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What movie feels impossible to watch without captions? (lemmy.world)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/asklemmy@lemmy.world
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I was recently watching the Sixth Sense, which prompted me to wonder if I'm the only one that feels like some movies feel truly impossible to follow everything in the story without captions. For this movie specifically, Haley Joel Osment's character was difficult to hear in his particular speech patterns and hushed voice.

I know Tenet is infamously not-great with it's sound design that this could be another example.

What are some of yours? Tell me I'm not the only one.

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[–] 19 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I watch every movie and show with subtitles. It's just easier because I don't have to turn the volume up so much and I can eat while watching without missing any dialogue and if someone talks over I still don't miss anything. Sometimes there are snippets in dialogue I'm not even sure you are supposed to hear them but you can still read them in the subtitles.

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  • [–] 11 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    Sometimes there are snippets in dialogue I'm not even sure you are supposed to hear them but you can still read them in the subtitles.

    This is the big one for me. If I hear a character mumbling but the subtitles say "[incoherent mumbling]" then I don't worry about it. But if i hear a character mumbling and the subtitles actually show me what they're saying, I know the audience was supposed to have understood it.

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    • [–] 10 points 9 months ago

    Christopher Nolan is my favorite director and least favorite sound engineer.

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    [+] 9 points 9 months ago (8 children)
    [deleted]
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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago* (1 child)

    there are two reasons for that!

    older older movies often didn't have much sound design, you heard what the people on set heard and maybe one sound effect or two if they wanted a gunshot without shooting guns on set

    most movies today are sound mixed for cinema, which almost always has a very expensive set up of speakers with one (or two) central speakers reserved specifically for dialogue. noticed how when you're at the cinema you don't need subtitles as often even though you're crunching through popcorn? but the problem arises when the producers decide they can't be bothered to hire the sound guy to make a separate sound mix for streaming or DVD and just mince the 7.1 speaker mix through your stereo headphones, squishing all the dialogue together with everything else without a care for the physical differences in playback

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    I don't know, I just watched Casablanca the other day and boy did I need subtitles...

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  • [–] 2 points 9 months ago

    Or if it's in a dialect that can be hard to understand. I remember watching a Scottish movie without subtitles not understanding a word said till about half way through. I had to rewatch it from the beginning now that I could mostly translate what was said.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago* (1 child)

    Set the volume to 100 when people are talking. Quickly set it to 5 when there's a anything else. You need to bounce between 5 and 100 all the time to make the movie tolerable.

    What's the deal with this sound design? If I keep the volume at 5, I'll miss 90% of the dialogue. If I keep it at 100, the movie will shatter my ears, and then I'm permanently done with movies. What exactly are the sound engineers trying to achieve here? Why are movies designed to be so unwatchable?

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    • [–] 6 points 9 months ago

    Trainspotting

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    [–] 5 points 9 months ago

    Snatch.

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