Batman Light Levels

[Jon Dent]

We generally never get sound complaints but I attribute it more to the fact we're a small town and everybody knows and expects what our sound is going to be like. Occasionally after action movies I hear "Wow, that was loud!" usually with a smile on their face.

We're in the same boat, but I've been using our town as a guinea pig with Batman, Uncharted and Moonfall to see if we can juice the volume a bit higher than what's been 'normal' over the last few years. Ever since I did my own EQ of the system I've felt our old default was a bit weak.

[William Kucharski]

Too bad a fader level of 7.0 is too uncomfortable for anyone to watch. Most our movies have to be 5.5 to 6.0 or it's uncomfortably loud.

Not this nonsense again.

[William Kucharski]

We've had the loudness debate before. I can confirm that it's possible for a movie to be "too loud" in the Dolby screening room. I saw one of the Transformers movies in there, and while the sound was obviously very impressive, clear, bombastic, or what-have-you....I still didn't like the overwhelming loudness of it. Another guy might have thought it sounded fine, but I didn't like it that loud. Even at a rock concert there are usually quiet moments, but that movie didn't seem to have any, or not many.

In my own theater, it's a similar situation....7 sounds good and impressive, but it's still too loud for my taste. So I adjust each movie until the dialogue sounds right to me, and the rest falls into place. Usually that setting is somewhere between 5.5 and 6.0. Since I'm getting older and I worry that my own hearing might be dimming a little, I often ask another trusted person if it sounds OK to them as well.

Again, the screening rooms are all set to 7.0, so the filmmakers know exactly what it will and should sound like.

(Yes, including Michael Bay and Christopher Nolan; I've talked to the projectionist who shows both their cuts, and their directive is they must show the film at 7.0)

[Darin Steffl]

Not this nonsense again.

Even at 5.5 to 6.0, our movies are louder than the multiplex screens who play at 4.0 to 4.5

Some of their movies are so quiet, I can't hear the dialogue. I assume they kept turning things down until old people stopped complaining.

Our movies are plenty loud and enjoyable but 7.0 hurts the ears so we can't play at that level.

[William Kucharski]

I agree with you on multiplexes playing films way too quietly, but obviously not on 7.0 being too loud.

As I posted in another thread, this was the big Paramount Theater screening room on their lot.

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[Darin Steffl]

I'm not disagreeing that 7.0 is what the mixers and directors want us to play at but it IS TOO LOUD at that level.

I went to my first cinemacon last year and I assume every screening at the colosseum was played at 7.0 and it was uncomfortably loud and our customers would stop coming if we played at that level. So we run in the middle between too quiet and too loud. We play at just the right level and I test about 6 parts of every movie to pick the right level. So I listen to quiet parts and loud parts and pick a happy fader level. Usually 5.5 to 6.0 is the sweet spot. Some movies are quiet so going to 6.5 to 7.0 works but that is rare, not common.

You can say all theaters should play every movie at 7.0 but all that will do is drive many customers to wait for the movie to hit streaming because their head and ears hurt when they go to the theater. I think there should be a minimum fader level for features like 5.0 or 5.5 so they can't be too quiet because that also ruins the movie for me when I can't hear anything.

[Mike Blakesley]

We've talked about CinemaCon's loudness before, too. You have to remember that most of what you see there is trailers, which always have obnoxiously loud sound mixes. The features they show as screenings usually sound much better than the trailers. They can be loud of course, but not annoying...usually. The trailers, though, are so noisy and the cuts in them are so fast that it's nigh impossible to get anything out of them or even remember them later, in most cases.

I don't understand why movie directors want their movies to be played at rock concert levels. Maybe it's psychological. I don't particularly care what those guys think.... they are used to seeing their films in small screening rooms in a controlled environment, not regular commercial theaters. And they don't have to listen to paying customers complain about overly loud sound.

Sure, there are "industry standards" for volume levels, but each auditorium is equipped based on what the builder can afford, which does not always match up to the same standard. Thus there are great sound systems and there are bad ones, but in any situation there is a certain level where dialog sounds "about right," and that's where the sound should be set.

Different people will have different opinions on what's "too loud" when it comes to anything, but I think most people would probably agree on a much closer range of settings for dialog scenes. The trick is to set your dialog scenes to fall within that range that will please most people. From there the loud parts will take care of themselves.

The bottom line is that any theater operator that sets theirs at 7 just because that's where the director says to set it is a bad operator.

[William Kucharski]

I'm not disagreeing that 7.0 is what the mixers and directors want us to play at but it IS TOO LOUD at that level.

No it's not. it's as intended.

You're not the creative, they are.

If you want to turn it down because of complaints so be it; it's one of the reasons I go to few theaters any more.

Thankfully I can play it at the volume the director intended at home.

Mike says that showing films at 7.0 because a director told them to makes them a bad operator; I say they're respecting their wishes and to me turning it down is no different than turning down the brightness to make the projection bulbs last longer or showing films at the wrong aspect ratio because none of the popcorn kids know how to change it and they'd have to "get a guy out."

Obviously not many agree with me as showmanship has gone into the trash can more than ever over the past several years and the last chain that did care, at least nominally, crashed and burned (Pacific/ArcLight.)

[William Kucharski]

I miss the good old days of THX theatres and remember with fondness when Twister was released with a letter from the director to play it louder than normal.

The theater posted it at the ticket booth along with verbiage saying that if that would bother you, "Go to an AMC where they don't care."

[Darin Steffl]

Comparing sound to brightness isn't fair. No one complains about the picture being too bright. Maybe too dim if there's a real issue but it doesn't hurt to watch a film that is too bright or too dim. Sound is much more perceptible and causes problems either with not understanding dialogue because it's too quiet. Or it's too loud and your head hurts from your ears ringing.

Our sound and picture quality are excellent and we don't do anything to hurt the experience. We're already set louder than 3 multiplexes near us and our presentation is better than all 3. I've visited each of them within the past 6 months to compare and make sure we always do things better.

[Carsten Kurz]

'Showmanship' is a virtue expressed towards our paying audience. Not towards the director. If the director comes to our theatre for each and every show to deal with our patron's complaints, AND sit through his own movie at 7, then, I'd play it at 7. As long as he's there.

Besides that, it is simply NOT TRUE that every movie is mixed to 7. If reference level is a moving target, we exhibitors have to move with it. Period.

[Mike Blakesley]

Mike says that showing films at 7.0 because a director told them to makes them a bad operator; I say they're respecting their wishes

I guess we will have to agree to disagree. The day some movie director shows up in my theater and says "Turn it up, please" I will do as he asks. But no director has ever heard our sound system, in fact I would wager that most movie directors almost NEVER experience their own movie with a paying audience in a regular commercial theater. I have 100% more experience than any movie director in (1) knowing what my sound system sounds like, and (2) knowing what my audience likes, so I think I'm in a better position to judge what's "too loud" in my own theater than some director with bad hearing in Hollywood.

I remember when we had the show Gravity some years ago. It came with one of these presentation notes saying to be sure to play it at 7.0. On that movie we played the sound at 8.5 because that was what it needed to sound good to me.

I'm an operator who stands in the back of the auditorium and checks out the sound and picture for every show. If there is a problem with our presentation, I will know about it immediately and take care of it. I reject the implication that I "don't care." On the contrary, I care deeply, which is why I don't just blindly follow directions from some person who's never set foot in my building.

[Jon Dent]

I reject the implication that I "don't care." On the contrary, I care deeply, which is why I don't just blindly follow directions from some person who's never set foot in my building.

Amen to that.

I'd also point out that the mixing is being done in ideal acoustic environments with some of the best sound equipment in the world. I'm sure it's absolutely glorious at '7' there.

However... One thing pretty much all professional commercial music mixers do is spot their mix on a number of different playback systems (including crappy bookshelf speakers and iPhones). Do they do that in film mixing? Not to the best of my knowledge. So most of these mixers (and directors) probably have no idea how their mix translates to a run of the mill, decade old JBL setup with a rushed calibration because the technician was charging by the hour, plus travel. And let's be realistic, there's a lot more of those systems out there than a setup like Grauman's Chinese.

[Steve Guttag]

Another flaw in the home argument is that the home mix is not the theatrical one, in most cases. "7" in a cinema does not translate to "7" or reference in the home. You often get a near-field mix for the home, not something for a high-end home system but catering to the more common lower-end/TV.

[Jon Dent]

Another flaw in the home argument is that the home mix is not the theatrical one, in most cases. "7" in a cinema does not translate to "7" or reference in the home. You often get a near-field mix for the home, not something for a high-end home system but catering to the more common lower-end/TV.

Disney is notorious for this. I thought Free Guy sounded great in the theater and had some impressive low end. Come to find out that the BluRay is severely neutered by comparison.