A familiar charge against Christopher Nolan‘s films: they’re too loud, the sound mixing isn’t clear, making dialogue in them impossible to hear sometimes. So is that true for “Oppenheimer,” Nolan’s latest? That may depend on several factors, like whether or not one sees it in an IMAX theater. But Variety reports (via Insider) that the director has an answer for why some people have such difficulty deciphering speech in his films, and he understands if some disagree with it.
“I like to use the performance that was given in the moment rather than the actor re-voice it later,” Nolan told Insider in a new interview. “Which is an artistic choice that some people disagree with, and that’s their right.” So, in other words, Nolan refuses to re-record dialogue with actors in post-production, preferring their original performance. Muffled or not, that’s what the director wants to work with. And yes, that means he refuses to work with ADR (automated dialogue replacement), preferring the organicism of the original take he shot.
But it doesn’t help sound matters that Nolan prefers to shoot on IMAX cameras. In fact, he shot all of “Oppenheimer” on IMAX and IMAX 70mm, cameras that are, while not as loud as their predecessors, still pretty darn loud. But Nolan thinks the cameras are more manageable audio-wise than they once were. “There are certain mechanical improvements,” Nolan explained about the new IMAX cameras. “And actually, IMAX is building new cameras right now which are going to be even quieter. But the real breakthrough is in software technology that allows you to filter out the camera noise. That has improved massively in the 15 or so years that I’ve been using these cameras. Which opens up for you to do more intimate scenes that you would not have been able to do in the past.”
Intimate scenes aside, quiet IMAX cameras means less issues like what Nolan had to deal with regarding Tom Hardy‘s voice for Bane in “The Dark Knight Rises.” Amid complaints that audiences couldn’t understand the character in the trailer and previews, Hardy and Nolan re-recorded his dialogue for the entire film. And a common criticism against Nolan is how the scores of his movies drown out dialogue at times. Nolan’s refusal to re-record lines in post-production explains that now; and with quieter IMAX cameras, that may become an issue of the past for his audiences.
So did you find lines in “Oppenheimer” hard to understand during its three-hour runtime? That doesn’t appear to be the consensus, as Nolan’s latest looks to charge past $200 million at the global box office this weekend. But rest assured: whatever the director’s next project is, fans and critics will be paying close attention as to whether the audio mix of it improves upon his previous work.