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The BBC's mumbling thespian problem


Scott Smith

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See:

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/apr/19/bbc-tv-mumbling-problem-happy-valley

While I'm encouraged to see the Brits address the problem of incomprehensible dialog on their TV shows, I have to admit that I am at a total loss when it comes to the statement that the "source of mumbling is incredibly hard to isolate".

Wow, really!!? Well, Ms. Moore, I can give you a clue.....try looking AT THE SOURCE!!!

I mean, DUH....!!

 

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This was a great read thanks Mr. Smith!! The comments range from dead on Mr. Sound Guy speaking the truths that we all know to dummies saying the problem is old people's ears and that 2000 viewers are anomalies.  I recall reading a similar article a few years ago, and I'm surprised it's still in this stage of discussion.  I woulda thought those Brits woulda taken care of it...

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"I also think muttering is something we could have a look at."

 

well it seems to me that even here in Germany there is an epidemic of actors whispering, mumbling or who are too busy trying to project an affected vocal performance. so often i have to deal with actors standing meters apart from eachother in a scene and whispering their dialogue as if talking only to themselves, and this even in scenes happening in bars or discos when later in post loud ambience and music will be pasted on top. and sometimes when i have intervened the directors say to me: "well, i can understand what they are saying". and yes they can, because they know the script. the future viewer is not in that privileged position.

some years ago i did a film in which the main actor had lines both in german and english. his german was eloquent and precise but everytime he had an english line he suddenly tried to emulate Marlon Brando's Godfather voice! i, as a native english speaker, couldnt make head or tail of it. the lines were later all dubbed!

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Funny, I see the same problem pop up more and more often in U.S. movies too. Some actors mumble, and some actors just have really bad enunciation. The main girl in "It Follows" to my ears just has atrocious enunciation. A film I saw recently that had a really good rep "The Invitation" has the main character guy enunciate so badly that half the time I couldn't understand him, while I had no problem with the rest of the actors in that movie. I doubt that just that one actor was badly mic'd while the sound person did a good job with literally every other actor. At some point, if the director does not support you, there is not much you can do. I mean, I personally would not approach the actor, but I would warn the director that this actor is going to be a bear to hear for the audience. Unfortunately, the director has the script in front of him/her and doesn't hear the problem. Oh well, you can only do what you can do. But then you hear back "oh we had a terrible sound person, we got lots of complaints from the audience that they could not understand our main actor", not stopping to think how that "terrible" sound person managed to get perfectly good sound from the rest of the 20 actors in the production, and just "happened" to drop the ball on that one actor. Meanwhile the director is not going to come back and say "gee, I was warned about this actor by the sound guy", instead, he'll just agree that it was the fault of the sound guy, because after all "that's the job of sound". What can you do? Maybe just stick a lav down the throat of that one guy and let the post folks worry about how to put it together.

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Yeah, the "let's blame it on the sound guy" aspect of all of this irritates me to no end.

When it comes to needing to find a scapegoat for bad sound, this business is rightfully famous for picking on the person who not only has no control over the problem, but no authority to fix it.

Funny, you never find a casting director who gets blamed for suggesting an actor who mumbles or has poor diction, or a director getting blamed for hiring them.

Yet, in the case of the BBC debacle, the problem was obvious to 2000 members of the general public who took the time to write.

 Just gotta say again-DUH!!!

 

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