I Have Had It with Mumbling Actors

I never had problems with Brando either. Julius Caesar showed he could work with the finest Shakespearean actors with no trouble.

 

Even De Nero, until much later on..was easy to understand...later he was impossible.

I think Nick Nolte should be in the running for King of the Mumblers.

 

Everyone should enunciate clearly and speak from the diaphragm just like classically trained theater professionals, like this:

 

Oh yeah. I had to turn the captions on during The Butler.

I nominate this, Mr. Talk to my Button Hole actor.

 

I have never had any issue understanding Whitaker. Great actor.

 

I worked on a Forest Whittaker film about 8-9 years ago that nobody saw, Hurricane Season. Mr. Whittaker was a helluva actor and projected at a perfectly good volume throughout the show. Fantastic actor, perfect performance every time, emotional, clear, and completely believable, a total pro. I wouldn't consider him a low talker at all. But... actors decide to change their performance in different shows, and there's also the director to contend with.

 

Oh well comes through loud and clear for us.

 

It's related to plausible denial.

I'm also annoyed with one-note actors - both Gillian Anderson and David Duchovny strike me as not really being actors - that's who they are.

It's all mind humbling to me.

 

I just watched that episode a couple days ago!

 

If he's got a tendency to mumble, it must only be a recently-developed thing.... I had no trouble whatsoever understanding him during his entire X-Files tenure.

 

*WARNING: Possible spoilers ahead!

I still don't see the dramatic impact in burying half the dialogue of something like Interstellar, but Nolan's trick worked on me twice during The Dark Knight... first when there's a relatively quiet discussion going on between two characters (right before a rather loud surprise appears at the window behind them, although I don't want to give too much away about this fantastic, most unexpected jump scare moment), and again when Harvey Dent is asking Commissioner Gordon to say the name colleagues used behind his back. In these two particular instances there was actual impact created in the contrast from soft to loud, while just having Matthew McConaughey sat on a porch mumbling for what felt like an eternity didn't work at all - I was actually convinced that large pieces of expository conversation integral to understanding the whole plot were being lost because my hearing evidently wasn't on a standard good enough for Christopher Nolan. Ironically, in his director's commentary for debut Following, he said that due to the low budget of this particular film, more attention was paid to the sound in the opening few minutes so viewers would be less likely to notice the rest of the project being shot in a way that failed to meet their high quality expectations. Having money has clearly made him more complacent, and for his next movie I'll probably wait for the home release so I can watch with subtitles enabled.

 

Exactly. To me, that's as big of an annoyance as mumblers.
Why does everything have to have a startling boost at 80 cycles?

I guess it's just reflecting the love for ridiculous emphasis for bass frequencies in pop music that began in the late 80s......

 

You could say the same thing about John Wayne, Cary Grant, Clark Gable, Charles Bronson and probably a couple hundred other popular actors over the years. Movies stars are personalities, the public likes them because they like their personality. I love Jack Nicholson...but he's had a schtick for a long time...but it's a schtick I enjoy.

 

I understood all those actors. Never had to strain.

 

I was replying to a post about "one note actors" which I quoted in my reply.

...and for the record, so far in this thread I haven't found a SINGLE actor I have a hard time understanding.

 

Noted about one note actors...and I get that...but in many cases that is their appeal.

You seriously can understand Robert Downey Jr?

 

This is what I posted about one note actors: "Movies stars are personalities, the public likes them because they like their personality". So in other words we are in 100% agreement on that score.

Yes, I can understand Robert Downey Jr.

 

For a refreshing break, find a network showing the 1950s show Highway Patrol. Ah, the old audio standards! Every word delivered clearly and loudly without interference from surging music or sound effects. Yes, there's music, and yes there's sound effects, used sparingly, and never ever in conflict with the dialog.

When the episodes are over, you don't feel that you need to repeat them to fill in what you weren't able to catch the first time around.

The worst offender on TV of late is Criminal Minds. The actors are delivering solemn lines between each other, in low voices so their reluctant host police departments won't be disturbed by the information they are exchanging, until they are ready to handle it. This is a license to mumble if there ever was one. Love the show. Hate the mumbled lines. I always have to jack the volume up so much that the commercial breaks make me lunge for my remote and it's mute function.

 

+100!!!

 

Amazing! I betcha ears would perk up at the end of the Sgt. Pepper LP...

 

Beats the whisper-talking trend.

 

Pretty much the same thing.

 

When it first premiered, the new version of HAWAII FIVE-O was a mess in the audio department, at least it was on my CBS station. The effects and near-constant music track was so much louder than the dialog that I had to adjust the levels on my stereo to tone down the left-right-surround channels and boost the center-channel level, just to try to understand the conversations.

After about 10 episodes or so, it seems like they made adjustments for the better, dialing down the music and effects.

Harry

 

I always watch DVDs with the subtitles on - not a loss of hearing issue but just to catch as much dialogue as possible, not a big fan of re-running a scene because of poor acoustics and/or mumbling.

 

When Fox first put surround sound on their Saturday Baseball game it was a disaster if you didn't have surround sound. My mom couldn't operate a surround sound receiver. So, I set her up with stereo TV thusly: analog L & R from her TV to a power amp and set of speakers. All she had to do was turn on the TV and amp, that she could understand. I was at her house and the Braves game was on. We turned it on and we could hardly even understand a word. There was so much crowd noise forced into the stereo pair of speakers. We tried another channel, normal. Back to the Baseball game and it was an audio mess. During an occasional lull in the crowd noise we could faintly hear the announcers. My mom was really frustrated because she had macular degeneration. She relied on the audio more than the video. The commercials were fine. The game had scrambled audio for anybody without surround sound.

I thought I knew what was going on. I called her little dog over and said do ya wanna go for a ride. Her doggie said yes and jumped into my lap. I told my mom, come on, we're going over to my house and see if the game is audible with surround sound. At my house the announcers were audible but there was an unnecessary amount of crowd noise in the surrounds. My system had a stereo amp for the surround channels. I walked over and turned the surround amp off, is that better mom? It was.

She and I presume an army of other viewers called in and complained. By the following week Fox had figured out how to mix surround sound and it be compatible with all the sets out there....