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.
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
I really enjoy how old movies have their actors speak with a “theatre voice,” clearly annunciated, typically the same accent, loud for the people in the back.