Why is it that when it comes to audio, people applaud clean and pure, lifelike audio.

Yet, the same people cry foul when you critisise the visual quality of the movie. Be it film grain or burnt colours, black levels. Apparently the quest for lifelike imagery is an act of the devil.

Why the double standard?

How is film grain "lifelike"? Have we been transposed into "world-noir" while I was sleeping?

There's nothing wrong with tinting a scene to achieve an effect (such as a deep blue to enhance a feeling of sorrow or isolation) but the current trend of bigger, Better, MORE is getting out of hand. You don't need artificial film grain to the point where it obscures content (Battlestar Galactica) or severe tinting that dominates most if not all of a film's run length (Matrix, 300), or luma compression to achieve a video look (Talladega Nights). If the cinemetographer was lame and used cheap stock then fine, but what is getting old fast is taking perfectly good footage and purposefully 'harming' it in the name of artistic style.

It's like smothering everything on your plate in maple syrup... a little is nice but not when it's even in your salad. By the same token people get upset when certain directors take a film made decades ago and go back and tweak the thing fifteen times and distort the original intent or image.

If you made the comparison to audio, then futzing with the image isn't like taking a mono track and creating a fresh 5.1 mix for an older movie. That might be good, assuming it's not distracting. But if studios did the same thing with audio they did with video, we'd have unlimited use of reverb, echoes, electronic delays, and all manner of 70's style electronica effects used for nothing more than aural 'interest'. Nobody would stand for that, but surprisingly they don't mind when their heroes live in a monochrome green world.

Update: Here's a sample of everyone's current favorite offender, the Matrix. Which of these color tints do you want to watch for 2 hours? The top one is a tweak I did to try to remove some of the green, the middle is the original release, and the bottom is the 'new' enhanced green release. (Original bottom images shamelessly stolen and tweaked from http://matrix.wikia.com/wiki/Ultimate_Matrix_Collection )

http://img520.imageshack.us/img520/5116/matrixcompny5.th.jpg (http://img520.imageshack.us/my.php?image=matrixcompny5.jpg)

Why is it that when it comes to audio, people applaud clean and pure, lifelike audio.

Yet, the same people cry foul when you critisise the visual quality of the movie. Be it film grain or burnt colours, black levels. Apparently the quest for lifelike imagery is an act of the devil.

Why the double standard?I don't think there is a double standard. Movies are full of foley effects, redubs done in the studio, remixing of sound effects, etc.

The fact is that movies aren't meant to be a transparent representation of "real life", any more than a painting or a sculpture.

Why is it that when it comes to audio, people applaud clean and pure, lifelike audio.
Yet, the same people cry foul when you critisise the visual quality of the movie. Be it film grain or burnt colours, black levels. Apparently the quest for lifelike imagery is an act of the devil.
Why the double standard?
There is no double standard. The principle is to see the film as it was made. If the audio has limited frequency range and SNR because it's an old film that is what we expect to get. It won't be clean and pure.

I don't think there is a double standard. Movies are full of foley effects, redubs done in the studio, remixing of sound effects, etc.

The fact is that movies aren't meant to be a transparent representation of "real life", any more than a painting or a sculpture.

the suspension of disbelief is important to storytelling. grainy film is not beneficial to this notion.

Why is it that when it comes to audio, people applaud clean and pure, lifelike audio.
Yet, the same people cry foul when you critisise the visual quality of the movie. Be it film grain or burnt colours, black levels. Apparently the quest for lifelike imagery is an act of the devil.
Why the double standard?
There is no double standard. The principle is to see the film as it was made. If the audio has limited frequency range and SNR because it's an old film that is what we expect to get. It won't be clean and pure.

the suspension of disbelief is important to storytelling. grainy film is not beneficial to this notion.


Based on this logic ,characters doing things in films that realistically couldn't be done without wires and / or CGI shouldn't be in films either. :D

Art

I'm sick of people insisting that movies should look like Discovery HD Theater.

As for a "double standard" there's nothing more manipulated and artificial than a typical Hollywood movie soundtrack. I'd sure like to know what's so "lifelike" about hearing explosions in the vacuum of space, yet if they were missing the howls of protest might be the only sounds that would travel in a vacuum.

Yeah! And we need to lobby TCM to colorize all those old B&W movies, too! :D C'mon Ted, it's not like ya don't know how....

Based on this logic ,characters doing things in films that realistically couldn't be done without wires and / or CGI shouldn't be in films either. :D

Art

There it is. ;)

I don't think there is a double standard. Movies are full of foley effects, redubs done in the studio, remixing of sound effects, etc.

The fact is that movies aren't meant to be a transparent representation of "real life", any more than a painting or a sculpture.

best answer here IMO.

the tier thread therefore is useful if what you care about is modern eye candy and totally bogus if you look at movies as art and history.

imo the tier thread is not being balanced by people that love the artistic side of home theator. it is teaching newcomers that 100 years of art before potc is crap.

I think "audio" here is getting confused with music.

With music I expect the musical instruments and vocals to be reproduced with the media, D to A conversion, amplification, and speakers as close to what they sound like without all that stuff in between me and the music.

With a movie I want what comes out of my speakers and what is displayed on my screen to be as close to what the original movie looked and sounded like. I don't want to see or hear anything other than what was there in the final cut of the film. I don't want to see what it looked like to be standing next to the camera and I don't want to hear anymore or less than what was intended to be on the audio track.

There is no double standard.

best answer here IMO.

the tier thread therefore is useful if what you care about is modern eye candy and totally bogus if you look at movies as art and history.

imo the tier thread is not being balanced by people that love the artistic side of home theator. it is teaching newcomers that 100 years of art before potc is crap.

My sentiments exactly except I don't give shitt what it teaches them. I think HD baseball and X Box games aren't what films should look like and this is just common sense if you ever go to a commercial cinema. So many of the aspects of what film is both technically and artistically is what we should want to see when we see it on the HD optical media.

Art

impinging the film for the sake of style is just a fallback for a poor director who failed to manifest the scene as they intended.

impinging the film for the sake of style is just a fallback for a poor director who failed to manifest the scene as they intended.
Explain how stylistic choices like deliberate grain , desaturated colours, tinting et cetera are 'impinging' the film. That is exactly how they might choose to manifest the scene as they intended.

Was Picasso a poor artist because the people the people in his paintings were distorted instead of life-like?