The Dark Knight Rises - Page 11

But they did re-record it. Watch YouTube comparison videos. Watch trailer #2 and trailer #3. Something was changed. Lines were re-recorded... and for the worse.

Here was the original voice (probably same alongside everything that was edited in the IMAX prologue):

http://youtu.be/XXAzGGX2tpw?t=1m30s

Here is the new voice (although not the same take, but with the ADR involvement and such):

http://youtu.be/g8evyE9TuYk?t=1m03s

It's probably more a matter of choosing different ADR takes for the final mix, rather than going back to the studio. I doubt they could ever have used Tom Hardy's on-set performance. As hard to understand as he was in the IMAX preview, the on-set audio would have been just a mumbled mess. I doubt even the other actors could hear what he was saying.

I don't mind that they made the voice clearer.. my complaint is that they made it louder. There's no conceivable reason for that, makes it sound like he's carrying around a 300W amp in his back pocket.

I watched this again last night and the audio mix is FAR from "terrible".........I just dont get those comments. Yes it is loud and music, effects, etc.....do compete against each other at times, but I saw this more as an artistic decision since it seemed to me that they were trying to establish a mood of edge of your seat type tension, drama, suspense, and it worked and worked well from my perspective considering the on screen elements going on. The audio did nothing but pull me into the film. All the major film/action moments such as the first appearance of the Bat, stadium explosion, bomb explosion, etc.......all hit with convincing weight and impact. Surrounds were used very well to pull you into the film, not the best I have ever heard but still very good. Banes voice did not seem to loud in the mix since they were obviously trying to set him a bit apart from the others since he was the central figure from the enemy side. Bane was a bit hard to understand at times, but that was not due to the actual mix but something with the way this was created/recorded.

All in all I thought this was one hell of a HT ride with the audio playing a HUGE role in that. The biggest complaint by far that I have is the variable aspect which I already mentioned, but that has more to do with my CIH setup and variable aspect is obviously not created with CIH users in mind.

Excessive or blatant abuse of compressors, limiters, and clipping is a cop-out and is straight up lazy mixing.

It requires no talent or skill to produce a loud mix but only the best mixers utilize finesse not brute distorted force to create a dynamic and rich aural experience.

LOud-FIdelity sensibilities should never have taken hold in music let alone in movies; it abusively defeats the whole point of 120db of dynamic range let alone high quality recording, mixing, and playback chains. There are multitudes of examples of proper mixing that completely disproves any possible 'stylistic' rational to justify crushing dynamics to create pseudo impact.
Unfortunately this particular trend is becoming more common; too many Indie films abuse this trick as well to seem higher fidelity than they could be.

TDK is quite dynamic and enjoyable but from my experience of TDKR in IMAX it was a bloated, flat, fatiguing, and boring experience. Absolutely not impactful nor enjoyable.
Perhaps when I get to watch the BR on my system I'll feel differently but from the comments of others it may not be the case.

I sometimes check out the Audio Tier thread and some of the 'Reference' titles make no sense to me unless the criteria is simply loud throbbing bass at the cost of dynamics, then it makes sense. Rather sheer output is often misconstrued as being dynamic and impactful.

Best Regards
KvE
Edited by KMFDMvsEnya - 12/8/12 at 11:02am

I don't get these complaints about the loudness of Bane's voice. If folks (I don't mean you, Jedi) want to rail against it because it was 'dumbed down' and they want to act all superior, then fine, just say so. But the fact that he's wearing a big-ass mask on his face gives the filmmakers licence to do something unusual with his voice, not unlike Darth Vader back in the day, so the loudness doesn't bother me in the least. If anything it fits the character nicely, because theatricality is one of the League Of Shadows' favourite tools.

Bane's voice was understandable for me, it just sounded stupid. It sounded too loud and "close" to enjoy. It sounded more like he was narrating rather than speaking from inside the scene.

I never said that it was a live sound of Tom Hardy at the shoot (though it could have been, and for all we know he had a mic inside his mask used to edit later), I just said that it was the original release of a voice that we've heard.

And yes, the problem is they gave him the Phone Booth effect. Go ahead and use up 5.1 channels on a voice instead of just a center channel, and amplify it while you're at it... thanks, Nolan.

The non-Imax scenes really do look fairly terrible, black crush city and color issues. And to me the IMAX scenes don't look better than TDK....and yes this sound mix is wonky. Wow, zero lessons learned from TDK bluray release.

I'd almost go as far as saying that even with all the filtering on TDK that I'd probably show someone that disc before this one if they were checking out my system and really wanted to see a Batman movie.

Really astonished with how soft the non-Imax scenes look. Did not look like that in the theater!!!

Have you heard Bourne Legacy yet? Listen to that and knight back to back

so i popped in Inception and the non-Imax TDKR scenes look identical, so i'm chalking it up to the "Nolan filter". I just remember thinking this was a nice looking movie in the theater, hence my frustration with the non-IMAX scenes on the BD (i did not see it in IMAX in the theater, BTW).

Sounds good. As soon as Bourne gets here from Netflix, I will throw in some DKR scenes after and compare. What are some other examples that are similar to Bourne?

What are your thoughts on DK as far as the audio vs DKR?

Well said! This x 1,000


Yeah.. or ANY movie that doesn't have a below average sounding mix. Just watch The Dark Knight.

The Dark Knight sounds fine. They didn't go all crazy with compressed and uber loud sound effects. Effects are properly dynamic and proper loud.

This is exactly my problem with the TDKR blu-ray. There are times where things should have a bigger impact or sound clearer, but they just boom with noise or fall into a muddy non-mix. Some dialogue sounds terrible. It's like something i would expect from a 2.0 mix matrixed into some surround modes, and even then i think i've heard some of those that sound more transparent than this.

I'm highly disappointed with this disc. On many levels.
Edited by oleus - 12/8/12 at 6:56pm

Not sure if it's been posted...

Honest Trailers - The Dark Knight Rises

Both shifting aspect ratio and Bane's dialogue are addressed.

Have to concur, Bane's voice actively hurt my enjoyment of the movie. It might have been an epic finale to Nolan's trilogy if Bane's voice wasn't so stupid. People probably don't like hearing this, but casting 5'10" Tom Hardy as the huge Bane was a terrible mistake by Nolan and WB. I kept noticing all the odd angles they had to shoot him from, to make him appear bigger than the other actors on screen. I still don't understand why they just didn't get some 6'8" wrestler for the part and be done with it. It's not like the movie hinged on Bane's acting chops.

The Dark Knight Rises was a good movie that could have been even better.

How about also getting an actor that had to go through the rigor that Tom Hardy had to go through. Plain and simple, he was Nolan's vision of the character, and probably perfected it. Blame the director, not Hardy.

Folks, there is more about hiring an actor than the audience sees.

This thought never occurred to me when I watched it. When I saw Bane, I saw the character Tom was playing.

I disagree with this whole post.

The 35mm scenes are a huge improvement over TDK. I thought it looked really good. TDK 35mm scenes looked liked DVD compared to the IMAX shots. Not so in rises. It looks more natural.

The IMAX scenes in rises are clearly better than TDK's. The depth and clarity are improved so much. I don't even know how this is possible, or even think is was possible. And the colors are so damn rich. I could lie to someone and say i have a 4K display showing them the IMAX shots and i think they would believe me. It's that good.

No way would i demo my system with TDK over rises.

Did you see it in digital or 35mm projection?
Because they did not look that great in digital projection and even worse in IMAX. The blu-ray does a capable job of conveying that look, sans IMAX filtering. I assume the 35mm prints would look better, however (couldn't find a theater still showing this on 35mm film).
Edited by 42041 - 12/9/12 at 12:36am

"The Nolan Filter" pretty much covers it. His anamorphic stuff tends to have a soft look with near impenetrable blacks, it's as simple as that. (I saw TDKR on 15/70 IMAX and a 2K DCP and the 35mm stuff was all but identical to the Blu-ray presentation.)

The non-IMAX scenes improve as the film goes along as do the IMAX scenes. The first IMAX scene and opening non-IMAX sequences do not look quite right to me. I will amend my initial disappointment/comments about the PQ and agree with your disagreement with me :-)

However, the sound mix is not stellar and often muddy, and just wrong. And sadly the film itself suffers on this repeat viewing. Geoff D summed it up nicely a couple of posts up - "impenetrable blacks". There is a way to shoot "dark" without it becoming muddy and flat.

Thanks guys. While I did not listen to Bourne back to back with DKR, I did listen to BB, DK and DKR back to back to back on Fri night so it sounds like that should work as well. I could certainly tell that each mix was different vs the others. The biggest difference I noticed between all the mixes was that the LFE/bass going from BB to the last 2 movies was considerably more aggressive both in where it was used, how often it was used and the actual level which was louder in the 2nd two films. I also noticed how the last film was just mixed loud all around like you guys have mentioned, but again to me this seemed intentional and like they were trying to create this atmosphere of gloom, doom, edge of your seat tension, etc..........and.......it worked for me. Considering the plan was to destroy Gotham and wipe it off the earth, I thought the audio conveyed that type of mood very well and really pulled me in. I loved the audio personally, but I can see where you guys are coming from as well even though it was not an issue for me. Lots of variables to consider here as well including different room, equip, ears, calibration, etc.......All of us A/V guys are sensitive to various things when it comes to audio and/or video and you guys seem to be very sensitive to any sort of compression and I never really have been which is also partly why I was impressed and you guys were not. Having said all that and from a pure technical perspective, I would agree that the DK is a superior mix to DKR.

Another reason I did not have an issue with the way the DKR was mixed as far as this goes is that there was still enough dynamic range during these LOUD action scenes to emphasize the big moments. The first time the "Bat" makes an appearance, still plenty of dynamic range to make this moment stand out. The stadium explosion same thing. The big bomb scene toward the end same thing. Those are just off the top of my head, but all still had ample room dynamically in my setup to still emphasize their importance/impact/weight in the realm of the film.

My biggest issue with audio mixing by far is when a track for this type of movie is mixed WAY to conservatively in one area or another. Two classic examples of this are 2012 and Revenge of the Sith. Both of these films dropped the ball and were incredibly conservative in the low end considering the on screen action and this takes me out of a film quicker than anything. On the opposite end of the spectrum we have something like DKR which was VERY aggressive. I dont have a problem with VERY aggressive mixing for a completely unrealistic film like the film in question. I would MUCH, MUCH rather have them go a bit overboard on the mix than go to light and conservative, especially with a movie like this which is obviously completely unrealistic in a lot of ways. That is just me though and some will disagree which is cool as well.

Switching gears..............

By FAR my biggest complaint with these films (besides the horrible variable aspect) from a technical perspective is what appears to be some sort of image stability issue with both the IMAX and non IMAX footage. There is this almost faint strobing and flickering type characteristic to many parts of these films either with the way they were filmed or the equip/techniques used which I have not seen mentioned anywhere but I find distracting. I first noticed this last week when I popped in BB on HD-DVD for the first time in years as I was going to watch it and DK before DKR came out last Tues. This strobing caught my eye in both dark and brighter type scenes at times to the point that I turned off the movie thinking there might be something wrong with either my disc, HD-DVD player, projector or receiver. I then popped in Chronicles of Riddick and Beowulf as both have some great dark material where this would show up if it was an equip issue and Riddick has both great dark and bright scenes to test with. Both titles were rock solid. I then tested some blu rays and further ruled out my equip as they were rock solid as well. I chalked it up to maybe a faulty disc somehow and left it at that. I then went and bought DKR on Tues and they had BB on blu ray on sale so I decided to buy it to see if my disc was in fact the culprit. Turns out the blu ray has the exact same issue, so I now knew it was the transfer. To further prove it was just something with the transfer, I then went and played the disc on my upstairs plasma/PS3 and could see the EXACT same thing. It was something in the transfer.

When we watched DKR for the first time Thurs night I thought I was going crazy as I could see this same thing, although not as intense, in both the IMAX and non IMAX portions of the film! At this point I started to question my setup again, but once again I could see the exact same thing testing on the upstairs setup and I even tested it on a 3rd bedroom setup which has just a little 20" tube TV and I could even see it on that. Fri night I watched all 3 films like I mentioned and while BB was clearly the most severe as far as this issue, I could see it in all 3 films off/on at various times.

So that is my biggest issue as far as all 3 of these films from a technical perspective. What is this exactly? To see what I am talking about, a great scene to see it with is on the Batman Begins blu ray or HD-DVD starting at the 54:38 mark through the rest of this scene in Gordans office. You should be able to see this kind of sporadic faint strobing of the picture in general, but if you look at the dark part on the right side starting at this time stamp it should be easy to see. Is this due to the type of camera used? Or maybe the technique? Again, I can see it even with the IMAX footage at times. Is this something to do with the way Nolan films? I find whatever this is very annoying to the point that it detracts from a lot of the otherwise amazing IMAX footage.

My other complaint about the video is just the mixture of IMAX and non IMAX in general and the lack of consistency this causes in both DK and DKR. There are many jarring examples of switching from one to the other, but a great example is right in the beginning of DKR right after the plane jack scene when it switches to the scene in Gotham during the Harvy Dent event. It is like going from some of the best blu ray I have seen to DVD quality! I personally hate this technique as it is just way to inconsistent between shots and really pulls me out of the film to some degree.

Having said all that, and once you put aside the issues as much as possible, I thought all 3 films were excellent and watching the 3 back to back to back makes for one hell of a HT experience assuming you are one of those that likes the audio mix in 3.
Edited by Toe - 12/9/12 at 10:24am

Just picked it up at Walmart. Got a question. It switches aspect ratios on its own?! Thats gonna be weird if you prefer to magnify 2.40 pictures so they are fullscreen. Like, you've already blown it up to 1.8, so the IMAX image will be MASSIVE .

Well, nothing is cut off in the IMAX shots. Instead, things are blown out. So if you magnify your shots, you're probably not losing any extremely necessary information that you aren't losing in the 2.40:1 shots as well.