Or does every fucker on to and film mumble through their lines?

[PiperChapstick]

Watched a shit Jake Gyllenhaal film last night that didn't have subtitles available and I must have pressed the rewind button 50 times as I couldn't bloody understand a thing anyone said. Unless the script actually was as follows:

Man: Bfmfmumin sububmuff flubburfur

Woman: I clufferdufferf runyhumbut

Man: yeah bluffur shuburt wididhiy

It's a regular occurance in my house, I watch about 75% of tv and film with subtitles on now shouting "ENUNCIATE GODDAMN YOU"

Am I just a deaf unreasonable old bastard or do other people experience this?

[KurriKurri]

No I find many films extremely muttery (Tinker Tailor - muttery and incomprehensible) also most seem to have been filmed in complete darkness.
I am an old gimmer though

Mind you I don't think it's a completely new phenomenon - Marlon Brando was a terrible mutterer - Frank Sinatra used to refer to him as 'Mumbles'.

[BugritAndTidyup]

No, me too. We just have the subtitles on all the time because I find it so hard to make out what people are saying, especially when there's other noise going on. Mumbly fuckers

[HirplesWithHaggis]

Yanbu. What really annoys me is how much the volume increases during "action" scenes, with no dialogue, then "mumble mumble mumble" quieter. So you increase the volume and get deafened when the shooting starts again. (I'm not annoying any neighbours, though.)

[EponasWildDaughter]

YANBU AT ALL!

We're trying out NowTV right now and it's great, except that DH and i like subtitles and nowtv doesn't seem to have them. It's putting us off.

There's nothing wrong with our hearing, it's just that, as OP says, you miss half the bloody plot of films these days because of the bad sound quality. ''So who's he?'', ''what's he doing?'', ''where are they going?'' - like a pair of decrepit old buggers.

We discovered the delights of subtitles when DD was born last year. We had the telly on but wanted the sound down in the evenings and subtitles was a revelation!

[Jackie0]

I got my hearing tested because of this exact problem. Apparently my hearing is fine.
Mumbling fuckers

[PiperChapstick]

Well I'm pleased it's not just me!

And YY to the darkness out brightness setting was up to 99 last night and still not decking light enough

[bettythebuilder]

Yanbu, I'm the same, can't pick up what actors are saying so I'm constantly asking who characters are and what they said. I annoy myself, so goodness knows what I do to Dh.
I don't usually watch films at the cinema, though, I watch them on TV so I'm wondering if things would sound clearer if I went to the Flicks or if I would just annoy everyone else in the cinema by hissing "who's he?" "what did he say?"

[CantSee4Looking]

It is not just films, it is rl too. drives me potty. Just enunciate properly, it is not that difficult. And yes ds you are just being lazy and no I actually don't have a clue what you said. Refusing to repeat and getting cross that I am not listening does not help.

[emotionsecho]

I think Judy Dench made a similar point recently about the poor enunciation and mumbling in films and on TV, it is also something regularly raised as a criticism on forums by people of all ages so it's not just you but no-one seems to be taking any notice!

My pet hate is when actors attempt an accent 'for authenticity' and then totally mangle said accent and are even more incomprehensible. I would far rather they just spoke clearly so the audience could understand what they are saying, the BBC production of Jamaica Inn was a prime example of this and rightly was inundated with criticism and the butt of many jokes, it also did the 'let's make everything pitch black so you can't even see facial expressions' crap.

The over loud background music/noise when people are speaking is also intensely irritating.

I feel like shouting "You are being paid shed loads of money, you should at least be able to speak so people can hear you!"

[Topseyt]

This is a pet hate of mine. Everything seems to be mumbled these days, and as kurri already said, filmed in pitch darkness. I can really hardly be bothered watching.

Even my 3 DDs, who are ages 20, 16 and 13 say that they struggle and have to put the subtitles on, which I admit does help.

Uncontrollable volume is another bugbear. It veers wildly from barely audible and mumbled speech to loud enough during an action scene to drive me out of the house.

Why? Just Why? Do the film or drama series producers think it is somehow more authentic and enjoyable? It isn't.

[Karoleann]

We just turn off a film if its too mumbly (and it happens pretty frequently). Can't be bothered constantly working out what someone has just said.

[GloGirl]

Crazy volume is my pet hate. I've even given up on some films because of it.

[goawayalready]

yy my pet hate i just get the volume to a point where i can hear the actors and BOOM SOME FUCKING MUSIC COMES ON REALLY LOUD ive adjusted my settings constantly i can do nothing about this its insane

[Bunbaker]

At last. I feel vindicated. I get so frustrated trying to watch films and dramas on TV with such awful sound quality that I can't understand what is being said. This is one of the reasons we rarely watch live TV. If we record it we can play back the scene until we can understand the dialogue.

The BBC receive umpteen letters from viewers complaining about loud music drowning out voice overs on their documentaries and they ignore them completely.

Do you remember the furore last year over the dreadful sound quality on Jamaica Inn? I ended up watching it using subtitles.

[gabsdot45]

Ryan Gosling is the worst mumbler ever. I can't understand a word he says in his movies. Also I don't think he's that good looking either, not that that's relevant to this discussion but I thought I'd mention it

[DurhamDurham]

Maroon Brando didn't always mumble........STELLA STELLA!!!

[DurhamDurham]

Marlon......I hate my ipad!!!

[SellMySoulForSomeSleep]

I like watching things with subtitles, it's so difficult to grasp otherwise. Bad acting maybe? Anyway YANBU.

[Morro]

I have noticed this lately too, I miss whole lines of dialogue regularly because I can't make out what the fuckers are saying!

[OvO]

I do 99% of my TV and film watching via iPad and with headphones so hadn't noticed any mumbling problems but just last night I was watching Man of Steel and we had to have the sound up at 75 when it's usually on 20! Couldn't hear a bloody thing otherwise. Though we did then blow out eardrums out when the action scenes started.

[Oneeyedbloke]

I'm a sound engineer, I've worked on film, TV & radio & in particular dubbing theatres where they mix the final soundtrack for movies & big TV dramas. There are three main problems:

1. Voice production, ie actors mumbling their lines. This is worst in US films because North American accents are harder to understand, they have a lot of elision, ie sounds are missed out & blended into one another. Say an actor has to say the line "I know a little guy who can do that for you." In typical US English, that whole sentence can be spoken with hardly any audible consonants, which are generally the parts of speech that contain high frequencies and transients (sounds with distinct beginnings). You might get a hint of transient or two at the beginning of 'can' and 'do', maybe a fricative f on 'for' but otherwise it's a difficult-to-distinguish string of vowel sounds - ie a drawl. Say the same line in British English - or African or Australian or West Indian - and the consonants are back, chopping up the vowels and giving your ear & brain lots of clues as to what words are being said.
   

1. Poor sound mixing, especially for TV. Proper movies are meant to be seen on a big screen, with a correspondingly big soundtrack. The loudest sounds in a typical movie soundtrack are music and sound effects. Dialogue has a lower average level, but this is usually fine, when listened to at typical cinema sound volumes, ie quite loud. You get exciting bang-crash-music action scenes alongside dialogue at a more comfortable volume. If the dialogue was mixed to the same loudness as the music/SFX, it would be unpleasantly boomy.
   

But for TV, average listening volumes are lower, yes even if you have a 'home cinema system'. You're in a much smaller room, and most of us have neighbours/children to worry about, plus a certain amount of envirinmental background noise - traffic/kitchen/plumbing/teenagers etc. So dialogue levels must be RAISED to roughly equal the music/SFX. This has generally been known in the industry as 'mixing for the small screen'. Living rooms, even with 52-inch plasma tellies, are not cinemas.

But professional TV sound mixers work in very high tech, quiet sound studios, and the art of mixing for the small screen is being lost. Many TV dramas now resemble small movies in budget and general 'production values', and sound mixers succumb to the temptation to mix their soundtracks at high listening volumes, and make a big, fat movie soundtrack. The result, when reproduced at typical living room volumes, through typical small TV speakers, is dialogue that often borders on inaudibility.

1. No-one remembers to "be the listener". Audiences only get one chance to understand the dialogue. During post-production, scenes are played back hundreds, thousands of times. And everyone's got a script, so we know what the actors are supposed to be saying. Once you know that, it's practically impossible to make your brain forget it. Sound mixers should act as the listener, the first hearer. If it's not understandable at first hearing, then that represents failure of the soundtrack. I've had producers turn to me during mixing sessions when I've pointed out inaudible dialogue, and point out the lines on the script. Or they simply tell you what the line is. And I say, yes I know YOU know what he's saying but that's because you've heard it a thousand times, with the script in your brain. The audience don't have that. The irony being, of course, that now we do, after a fashion, and we are rewinding scenes ànd switching the subtitles on!
   

There are complications to all this, of course: the mix of music/SFX under dialogue is also a big issue, as is the question of how stereo and 'surround' tracks sound when heard in mono. But these are the three biggies, and the audiovisual industry generally needs to sort them out.

[Oneeyedbloke]

So, complain, complain, complain! There are 14.5 million hearing impaired people in Britain. That's a big chunk of any market. Though you don't have to have anything wrong with your hearing to experience problems with some of the overblown, badly-mixed productions you get these days. It extends to music, too. Funny how things were way better 30-40 years ago with way simpler technology.

[JonSnowKnowsNowt]

It would be great to have an online 'complaint form' covering all broadcasters etc. where you can just select from a drop-down menu the film/programme you watched, and fire off a complaint about sound quality to the makers/broadcasters.

If complaining was an easier, quicker process, perhaps the scale of the problem would be unignorable.

[emotionsecho]

Oneeyedbloke people are complaining but no-one in the industry is listening, they can't/won't hear us over their own personal soundtrack. Perhaps people like you who work in this field could make more noise about it too.

[BugritAndTidyup]

oneeyedbloke, that post was absolutely fascinating. Thank you for the insight into why this happens