Avatar 3 sound volume

[Mike Blakesley]

Disney put out a letter from James Cameron asking exhibition to please, please, play this movie at 7.0 otherwise it won't sound right.

The key unlocked last night so I decided to test it out to see what I thought. Usually our typical setting of 5.5 to 6.0 will work even if the director thinks we should blast the roof off the place. My practice is always to listen to a dialogue scene and adjust for that. (In most cases I feel like the director's "desire" is for the voices to sound way louder than necessary. This is just my personal experience/feeling based on a lot of years in the business, your mileage may vary.)

This time though, James is spot-on. The movie sounded just fine at 7.0, not overly loud, but nice and impactful. So my recommendation to everyone, is yes, go ahead and play it at 7.0 if that isn't your normal setting. At least give it a chance and see what you think.

[Marcel Birgelen]

You're running the 7.1 mix?

Avatar 1 and 2 @7 was also pretty doable. Good to see that Cameron isn't suffering from ear rot, like Christopher Nolan... Last time I've shown Interstellar @ 7.0, people attending the show started to question reality... If Nolan would read this, he'd probably say something like: Yeah, that's the point...

[Chris Haller]

I'm running Avatar 3 at 7.0 in our PLF houses. It sounds lovely. I agree - powerful, but not too much.

In our standard houses where I usually run at 4.5, I've got it bumped up to 5.0 with the 5.1 mix. I haven't had time to pop in and listen to it yet, but I'm sure it sounds pretty good. Our sister theater runs its standard houses at 5.5 typically, so I bumped it up to 6.0 with the 7.1 mix. Just not enough time to go an test every house across the 10 theaters that I have running it, I guess.

[Joe Redifer]

Film-Tech Forums - Directors have been sending out those notices for decades now. The James Cameron letter is getting some attention online and people think it's so great or so amazing that he would ask theaters to do this blah blah blah. I wish I would've kept them all. Even Woody Allen demanded his movies play at 7. People on the internet would be so blown away that literally thousands of nearly the exact same letter has gone out to theaters.

Film-Tech Cinema Systems - I am hearing that Avatar has a very soft mix. Very little subwoofer, not much in the way of surrounds. Even in IMAX where it's unheard of to hear anything quiet or even pleasant. Not like I care because I already saw the previous 2 movies and I think I've had my fill with this nonsense.

EDIT: I do not know why my post says FIlm-Tech Forums and Film-Tech Cinema Systems. I did not write those. I mean 1 and 2. So I wrote # 1 and # 2 (without the spaces). Is Daryl C.W. O'Shea around to fix this?

[Steve Guttag]

Any time you use the hashtag/pound symbol, F-T turns it into a link (#)

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There...a manual one in case the actual one didn't work.

[Jim Cassedy]

Any time you use the hashtag/pound symbol, F-T turns it into a link (#)

Thanks for that explanation, Steve!

I've had several past posts where the mysterious "Film-Tech Cinema Systems"
inexplicably appeared and I could never figure out why.

[Steve Guttag]

Since there are so many things that may involve the theatre number...not having that be a reliable symbol is certainly annoying. I bump into it all of the time on my Q-SYS for Cinema blog.

[Ryan Gallagher]

I just edit mine quickly to “No. X” etc when it catches me out. No biggie but yes a touch annoying.

You’d think it was a shorthand way to anchor link to prior replies, but if I try 7 for Steve’s response above that is not the link I get (or at least not in preview): Special

[Jon Dent]

I am hearing that Avatar has a very soft mix. Very little subwoofer, not much in the way of surrounds. Even in IMAX where it's unheard of to hear anything quiet or even pleasant.

it sounds okay, but a step down from The Way of Water. There's definitely surround and subwoofer activity, but it's more restrained. From the credits it looks like Christopher Boyes, the sound designer and lead mixer from the first two, wasn't involved on Fire and Ash for whatever reason.

Kind of reminds me of how Gary Rydstrom stepped away from the console for Revenge of the Sith, leading to a much tamer mix than the first two prequels.