I love bad horror movies and I’ve noticed a common trend. They all seem to have super high pitched random background sounds that irritate the fuck out of me! Like I just got one of those Digimon 20th anniversary guys a few months ago, and just noticed after the battery died I’ll be hearing it cry while watching bad horror movies. I’m an older millennial who took great care of my hearing in my younger days so tomorrow isn’t an issue. But I hear these high pitched sounds that make me wonder if the battery was really dead, only to check out my digivice and find that it is still completely dead.
I think the truth of it is, good sound engineering costs money, time, or both. I both ran sound and did sound design for local stage theater and I was shocked at how little the designers knew how to make their transitions seamless and avoid clipping, resonant frequencies, static, and a whole mess of other issues, many of which need fixes during recording rather than post.
It took me about 5 years working with audio software before I was making stuff for other people but a lot of other people have the confidence to learn their skill working with live projects, project result be damned. I go back and listen to my early stuff and I hear all sorts of mistakes I didn’t even know I was making.
Access to good hardware/software can also be a major detriment. I’ve had to sacrifice many design ideas due to available tools. When at the end of the day, it comes down to bad audio vs no audio at all, there’s an obvious winner.
I agree with everything you say. But how on God’s green earth does someone get a high enough position to include tones that would turn off younger people?
(Again not trying to sound combative, I just talk like this)
I think it is worth considering that every single b-rated movie has a huge pile of things they had to cut that probably made them cried for days and will regret cutting for the rest of their lives. Movies cost a fortune to make, and every single element costs more than you can imagine. At a certain point it is the choice between shitty sound or abandoning big enough plot points to kill the whole project.
You’re specifically asking about B-Movies here. They’ll grab whoever the heck fills the chair.
If it sounds good enough for the story to be told and trick someone into watching it, the goal was achieved. Time for the next movie!
Most of the time, if the dialog is delivered and actors are on set, that’s really all that matters for tax purposes.
I remember reading something from a sound editor for movies and TV. Essentially no director wants to halt production and re-do a scene because the audio is bad. It’s pretty hard to redo a scene if the camera didn’t get a good shot, it’s even harder if the camera was good but the audio was off. Most directors will just say “Just fix it in post”.
But, there aren’t really enhancements for audio. A bad segment of audio is always bad. You can’t just amplify the hell out of it and have it sound good. So the lower the budget the movie, the more costly it is to redo a shot, and the more likely they’ll tell the sound guys that they’ll have to deal with it.
Actors used to be on the hook for overdub voice work after shooting wrapped. I don’t know if that’s still the case.
Honestly, I’m more concerned about high budget movies where I can’t understand a fucking word. I know there have been many articles and YouTube videos on the subject, but there’s really no excuse for that nonsense.
