Interstellar

[mgoorevich]

Originally Posted by Henchman

It's always easy to use the term art to make excuses for crappy mix choices that make no sense.
I'm sure they used the same excuse for the abysmal mix of " Public Enemies".

I disagree that the mix was crappy. Yes, it was harsh, yes it was greenish alike and maybe not always to my taste. But I say that I can understand for what purpose it was made (as well as no focus in MS and weird colour grading).Yes I would mix it different and you too probably. But you mix your TV and I mix my crappy indies the best I can.
I think maybe we are irritated because we know we could do it better and don't understand why others do it not the way we perceive it.
But give a little bit of tolerance to the crappy mixes.

[noiseboyuk]

In amid all the relativism, worth remembering that nothing pisses off more people in anything to do with sound than not being able to hear words. It could be argued that's is arrogant to ignore this.

It's all nuance of course. There are times when - genuinely - not hearing every word is fine, and no-one will care if the odd exclamation is a little unclear while a planet explodes around them or something. But obscure the dialogue in routine narrative scenes, and you'll have an angry mob on your hands. I think it's doubtful that this can be honestly classified as artistic bravery.

What's interesting to me though is just how diverse contemporary film mixes are. You get Nolan and Fincher at one end considering intelligability in some way vulgar, and at the other the mix can be so conservative that the orchestra sounds like they're playing in screen 3 while you're sat in screen 1 (I'm looking at you, How To Train Your Dragon 1).

[Henchman]

Originally Posted by mgoorevich

I think maybe we are irritated because we know we could do it better and don't understand why others do it not the way we perceive it.
But give a little bit of tolerance to the crappy mixes.

Actually, we couldnt do better. Because the mixers on this, are excellent mixers.

[Branko]

Originally Posted by Henchman

... the abysmal mix of " Public Enemies".

Yes. My God, that one was terrible...

[peter5992]

I just saw the movie in 70mm IMAX. Generally I liked it but the film print was pretty bad - I could see the hairs. Is that an artistic choice?! At times I thought I was watching a super 8 movie instead of the highest end film format currently available.

The soundtrack was impressive but the one thing that kind of bothered me was the near incessant music by Hans Zimmer which kept droning on and on and on for nearly 3 hours straight with very little changes. I had the same issue with Inception, apparently this is a deliberate choice by Chris Nolan.

[tamasdragon]

I saw it in 5.1 but in a really good theater, though I think the volume was at 4 or 5 not at 7. All in all, I think it's a stellar mix. I think there's one or max two scenes where this hardly intelligible dialogue helps the story, the rest is bad decision imho. Maybe because I saw it in a really good theater, but sonically I think the mixers did a pretty good job.

[FajitaTone]

Saw it In IMAX. Decent move. I enjoyed it. A little melodramatic and sometimes predictable. Superfluous scenes. I don't want to say which because "spoilers" but I'm looking at you Matt Damon, and it was just too freaking loud!!!! I like a good explosion and a score you can feel, as much as the next guy, but holy sh** that was loud.

[BrianJArmstrong]

Originally Posted by Henchman

It's always easy to use the term art to make excuses for crappy mix choices that make no sense.
I'm sure they used the same excuse for the abysmal mix of " Public Enemies".

Michael Mann rode stem faders during the printmaster. He also insisted on throwing out 98% of the editorial team's GOOD work to use the avid mix and production sound.

Art be damned, Public Enemies sounded terrible. And you couldn't have had two better guys behind the console.

[Henchman]

Originally Posted by BrianJArmstrong

Michael Mann rode stem faders during the printmaster. He also insisted on throwing out 98% of the editorial team's GOOD work to use the avid mix and production sound.

Art be damned, Public Enemies sounded terrible. And you couldn't have had two better guys behind the console.

I know.
I remember after seeing it, I thought "wtf was wrong with the mixers". But I learned, and heard through the grapevine what went on behind the scenes. Michael Mann not only threw out what the editorial team did, but made them get rid of all the dialog predubs, and start from scratch.

[TheMuffinMan01]

Saw it in IMAX in Toronto. Some of the dark 35mm stuff looked pretty bad, but holy geeze is IMAX a gorgeous format. You just don't see resolution and dynamic range like that in digital, and it's not anywhere conceivably near on the horizon. Vistavision stuff looked great too.

Most of what I remember from the mix is rumble. So much rumble. The dynamic range was huge, but not really for the better. the loud parts were LOUD and the quiet parts were normal levels. In the opening when they cutaway to the crash or whatever, I was really tempted to plug my ears. I found the loud parts later on to be excessive, but not as uncomfortable. The dialogue for me sat comfortably and audibly at normal levels, the problem was how loud the loud parts were. IMAX theatres are automatically calibrated before each screening, presumably to match some IMAX certified dub stage out there, but in a normal cinema, I can imagine a manager going in and dropping the fader based on the loud parts, thus making the dialogue far too low.

As for the film itself, I was quite disappointed. As impressive as the production was (and it was), it didn't mask the tired story for me. I walked out thinking I had seen the film many times before especially in Apollo 13 and Armageddon (obviously). Tired characters tired plot points tired story arch tired everything.