Here's Why Movie Dialogue Has Gotten More Difficult To Understand


A friend sent me this article. It is a pretty long article, but it is full of details on why this happens. There is no "fluff" in this article.

https://www.slashfilm.com/673162/heres-why-movie-dialogue-has-gotten-more-difficult-to-understand-and-three-ways-to-fix-it

I found it completely fascinating. There are a couple movies I have noted that have had excellent audio (and video), but I’m sure there are many more:

Wonder Woman - this has absolutely excellent audio and video quality. Everything is very high resolution and mixed extremely well. I actually use this movie a lot for testing audio/video in different situations.

The Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn - Part 2: (yeah, don’t laugh at me). This movie has very high video resolution and clarity in the beginning scenes (as well as many other scenes). One of the sharpest and highest image detail I have seen. The audio is very good as well.

==== on the other hand ===

Star Wars: Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker - this movie has absolutely horrid audio. The mix is much lower than what you need and audio clarity absolutely sucks. This was just a recent movie I watched, but I have seen many action movies where the audio is loud enough, but it’s a complete mess.

auxinput

The general volume of the Star Wars movie was much less than any other movie.  It was basically like listening to a stereo recording with only 1 speaker instead of a full 2 speakers.

A lot of actors whisper their dialog instead of speaking it (trying not to appear too "manly"? I don’t know). Gets on my nerves...

Unintelligible? Right away I thought, "Christopher Nolan!" Sure enough, he comes up right away. But the next biggest factor comes way near the end, "Sound is still a mystery to a lot of people." 

Oh well. It is by and large a lot better than it was 50 years ago.