Jump to content

Tenet up: listen, Christopher Nolan, we just can't hear a word you're saying #christophernolanpileon


Jim Feeley

Recommended Posts

In case you're not tired of the topic, here's a column from today's issue of The Guardian, prompted (I guess), by Nolan's new book.

 

====

Tenet up: listen, Christopher Nolan, we just can't hear a word you're saying

The Tenet director has dismissed critics of his poor sound mixing by blaming us for being too conservative.

Why must he keep toying with our perception of sound?

 

We’re all aware of the impossible situation that film currently finds itself in. Screens started shutting in the summer. This is because the big new movies have all been postponed. This is because movie studios are nervous about losses. And this is because Tenet, the great bellwether of cinema in 2020, underperformed theatrically.

 

But perhaps an alternate dimension exists where cinema is still thriving. The Eternals is breaking box-office records. No Time to Die is still showing to packed houses. Pre-sales for Dune are through the roof. And it’s all because people flocked to Tenet in their droves. What separates that dimension from this? That version’s Tenet had a better sound mix. People saw it, they understood it, they didn’t immediately tell all their friends that it was frustrating and incomprehensible, and as a result it gave Hollywood the confidence to spring back into action.

 

It’s hard to be anything other than completely perplexed by Tenet’s sound mix, where almost every scrap of dialogue that isn’t being screamed by Kenneth Branagh is smothered under a thick blanket of soupy noise. Don’t get me wrong, it might still be a good film – I’m looking forward to watching it at home with the subtitles on to find out – but a movie where you have to try to lip-read several complicated theories about the nature of time isn’t exactly accessible to a mass audience.

 

Nevertheless, Christopher Nolan is bullish on the matter. The topic of his sound mixes comes up in the new book The Nolan Variations, and he claims that his peers have called him up to complain about it.

====

 

Rest of the column, a five-minute read (at the most):

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/nov/16/tenet-up-listen-christopher-nolan-interstellar-sound-mixing

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I think a director can spend so long with their film, from the start with the script, through the weeks/months shooting of it, then the many many hours in the editing room, that they end up totally losing the big picture perspective of it. And they no longer can see it "fresh" like someone who hears it for the first time without any prior knowledge. 

 

One of the many downsides to this, is that the director knows every syllable of dialogue inside and out, better than anybody else on the planet. Thus if there are issues in audibility with the dialogue, the director might gloss over this as they already mentally "hear" it inside in their own mind 110% perfectly crystal clear as they know the dialogue itself so very very very well. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

55 minutes ago, Vincent R. said:

His art, his choice, move along. 

 

And yet, you commented! Wait. Let me translate that into Nolanese. @#%^*(&. ?( ______________%&^P{}>:K

 

I kid.

 

Ya, I'm mostly done with this. But I find it interesting that general-interest media such as The Guardian, are noticing and discussing. And for me, it really does get in the way of his films. But at least having Nolan take credit/blame for this lets people know that the sound department didn't screw up... Some of my non-film/video friends have also commented on Nolan's sound... I don't recall them mentioning that in other mainstream (e.g., non mumblecore) films, because of the consistent high quality of sound departments' work.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/17/2020 at 9:37 AM, Vincent R. said:

His art, his choice, move along. 

This is part of a trend, and not really the time to move along in my opinion. He is certainly not the main culprit, but part of this “movement” towards an audible dialogue can be attributed directly to him. I am really glad to see people other than sound professionals talking about this!  Thanks for posting Jim!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/17/2020 at 7:37 AM, Vincent R. said:

His art, his choice, move along. 

Sure, if I were in the post house for this project, I'd keep my mouth shut (boy, did I ever step in a big pile commenting on films when I worked at a post house).  And yes, certain people such as your self who are product representatives or those who work in Hollywood on major features would tend to keep their mouths  shut for purposes of not showing bias and staying employed. But for the rest of us,  I would think if there is anywhere one should talk about a movie's sound, it's here.

 

If one can't  share and discuss art, what's the point of art?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

14 hours ago, Paul F said:

certain people such as your self who are product representatives or those who work in Hollywood on major features would tend to keep their mouths  shut for purposes of not showing bias and staying employed.

Oh you gonna play it below the belt now? From a technical point of view I will be the first to start a discussion. This is not it.

 

14 hours ago, Paul F said:

If one can't  share and discuss art, what's the point of art?

fair point, yet in the end, there is no right or wrong in this. I believe gradually we can conclude this now, after x-amount of Nolan's movies with overwhelming sound. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Vincent, I had no intention of punching below the belt. I do regret using the term 'mouths shut'. That certainly is not a polite way of expressing what I wanted to say. It's an unfortunate term that came to mind because of my experience at a major post house where I managed to shove my foot into my  mouth on occasion even when I made complementary remarks. I learned that no matter what I thought, good or bad, I needed to keep my mouth shut and not have an opinion about anything.

 

I was also a product manager. As such, I know that one has to have a neutral voice and not make opinions in certain subject matter.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 11/23/2020 at 1:06 AM, Vincent R. said:

Oh you gonna play it below the belt now? From a technical point of view I will be the first to start a discussion. This is not it.

 

fair point, yet in the end, there is no right or wrong in this. I believe gradually we can conclude this now, after x-amount of Nolan's movies with overwhelming sound. 

 

Are you saying that his movie’s profits are the measure of their quality?
 

This thread is about a sound problem that has “broken” into the non-sound-guy world.  That’s pretty special! It is not a fabricated sound problem, it is a real sound problem. People other than sound guys cannot hear the dialogue. That is a sound problem.
 

Shrugging one’s shoulders and saying “that’s his style” is perfectly acceptable for you to do, but it is pretty outrageous to advise everyone else to do the same, and then get defensive when they react with their opinions.
 

I don’t think it’s any fun to read a bunch of old dudes complaining. If that’s what this seemed like to you, your reaction is understandable. But I think you projected a little. We have already talked about this here many times, and I appreciated the article.  It’s still worth talking about, in my opinion.

 

Dan Izen

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 hours ago, Izen Ears said:

But I think you projected a little.

I think you are projecting a little, or a lot. All I said was "his art his choice, move along" (meaning to me: it doesn't matter, millions of movies are made, with certain artistic choices, whether it is sound, lightning, whatever). I guess the bait was in the latter of my sentence, the "move along", that for some reason I am the subject all of the sudden over here. 

3 hours ago, Izen Ears said:

Are you saying that his movie’s profits are the measure of their quality?

No, I was talking about his style. Like, how David Fincher's films are basically always dark and green, Gaspar Noé shocking without borders, And Vin Diesel films is sponsored by white wife beaters.

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

23 hours ago, Vincent R. said:

I think you are projecting a little, or a lot. All I said was "his art his choice, move along" (meaning to me: it doesn't matter, millions of movies are made, with certain artistic choices, whether it is sound, lightning, whatever). I guess the bait was in the latter of my sentence, the "move along", that for some reason I am the subject all of the sudden over here. 

No, I was talking about his style. Like, how David Fincher's films are basically always dark and green, Gaspar Noé shocking without borders, And Vin Diesel films is sponsored by white wife beaters.

 

I apologize for misunderstanding you. I thought when you said to move along, you were telling me what to do. It also appeared you were judging everyone for discussing a problem because you don’t think it’s is a real problem. And by the way that is not projection, that is misunderstanding. Accusing Paul F of playing below the belt is projecting.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I have a love-hate relationship with Nolan. I love Memento, Prestige, Dark Knight, and thought Inception, Interstellar, Dark Knight Rises were misses. He certainly is a genius, but Tenet (his absolute worst film in my opinion) has other MAJOR issues not related to the sound mix. I'm shocked and disappointed about his seeming lack of understanding about the sound mix in general. He calls the audience "conservative". How does he not understand one of the oldest cliches about filmmaking: you can do almost anything you want to the picture, but the sound has to be solid or else you're watching something akin to student film/youtube video (or something like that). He only seems to just be learning that now. Maybe it's a product of being at his level, surrounded by yes-men, but besides the Mumblecore movement, I have not seen this kind of issue with any other filmmakers.

 

Edit: Let me add - In an early interview with him, he talks about production sound and ponders why more sound mixers don't use the "4-1-6" microphone so he clearly has opinions about how sound is captured and thinks he knows it all (though he probably does know more than the average Joe). There's stories about him telling the Dark Knight Rises team where to put the lav to capture Bane's voice from behind the mask. Didn't work out so well. I've also heard he fired the production mixer on one of his movies.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 month later...

I'm coming a little late to this party, but I tried streaming Tenet a few days ago and after 15 minutes I gave up. I could hardly understand a word of the story. With such a hyped film, I was expecting to at least be able to hear the dialog.  I don't even know or care what the rest of the film contains. I've liked a lot of his stuff, but this one was unwatchable.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

19 hours ago, Ira Seigel said:

I'm coming a little late to this party, but I tried streaming Tenet a few days ago and after 15 minutes I gave up. I could hardly understand a word of the story. With such a hyped film, I was expecting to at least be able to hear the dialog.  I don't even know or care what the rest of the film contains. I've liked a lot of his stuff, but this one was unwatchable.

I'm in the same boat. I just tried streaming it and couldn't make it. It was disorienting on almost an emotional level. I felt so removed from the action that it bordered on the surreal.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 3 weeks later...

I haven't seen this posted before. Interesting analysis on Digg, particularly the bit about Nolan mixing only for excellent theatre sound systems not for run of the mill, smaller theatre systems.  Also that the mix for home viewing is different from the mix for theatre viewing and that leads to different opinions about the sound:

https://digg.com/video/the-reason-why-you-can-barely-hear-the-dialogue-in-tenet

 

Best Regards,

Larry Fisher

p.s. Makes you wonder about 48k vs 96k

 

 

 

 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

 Regarding the comments in that piece about the quality of theater sound systems, decades ago, the post sound team at Sprockets (now Skywalker Sound) and the THX group (both a part of Lucasfilm) noticed how their mixes didn't work in a lot of theaters. They surveyed hundreds of theaters ambient sound levels (air conditioning fans etc) and developed a background noise generator that was added to the mixing console of their mixing stages. On every mixing console is a button that they can turn on or off that adds the noise into the mix so that they can hear what the mix will sound like in the average theater specifically so that dialog is not lost in some theaters.

 

I believe most of the credit for this goes to Thomlinson Holman, who developed THX.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

When I gave tours to friends, one of my favorite bits of the tour was to turn that button on and off. For some reason, having toured the amazing facility, that little button made such an impression. People were always amazed at how complicated sound for film is. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...