Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Public Enemies Sound?

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Posted by Jerome Holmes (Member # 5013) on 07-01-2009, 05:31 AM:

We got a notification rather early (either Friday or Saturday) to put our Dolby readers up to 7 for "Public Enemies." Pretty much right away dismissed it as the same ol' notification we've been getting... HOWEVER, the sound was rather uneven - at least on our print... We ran it at 6 but there were still moments that were well under what I'd expect for dialog and action...

As for our reader, we're using a Dolby Digital CP-650, and it was running with a pretty low rate (1-2)... There was one audio cap that i could tell (maybe 2).

Anyone else experiencing the same issues?

Posted by Caleb Johnstone-Cowan (Member # 3710) on 07-01-2009, 07:17 AM:

I watched the rehearsal last night and noticed the sound thing, it seems intentional.

Posted by Andy Bajew (Member # 5330) on 07-01-2009, 01:48 PM:

We have the same issue with our print. It seems like it is becoming more common to receive a print where the sound levels are way off between dialog and some sort of action scene. I constantly had to switch the DTS between 5.2 and 6.0 until we finally left it at 5.7. We haven't had any complaints yet.

Posted by Matt Skilton (Member # 5288) on 07-02-2009, 06:35 AM:

We had the same problems with our print. Reel 2 especially has some very bad sound mixing when John Dillinger meets Billie Frechette for the first time.
I actually put this down to a Michael Mann thing as Miami Vice had some strange sound going on too. Michael Mann likes to shoot everything on location, and he tends to like using the recorded audio from the actual shoot rather then dubbing it all, so I think that's the real problem.

Posted by Jonathan Althaus (Member # 5042) on 07-02-2009, 07:15 PM:

Our prints sounded perfectly normal. It's not playing in our lone Dolby theatre though, Ice Age went there.

Posted by Matt Young (Member # 5327) on 07-02-2009, 10:14 PM:

We had to turn our sound up in that auditorium a couple noches. Some parts of pure dialog were just not loud enough before we turned it up.

Posted by Rod Cornelison (Member # 5202) on 07-02-2009, 10:19 PM:

[beer]

Posted by Laurie Higgins (Member # 4843) on 07-03-2009, 04:32 PM:

Same here, I had to cut the sound up and then yesterday it switched theaters and today I have had complaints and had to turn the sound up way more than what made me comfortable. I also have to say that at the time, it was all dialogue and I couldn't even hear what they were saying through the monitor with the sound at our normal level.

Posted by Matt Skilton (Member # 5288) on 07-03-2009, 05:15 PM:

The problem is there's a lot of gun firing in the film, and our HF speakers are very prone to breaking so I'm refusing to go above 5 on our CP-650's, regardless of complaints! [Embarrassed]

Posted by Justin Gorka (Member # 3727) on 07-03-2009, 05:55 PM:

We had info from our dudes that it is intentional! Bloody directers.

Posted by Andy Bajew (Member # 5330) on 07-03-2009, 11:48 PM:

In my theater, Public Enemies is being played in a auditorium where the DTS discs "aren't a match" and is being moved to an auditorium where the DTS processor is a much newer type where we leave the discs in. Would it being played with digital soundtrack really make any difference?

Posted by Jonathan Althaus (Member # 5042) on 07-03-2009, 11:54 PM:

This film, it seems so. We're having issues with one of our drives and its pretty evident (in a bad way) when it switches over to optical.

Posted by Jeremy Weigel (Member # 4208) on 07-04-2009, 12:44 AM:

When I arrived this evening I was told that there had been a few complaints about the dialog being too low so they turned it up about half a notch (CP65/DA20) and then started getting complaints that the action scenes were too loud. Having already seen this discussion, I informed my boss that we weren't the only ones receiving complaints.

After telling the projectionist to put the fader back to its "normal" setting, I went in to listen for myself. The scene I watched was near the beginning where they are in a car. The shots that took place inside the car had strong clear dialog, but the shots with camera aimed at the cab from outside the car had soft dialog and then when the shot switched to the inside again the dialog was strong and clear again. I believe it went back and forth between shots a few times and every time the dialog went loud and then soft and did get annoying. If the whole film was done this way I can certainly see why people start to complain.

Posted by Mike Schulz (Member # 4297) on 07-04-2009, 01:55 AM:

I am convinced they ran out of money in post production. Not only was the sound mix terrible but the HD looked like some film students shot a movie in their back yard. Come on Michael Mann, even you know how to do this right, go re-watch Collateral to see how the finished cut should look like.

That being said, we have our fader set to 7.0 for both 35mm and digital presentation.