Movie Sound Question

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gswitz
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2013/06/04 23:28:46 (permalink)

Movie Sound Question

I just watched a Russian movie (Come and See). It was all subtitles and in Russian. A WWII movie about a boy in 1943 and what he sees. It's gruesome as you can imagine. I watched the Vector Scope and the entire movie was 20% left. Like it was NEVER Centered.
 
It occurs to me to ask you guys if this is common in movies. Normally, when I watch TV and watch the Vector Scope it is largely centered and spreads out for the music and spooky sections where there is lots of phase cancellation and stereo spread.
 
Anyway,... Do you know a reason to mix a movie 20% left for the whole thing, even the parts with very little width on the vector scope? Like the shape was a straight line from sorta 11:00 to 5:00 or so.
post edited by gswitz - 2013/06/04 23:30:58

StudioCat > I use Windows 10 and Sonar Platinum. I have a touch screen.
I make some videos. This one shows how to do a physical loopback on the RME UCX to get many more equalizer nodes.
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    Kalle Rantaaho
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    Re: Movie Sound Question 2013/06/05 04:51:31 (permalink)
    I've several times experienced different kinds of mistakes/bugs in DVDs which are for an assumably smaller consumer base (does that expression make sense?). Maybe the smaller distributors don't have a quality control as good as some others.
    For example, I have two good films which can't be started from the "Play" icon, but I must go to scene selection and select scene one.

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    gswitz
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    Re: Movie Sound Question 2013/06/05 07:46:40 (permalink)
    Interesting, Kalle. Thanks for responding. I also thought that it might have been artistic... a show that the world wasn't right or justified during this time (WWII movie). I guess if I had done it for that reason I would have periodically swept the pan to the right side as well as sweeping left. I just found it interesting. I'm not sure it was a production mistake. The movie was very professional and didn't appear to lack for resources. Honestly, it looked like a movie made without the PITA restrictions we have on movie makers in this country. Some animals appeared tortured in the movie -- very authentically. I will say that the footage and sound track were chilling. Nothing Steven Spielberg about it. Not a lot of fancy tricks. Great acting on the part of the actors. A rather simple story to tell.
     
    I guess I'd rather believe it wasn't an accident. Perhaps the sound engineer was a little deaf in one ear? haha.
     
    Best, G

    StudioCat > I use Windows 10 and Sonar Platinum. I have a touch screen.
    I make some videos. This one shows how to do a physical loopback on the RME UCX to get many more equalizer nodes.
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    Guitarhacker
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    Re: Movie Sound Question 2013/06/05 08:34:29 (permalink)
    Perhaps, they were not paying attention to the sound as closely as you were.
     
    I would think that a 20% left bias would have been evident..... BUT..... if they were not watching the meters, and or setting off center during the sound editing process, or the volume control on the monitors had been set differently on the left and right speakers.... yeah, this could totally happen.

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    gswitz
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    Re: Movie Sound Question 2013/06/05 09:05:31 (permalink)
    I went back and watched the opening scene again where two people were talking in erie way to children. In that scene, balance shifted from right to left and back. Stark swings from twenty percent right to twenty percent left.

    Enough on this. Interesting mix though.

    StudioCat > I use Windows 10 and Sonar Platinum. I have a touch screen.
    I make some videos. This one shows how to do a physical loopback on the RME UCX to get many more equalizer nodes.
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    bitflipper
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    Re: Movie Sound Question 2013/06/05 09:17:36 (permalink)
    I"ll bet it wouldn"t sound that way in a theater. I"ve heard lots of movies with horrible audio mistakes on the DVD version. I assume it's just because they rushed through it. Probably one guy who does a dozen titles a week.


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