivered on the day. However, I also think it takes the viewer out of the movie if you can't hear the dialogue. You start to think "What did they say?" and it breaks the immersive quality that Nolan works so hard to achieve with his filmmaking. If you're wondering what it is you haven't heard, that is a distraction.

Actually, it can also have the opposite effect IMHO. His approach (and others like it) is actually immersive... and really, I find perfectly/easily understanding dialog isn't always the point at all. It really depends (as I alluded earlier).

Did great films always even have sound, let alone clear dialog? Nope.

It's quite arguable that the truly best, most cinematic films shouldn't need to rely so much on clear dialog, if any dialog, at all.

Indeed, I often find the (exact) dialog actually not nearly that important in many cases where it's hard to hear... provided it's actually a truly good/engaging film... vs a mediocre/bad one (that may rely too much on explicit dialog or voiceovers)...

That isn't to say that's always the case of course... but quite often in my experience anyway...

Just as I don't need to inspect every last square inch of the frame all the time, I don't always need perfectly clear, perfectly understood dialog either... although yes, dialog is typically meant to be understood (enough) more so than every last square inch of the frame be consciously seen and/or examined, heh.

Someone else mentioned sci-fi "gobbledegook"... and yeah, do we always need to fully comprehend those? OR whatever mysteries/questions left unanswered/unresolved in a film? Nope.

Sometimes, just the essence/feel of what's said may be plenty enough...

FWIW, I just happened to catch Wim Wender's Perfect Days the other night (as I mentioned on the Oscars thread). Dialog is quite sparing in that... especially from the lead character... and vast majority of it needed subtitling, which is rarely exact anyway... and how lovely/wonderful that was indeed to understand w/ so few words (and almost no exact understanding because of subtitling) me thinks -- I barely even needed the subtitles at times...

If Nolan is okay with that, that's his right. It is his film.

I don't remember having this problem with Oppenheimer. But I think being annoyed by it would be a valid response. I should also note that I saw the film once during its opening weekend and not since. So I'm sure people who have seen it several times and/or saw it more recently have more of a recollection than I do of any issues they might have had with the sound.

Sure, valid (enough) response... though I'd encourage people to be more openminded about such choices in sound... while still acknowledging, yes, the dialog isn't (always) exactly easy to hear/understand... just as Nolan also acknowledged.

Villeneuve's Dune's dialog was definitely (waaay) harder to hear at times, IMO -- I just saw that again on Tues late night. BUT in that case, I found it not really important quite what exactly was said in at least some, if not all, of those moments...

_Man_

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

Look at this another way.

I've grown to love (some) opera over the years. When I first began in my late teens to early twenties, I wasn't too crazy about the fact I couldn't understand what was being sung w/out following along w/ subtitles or libretto. But before too long, I realized and learned that it's actually not that important what exactly is being sung at every moment -- sure, subtitles or libretto would be good the 1st time or two, but not so necessary once I know what's going on (and there's a lot of tropes, etc to help follow along)... plus the music (both sung and not) really can be that good to appreciate despite not knowing what's actually sung (as pointed out by Red in one scene of The Shawshank Redemption)...

Even if I spoke the language, it'd actually be kinda hard to make out every word sung, particularly in that style, anyway -- that's also been true w/ English and Chinese operas/operettas, etc. But yeah, I also already treated contemporary music similarly to some extent anyway -- I find the best music usually don't really need clear understanding of the lyrics, just the gist is often enough.

That's also not to say we shouldn't wanna understand more fully... but we could also save that for revisits too... just as w/ other aspects of the film, music, whatever other art we may enjoy/like even love the 1st time and then revisit (maybe even many times) later...

_Man_

 

[dpippel]

Having trouble understanding the dialog? Subtitles. I wouldn’t want Nolan - or Altman or Welles or any director for that matter - to change their style to make the dialog “clearer.” It would take away from the performances and the overall effect that Nolan wanted.

As opposed to having, say, that same dialog splashed across the screen in large white lettering and, in many cases, superimposed over the frame?

 

[mskaye]

As opposed to having, say, that same dialog splashed across the screen in large white lettering and, in many cases, superimposed over the frame?

Well it is a useless argument because that's their style and its not going to change. I mean it's like saying someone was annoyed by the elliptical narrative structures of The Killing and Pulp Fiction because it wasn't perfectly linear. Come to think about it, Oppenheimer fits into that category too.

 

[dpippel]

Well it is a useless argument because that's their style and its not going to change. I mean it's like saying someone was annoyed by the elliptical narrative structures of The Killing and Pulp Fiction because it wasn't perfectly linear. Come to think about it, Oppenheimer fits into that category too.

I think that's an apples-and-oranges argument. As a viewer, you have no control over how a film is structured, but you CAN manage the audio presentation to a certain degree.

I was merely pointing out that both situations - hard-to-understand dialogue AND subtitles - make the experience less than optimal for the viewer. Nolan, et al., may be trying to achieve a certain effect by making dialog somewhat unintelligible, but whatever that goal may be, it gets completely negated (IMO) in the home theater environment when you turn on subtitles and ruin the experience that the director intended visually.

Which option is "best?" Well, if watching a film as close to the way the director intended as possible is your goal, then you leave subtitles off and just deal with it.

 

[Malcolm R]

I'm just always mystified that Nolan seems to put such effort into his scripts, then shoots and masters the film so the dialogue he's written is hard to understand for some.

If the words aren't important, he could just have the actors literally go, "blah, blah, blah, ... yada, yada, yada, ...." in those scenes. Why write actual lines?

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

I'm just always mystified that Nolan seems to put such effort into his scripts, then shoots and masters the film so the dialogue he's written is hard to understand for some.

If the words aren't important, he could just have the actors literally go, "blah, blah, blah, ... yada, yada, yada, ...." in those scenes. Why write actual lines?

It's not (and probably shouldn't often be) some kinda black-and-white, binary thing though.

There's simply not just 1 way to use dialog (or sound in general) afterall.

Granted, some of what's going on w/ Nolan's films are apparently also complicated by his use of big, noisy, 15/70mm IMAX cameras (unlike some others)...

_Man_

 

[Carlo_M]

So I agree with Nolan in that more often than not, the dialogue as recorded may be the best take available, and ADR is both time consuming and expensive and the results may end up not even being totally lip-sync'd which admittedly for me is something that I notice and if bad enough, takes me out of the movie.

I wonder if something he'd consider for the future is using Peter Jackson's sound isolation tech (used for The Beatles documentary) to be able to extract out audio from the the actual take, but eliminate some of the ambient noise which may have detracted from the sound quality (e.g. IMAX cameras are notoriously noisy). That way he can use the dialogue from the take but then enhance it via audio software to make it more audible.

Obviously if he wants something muffled/inaudible, then go ahead and leave it alone. But if he actually wants the dialogue intelligible this could be a way to remove distracting/ambient noise that may have been captured on the take, for the sake of the final movie soundtrack.

 

[Josh Steinberg]

When Nolan shoots using the IMAX camera, they already do use ADR on that footage. But rather than doing it in a recording studio months or years after the fact, they do what is called a “wild take” - the actors do another take in the same location without the camera running, immediately following the take with the camera, and the sound recordist gets the audio that is dubbed into the final film from that.

It’s a relatively modern phenomenon that there’s an expectation that every line of dialogue be completely and equally audible at all costs. That’s not really how movies were done for the longest time, with the auteur era in the late 60s/70s and directors like Robert Altman taking it to an extreme.

Nolan isn’t as extreme as those guys were, in my view. I think he just uses dialogue in more ways than one, and when it’s information that needs to be unambiguously audible, it is, and when it’s more about creating an atmosphere or mood, he defers to the needs of the scene - sometimes it’s not important for an audience to know every word verbatim, it’s only important for the audience to know that the characters onscreen are talking to each other.

There’s a scene in “Tenet” that exemplifies this. Early on, Robert Pattinson’s character is dispatched to learn more about the duty-free art locker facility at the airport. Although he’s walking and talking with the security executive, it’s not the most intelligible dialogue in the history of dialogue. But it soon becomes clear, at least to me, that what the characters are saying is not the point of the scene. The point of the scene is that we’re watching Pattinson sizing up the location, figuring out how he will break into it, and that his visit with the security executive is merely a ruse to get him into the door so he can examine the facility. It is then revealed that what we’re seeing is Pattinson’s memory of visiting the facility, as we hear dialogue of Pattinson recounting the visit to his partner, played by John David Washington. Everything pertinent that we need to hear is clearly audible in Pattinson’s conversation with Washington.

If there’s dialogue we absolutely need to hear without question, Nolan isn’t above hitting us over the head with it repeatedly. In the climactic battle at the end of The Dark Knight Rises, Batman repeatedly tells many different characters how many minutes until the nuclear core will detonate, and what steps need to be taken to reconnect the core to prevent the explosion. That’s all very front and center in the mix because Nolan wants us to know exactly what Batman is trying to accomplish and what parameters he must work within to accomplish it.

The writer William Goldman was fond of saying “Screenplays aren’t dialogue; screenplays are structure.” This is something that Nolan clearly believes and adheres to - what makes the screenplays to his films extraordinary isn’t what the characters are saying but the way his narratives are structured to create the immersive worlds he portrays onscreen.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

I'm just always mystified that Nolan seems to put such effort into his scripts, then shoots and masters the film so the dialogue he's written is hard to understand for some.

If the words aren't important, he could just have the actors literally go, "blah, blah, blah, ... yada, yada, yada, ...." in those scenes. Why write actual lines?

Where does Nolan say words aren't important?

You imply every word of every Nolan movie is utterly incomprehensible and thus irrelevant.

 

[mskaye]

The vast majority of filmmakers make films with dialogue that is audible. I see Nolan's point about using the dialogue as delivered on the day. However, I also think it takes the viewer out of the movie if you can't hear the dialogue. You start to think "What did they say?" and it breaks the immersive quality that Nolan works so hard to achieve with his filmmaking. If you're wondering what it is you haven't heard, that is a distraction.

If Nolan is okay with that, that's his right. It is his film.

I don't remember having this problem with Oppenheimer. But I think being annoyed by it would be a valid response. I should also note that I saw the film once during its opening weekend and not since. So I'm sure people who have seen it several times and/or saw it more recently have more of a recollection than I do of any issues they might have had with the sound.

Honestly, I saw the film twice in theaters and once at home and I never once felt that the dialogue was difficult to understand. I asked a bunch of friends the same thing and they all said that this was a non-issue. The film has grossed a billion dollars. If the dialogue was as unintelligible as some posters would lead us to believe it would have been mentioned as a reason why the film was a flop. But it's not a flop in fact, it's damn close to being a masterpiece.

 

[Jake Lipson]

f the dialogue was as unintelligible as some posters would lead us to believe it would have been mentioned as a reason why the film was a flop.

I'm not sure I would go quite that far because we all have our own experiences with film. Some of the dialogue may well be difficult for some folks to understand. That doesn't mean everyone who saw it had that issue. We know from the gross that a lot of people saw the movie and can assume that most of them basically understood it. But it is also possible that some people had an issue with parts of the dialogue, but not enough of it to make their entire experience a negative one.

I didn't have a problem understanding Tom Hardy as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises personally. But I heard that issue raised from other people and I believe their point is valid.

But it's not a flop in fact, it's damn close to being a masterpiece.

I acknowledge your point here. But "flop" and "masterpiece" are not mutually exclusive nor are they necessarily related. There have been masterpieces that have flopped, and there have also been terrible movies that made a lot of money.

 

[Colin Jacobson]

I didn't have a problem understanding Tom Hardy as Bane in The Dark Knight Rises personally. But I heard that issue raised from other people and I believe their point is valid.

Didn't Nolan actually go back and "fix" Hardy's dialogue early in the process because he was so tough to understand?

I might misremember but I have some recollection that Nolan DID touch up Hardy's dialogue.