Why Movie Dialogue Has Become So Difficult to Understand

A few years ago, I accidentally turned on the subtitles on Netflix and, well, never turned them off. Now I watch everything, including shows in English, with subtitles on.

Pen Pearson, a critic at Slashfilm (/Film), does likewise. That's because he's noticed that it's increasingly hard for him to understand what actors are saying. It's not because he's suffered hearing loss. Movies are intentionally made this way now.

In his deep dive into the issue, Pearson discovered that some filmmakers choose a sound design that makes the dialogue difficult to follow beecause they often want to show hard, difficult situations for characters--the sorts of situations that might make it difficult to hear what's going on. If the audience can't understand the actors, they can empathize with the challenges of the character in that given situation.

Futhermore, actors vocalize differently these days. If I understand Pearson correctly, he means that actors aren't trained to speak clearly on an open stage, but to talk, or even mumble, into a microphone. This is a popular acting style that makes a sound engineer's work difficult. And because the modern visual style of movies calls for wide shots, it's not always possible to simply lower a boom mic over an actor.

Other trends contribute to this problem, such as the transition from sound design for theaters to online streaming video. Read about them at /Film.

-via Kottke | Image: Warner Bros.


I've been watching TV with subtitles for a couple of years - ever since someone on a Walking Dead forum mentioned how much easier it was to understand. Now there are shows I can't watch because there are either no subtitles or the subtitles don't match the dialog. The other thing I love is that they often tell me what mood the music is trying to set. Because I always thought music was trying to set either a happy or scary mood - but the number of variations is amazing and in some cases actually changes what I thought was happening in a scene.
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Try to follow these sloppy slang infected mumblings as a non-native speaker! However, there are examples of actors that are wery well able to speak very clear and understandable in whily clearly expressing the situation they are in with their voice, such as the actor of "Zec Tschelovek" in "Jack Reacher"... I think that if i can't easily follow the idalogues and i have to conentrate on the meaning of every spoken word, i actually wont't be able to enjoy the movie.What will be the next step? reduced video resolution? botox style facial exprssions?
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I've got a bad ear so sub titles are a must for me. I have noticed that British tv shows are real big on dropping their voices almost to a whisper and sub titles are a must for those shows. Even my hubby complains about needing sub titles for those shows, too.Personally, I think it's sheer laziness on any director's part to allow mumbling, muffled or drowned out dialogue from background music or noise. I don't want to spend my time trying to figure out what someone is saying instead of enjoying the entire show.
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So, I don't have surround sound or even external speakers. I thought my TV's system speakers were trash for months, until I checked my setting and realized it was set to the "surround sound" option. Sound is great now! I can hear my TV again! Has the author checked their settings?
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Trying to watch a movie on the premium channels is so annoying. Turn sound up for dialogue. Turn down for music or sound effects. Turn it up again, turn it down again. It's not fun. It's not "artistic". It's stupid. Stop it! I too have to rely on CC so I'm not changing the volume every 10 seconds.
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