Walter Murch - Problems with the sound dynamics in 'The Godfather II' (66/320)

To listen to more of Walter Murch’s stories, go to the playlist: • Walter Murch (Film-maker)
Walter Scott Murch (b. 1943) is widely recognised as one of the leading authorities in the field of film editing, as well as one of the few film editors equally active in both picture and sound. [Listener: Christopher Sykes; date recorded: 2016]
TRANSCRIPT: I plunged almost immediately from 'The Conversation' into '[The] Godfather Part II', which now needed a mix. And so I was not editing film on 'Godfather Part II', that was Ritchie Marks, Peter Zinner and Barry Malkin, all of whom had worked for Francis [Ford Coppola] before, but not me because I was working on 'The Conversation'. So I came in to do the sound design, although I'm not credited with that term, but the supervising sound editing and the mix on 'Godfather II'. And well there's a lot to say about it, but it... it was a big film and long, it was 3 hours and 20 minutes long. And that's a long film and we had to mix it very quickly because the film had to come out in... around Christmas.
And... There was one disaster that happened on that film that permanently gave me a little scar; I can show it to you here. Metaphorically speaking which is that I wanted the film to have a large dynamic range which means in practical terms that the loudest sound in the film is significantly louder than average dialogue. One of the terms for this is headroom which means average dialogue is here at a certain loudness, how much louder is the biggest explosion in the film. For many years before Dolby, and this was before Dolby, the limit was six decibels which is about 50% louder. So in these big films, even the loudest explosion in the film is only 50% louder than average dialogue. And there has to be artistry to make that work. You have to kind of massage things to make it seem louder than it is. But I was young and on 'American Graffiti', I had pushed that envelope and done that. And on 'Godfather II' I pushed it even more because I wanted the riots in Havana to be loud.
And in retrospect, I pushed it too far. And so the film came out, and complaints started coming back from the theatres which is: it's too dynamic. When we adjust... when we adjust the levels to make the dialogue sound correct, the loud sounds are way too loud. If we turn the sound down so that the loud sounds are correct, then nobody can hear the dialogue. So that's a problem. It technically is exacerbated by the fact that we were working in a relatively small mixing theatre.
And I've worked in many small mixing theatres. But you have to be very careful when you're in a small theatre because small mixing theatres, small rooms allow you to endure a greater dynamic range than normal. I don't know the physical reason for this. I suspect that it has to do with the fact that loud explosions and loud music are generally continuous sounds that exist over a wide spectrum of frequencies. So in music, Beethoven, he's using lots of frequencies and the sound is... continuous. And what this does is energize all of the air molecules in the room and kind of get them moving. There's kind of inertia to the air in the room, and you have to energize it with the sound and get them going.
Dialogue, on the other hand, is intermittent. It starts and stops. And it's in a relatively speaking restricted frequency range compared to music or sound effects. So dialogue - it takes more to energize the room. On the other hand, if the room is small, even the dialogue will get all of the air moving. Whereas when you're dealing with a large theatre, and in those days as in 'Godfather II' theatres were still very large and you had theatres where there would be one thousand people, you know - huge amounts of air, and that's where the problem began to set in that the dialogue would not energize that huge cubic space compared to how the music and the sound effects would.

[@gregbain9494]

Searching for sound issues in GF2 directed me here. Nice to know I wasn't going mad either.

[@oman115]

I always thought that the dialogue in Godfather 2 was always a bit off and hard to understand. I'm glad it's not just me.

[@mattsurridge9129]

I wonder if this is why some of Nolan’s stuff is incredibly difficult to hear. Same principle with different technology maybe?

[@thegrimyeaper]

"The film HAD to come out around Christmas."
Funny how most movies that we watch and admire for decades is a product of a few guys in a room rushing everything because of one holiday.