'This is the part of myself I told you I struggle against'

Long day yesterday. After we put my daughter to bed, my wife and I were exhausted. We were going to sit down to dinner at the table, but then we both got that “I’m too tired to sit upright,” vibe and we ate in front of the TV instead.

We turned on an episode of You. It’s on Netflix. Doesn’t matter if you’ve seen it really, the point isn’t that we watched it, or what it’s about. It’s how we watched it. Like this:

See? Subtitles “on.” Closed captioning enabled.

Why? Because in 2021, sound quality is just all over the place when it comes to television and movies.

This isn’t just me saying this. There’s a Reddit thread of people who went to see the movie Dune recently and found its dialogue to be incomprehensible at times, but then went home to watch it again on HBO Max with subtitles, and felt as if they were watching an entirely different movie.

And, here’s Bob Pearson, who writes for the movie review site Slashfilm, and who did a deep dive recently on why film and TV are getting more creative, more visually interesting—and yet harder to hear:

Pearson surveyed Hollywood friends, colleagues and sources who work in sound editing, mixing and design, including some Oscar winners like Jaime Baksht, who got the award for Sound of Metal last year. (Highly recommended movie, btw.)

They industry experts told him there are a few things going on today that weren’t the case 10 or 20 years ago, and that combine to make it a lot harder to hear what’s going on in movies:

“In the last 15 years, movies have become more visually exciting,” said Mark Mangini, the Academy Award-winning sound designer behind films like Mad Max: Fury Road and Blade Runner 2049. “And because of that, it is less likely that you're going to be allowed to put that boom mic right where the actor is, because it's probably going to drop a shadow because it's in front of a light that the camera team insists has to exist to get the perfect look.”

"It seems to be a little bit of a fad with some actors to do the sort of soft delivery or under your breath delivery of some lines," explained Thomas Curley, who won an Oscar as a production sound mixer on Whiplash (another good one). "That's a personal choice for them. Our job is to record it as well as we can regardless."

A “high-profile Hollywood sound professional who wishe[d] to remain anonymous” explained:

Once upon a time, say maybe 1997, there were two main ways to watch a movie: in a theatre, or at home on your VCR. Now, there are many more options, and some of the sound pros say there’s a vast gulf between what sounds sound like in the mixing booth and what they should like on a wide variety of consumer viewing setups.

I think I can summarize this one pretty well; it’s just a facet of human nature:

Actors, directors, and others on set don’t notice mumbled dialogue, simply because they’ve heard the script so often by the time they’re shooting for real.

Finally, some of the sound pros blamed directors for simply not caring.

Among the worst offenders: Christopher Nolan, director of "Tenet," "Interstellar," and "The Dark Knight Rises,” whose films “push the boundaries of sound design, often resulting in scenes in which audiences literally cannot understand what his characters say.

(According to Pearson, Nolan admits that “other filmmakers have reached out to him to complain about this issue in his movies.”)

I’m just kidding, there is no real solution—well, except for subtitles. But, I’m glad for this discussion, because it allows me to put off admitting what might actually be the root cause that nobody seems willing to admit.

In short, none of us is getting any younger.

Thanks for reading. Photo: Fair use from ‘You.’ Want to see all my mistakes? Click here.