re: Christopher Nolan Says Fellow Directors Have Called to Complain About His Inaudible Sound

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I haven't seen Tenet, but no one has brought up Inception yet.

The sound design of that movie was a huge factor in making it a great film.

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I loved the sound/score of Inception and Interstellar and neither gave me problems understanding the dialogue

Tenet was the first one where I had trouble understanding everything. I got most of it, but some parts were definitely drowned out

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Nolan's response is akin to building a sports car that only performs on the world's most expensive track surfaces... and then blaming the drivers who tell him the cars handle poorly on most roads.

If he wants to do separate releases with different sound production for the very few great sound theaters then great, that's added value. Until then be less of an elitist prick and fix your goddamn sound dialog.

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The car analogy is a poor one here, BTW that is the James may N-ring argument for cars.

Simply turning down the volume below the normal reference level hurts a sub-standard theater less than a SOTA theater. Most below SOTA level theaters will use mid forward horn-loaded speakers which have a propensity to accentuate the midrange and thus accentuate dialog. The problem is that many movie patrons prefer the loud scenes not be reproduced at reference level and some theaters accomplish this by simply turning down the volume. This reduces the SPL of both the very loud scenes and the very quiet scenes which can produce dialog that is hard to hear. The proper way to accomplish this is by using a compression algorithm which reduces the overall dynamic range which reduces the volume of the loud sounds while preserving the quiet sounds. Even most home receivers can do this using what is called midnight or night time mode.

There is nothing wrong with Nolan's sound engineering as long as the theater isn't lazy and properly sets up the sound reproduction. Either play it at reference level or if you want to reduce the volume of the loudest scenes do it via a compression algorithm instead of simply a volume pot.


Giving into the lowest common denominator is what has ruined most music recordings today (see the loudness war re music). It is also the reason much of music is mixed or at least verified on Yamaha NS10 studio monitors.

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I like his movies for the most part but Nolan underappreciates the most basic and important part of a story: the literal words used to tell the story. Great dialog isn't necessarily fancy or poetic but words are the stuff of thought and his contempt for that element of movies is disgusting from someone who thinks of himself as making art worth consuming.

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I take it you aren't a Terrence Malick fan?

FFS, I've been thinking all along that this was a consequence of mixing the score for a large format, IMAX style experience and I was typically seeing the films on non-large format or home setups.

So, this bullshite is intentional? Good to know. I'm rethinking Nolan's skills then if the thinks the problem is with me.

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I take it you aren't a Terrence Malick fan?

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If Nolan did the sound it would have been:

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Kit: You know Holly, well, she means [dialogue inaudible], sir...Look, [inaudible again] respect for [inaudible] too, sir. That's about as good a one as I know to tell ya.

Mr. Sargis: Well, it's not [inaudible]...I don't want [inaudible]. I don't want [inaudible] Do you understand? You're [inaudible]

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Tenet was next level bad with this. I had no idea some of the things Kenneth Branagh was saying and was confused as hell throughout the movie.