Spiderman/Spiderverse Sound Level Alert

[Jim Cassedy]

I got the following message (after our first round of shows, of course). I couldn't be there for the opening
night, but one of the asst managers told me he manually 'boosted the volume level' in our large auditorium
last night. I was in early this morning and did a personal ear-check in each auditorium and the sound IS
definitely 'soft' so I wound up programming higher level autocues.
I just wanted to give ya'll a heads up in case you're not aware of this already!
We have a mix of Trinnov & QSC processors . Unfortunately our servers & TMS don't have programmable
volume level cues above "0" (equiv to Dolby "7") on the QSC's. I think we can live with that- - but if not, I'll
have add them to the cue library. (I couldn't do that today for reasons not important here)

MESSAGE:

"Dear projectionists!

Ye unsung heroes of the cinematic arts and champions of great film presentation!
Hail to thee and many thanks for showing SPIDER-MAN: ACROSS THE SPIDER-VERSE across the
planet! We understand that films - particularly superhero films - can be loud. We have taken great
pains to mix this film for comfort and dynamics to maximize the moviegoer’s experience and be fun
and vibrant and never punishing. We invite you to play the film at full volume. In our experience this
film in a full house sometimes feels a touch quiet. So: please play it at 7 as intended. In some houses
we have found that 7.5 plays even better and richer especially when the seats are full! Thanks for your
hard work helping audiences enjoy the film, we trust you to give them the immersive bold thrilling
experience only a theater can provide. Excelsior!
Chris & Phil "

From what I heard, and from what a couple of friends who've seen the movie told me, there's quite a bit
of dynamic difference between the music/efx and the dialog. One guy asked me "Did Christopher Nolan
do the sound mix for this movie?"

[Mike Blakesley]

I remember the first trailer seemed to be really soft compared to the standard trailers.

[Chris Haller]

I listened to Spider-Verse in one of our smaller houses last night. It definitely has a strange audio mix - dialogue does seem a little muffled in the early moments, and there's some interesting, but weird use of the surround speakers to implement some kind of inner-head voice that sounds almost wrong. Beyond that, it was your regular, run of the mill 6 channel mix for us. Most of our movies run at 6-7 on our Dolby faders, and I suspect this was no different.

[Jon Dent]

Sony just released an updated DCP today. I called Deluxe and they said it was to correct "Audio issues" but didn't have any further details. The ingest letter doesn't have any details in it either.

[Paul H. Rayton]

The issue was with the sound mix, somehow. There is a new thread in "Ground Level", from Frank Cox, in which he talks about new KDMs and versions being sent out with improved sound in the affected sections. See here: http://www.film-tech.com/vbb/forum/g...e-two-versions

The amazing part (to me) is that Sony re-did the tracks in response to (apparently) widespread complaints from audiences & theaters. Compare that with the WB response to similarly-widespread complaints about Christopher Nolan soundtracks also being unintelligible: nothing!

[Jim Cassedy]

I heard rumors earlier this week that they were going to send out a re-mixed version, and I
did also notice the version difference (FTR_7 vs FTR_1 ) when they sent the keys yesterday.
I'm not at the the theater at the moment, nor near a computer where I can log in remotely, but
as of last night, I don't recall seeing a new version show up in our library serverthingy.
(We get content via satellite) It is interesting they've actually re-tweaked the sound mix
(Whatever happened to: We have taken great pains to mix this film for comfort and
dynamics to maximize the moviegoer’s experience " from last week's studio letter?

I don't know if its' related, or just coincidence, but yesterday the box office staff mentioned
to me that there has been a much higher than usual amount of people requesting to use
the Assisted Listening headsets and/or captioning devices for this movie.

[Jon Dent]

The amazing part (to me) is that Sony re-did the tracks in response to (apparently) widespread complaints from audiences & theaters. Compare that with the WB response to similarly-widespread complaints about Christopher Nolan soundtracks also being unintelligible: nothing!

Nolan has almost unprecedented control over how his films are produced and released. I doubt the filmmakers of Spider-Man have the same leeway.

I'm apprehensive of how Oppenheimer will fare in that regard. Based on the trailers I've seen, there's a lot of room for Nolan's audio shenanigans.

[Jim Cassedy]

Read it here--> https://tinyurl.com/42yxju9x

VarietySpidermanStory.jpg

[Dennis Benjamin]

I did a spot check of 17 theatre locations that I have access to, Only 3 of them had updated the DCP as of yesterday, Hopefully they get the new DCP added to the playlists.