Nolan's Batman 3 Title

[Tribal Warfare]

Batman sequel 'Rises' again

LOS ANGELES - THE next Batman sequel has a title: The Dark Knight Rises. Distributor Warner Bros. confirmed the name for director Christopher Nolan's third adventure about the DC Comics vigilante hero, which follows Batman Begins in 2005 and The Dark Knight in 2008.

The Dark Knight Rises is due in theaters July 20, 2012. Bucking Hollywood's current wave of 3-D movies, Nolan is not planning to shoot the film in 3-D.

Warner Bros had agreed with Nolan's argument that the sequel should resist the 3-D craze, the director told the Los Angeles Times' Hero Complex blog, which first reported the title.

Nolan would not reveal what villain might appear in The Dark Knight Rises, but he said it would not be the Riddler, one of the key bad guys in the comics and past film and TV Batman tales.

Earlier this year, Nolan said he would not resurrect the Joker, the cackling villain played by Heath Ledger in The Dark Knight. Ledger won the supporting-actor Academy Award for the role, a year after he died of an accidental overdose of prescription drugs. -- AP

[Tribal Warfare]

IMAX Says No New Audio Mix on THE DARK KNIGHT RISES IMAX Prologue

It’s pretty safe to say that Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight Rises is one of the most anticipated movies of the year. Some fans were treated to an early look at the film by way of a six-minute prologue earlier this month on select IMAX screens. While most were very happy with the footage, the one universal complaint has been that Bane’s (Tom Hardy) dialogue is hard to understand. Even in the newest trailer, it’s hard to decipher what the guy’s saying.

A few weeks ago, it was reported that despite widespread outcry, Nolan had no plans to rework Bane’s dialogue. He said he wasn’t opposed to “altering the sounds slightly” but he refused to “rework it completely.” Sources have now informed us that Warner Bros. has sent out a new audio mix for the Dark Knight Rises prologue to IMAX theaters, and Bane’s dialogue is now much easier to understand. Hit the jump for the details and an update.

A source has informed us that a new audio mix was sent to IMAX theaters a few days ago. Here’s what he had to say:

“A friend of mine who is an IMAX projectionist told me they received a new soundtrack for the Dark Knight Rises prologue. He said it’s now a combo soundtrack with Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, but the cool thing about this is that they’ve cleaned up the dialogue. They’ve gone in and lowered the background noise of the plane and other things, thus making Bane’s dialogue clearer and more understandable. He asked some people after they left the movie if they could understand Bane and they all said they had no issue understanding him, and were excited for the movie.”

It definitely sounds like Nolan is sticking to his guns (ie. not reworking Bane’s dialogue), but he’s at least conceding that the audio—one way or another—needs work. While I understand the director’s desire to have audiences participate rather than have everything pushed at them, when the majority of viewers can’t understand what your villain is saying, something’s gotta give.

When asked how much clearer Bane’s dialogue is now compared to when we first heard it, our source said “40-50%, because he’s no longer being overpowered by the background noise that drowned him out before.” As I’ve yet to see the prologue I can’t say whether or not the background noises seemed to be an issue, but given our source’s reaction to the new mix I’d say Nolan’s found a fine compromise. He doesn’t have to sacrifice the integrity of his vision by dumbing things down, and we can now understand what the hell Bane is saying. You can read Steve’s full spoiler-free recap of the prologue here, and click here to find out where the IMAX prologue is currently being screened. The Dark Knight Rises opens July 20th.

UPDATE 1: Steve here. Someone has sent me the letter that IMAX sent to theaters detailing the new audio mix for The Dark Knight Rises. Here’s part of it:



The Dark Knight Rises IMAX new audio mix letter to projectionists

UPDATE 2: Steve again. Warner Bros. has contacted me and said that our story is absolutely not true. While I’ve dealt with the source who sent me the letter before, I wanted to make sure we are always posting the truth. I’m working on getting to the bottom of this right now.

UPDATE 3: Steve again. I spoke to a representative from IMAX. They told me that they have not issued a new mix for The Dark Knight Rises, but some theaters have been sent the digital file that would have been playing on an analogue system. Again, they say this digital delivery does not change the way Bane sounds or any of the background noise. Needless to say, I’m sorry we posted something that appears to be inaccurate. Saying that, I’ve seen the IMAX prologue three times and I still struggle to understand what Bane is saying. It’s a real issue.

[Deberg_1990]

INteresting......maybe we can get JD to confirm this at his theater?

[JD10367]

Originally Posted by Deberg_1990

INteresting......maybe we can get JD to confirm this at his theater?

Okay... what it sounds like is this:

In ye olden days (pre-1990), the soundtracks for IMAX films were 6 tracks recorded on magnetically-coated 35mm film, and would run on a "sound projector" for all intents and purposes, called a Dubber. These were big in Hollywood around 1653, I think (i.e. they're really friggin' old technology).

In this picture, it's the reel-to-reel thingy on the right:



For trailers, you would get a small reel, and physically splice it to the feature sound reel.

Around 1995 they entered the 20th century and started recording the sound on compact discs. They called that unit a DDP (Digital Disc Playback). It took three CDs to cover the 6 tracks, with each CD having 2 tracks (i.e. separated by ears... if you put one in your car, one track would play out of your left speaker and the other track out of your right speaker). The machine would sync all three CDs together and play them at the same time.



Problem is, with this system, it only played the feature-film sound. The trailer sound still had to be played off the magnetic-tape dubber.

Then, around 2000, they realized it would be even simpler to use a computer, and put the soundtrack on a CD-ROM or DVD-ROM. So they invented an even newer machine called a DTAC, powered by a Windows NT computer (I shit you not, I still have it running 10 years later). This machine could incorporate the trailer sound, so those dubbers no longer needed to be used. You receive a disc for the feature and a disc for the trailer(s) and load them all into the computer to edit your show's sound sequence.

DTAC is at left, you can see the computer keyboard and bottom half of the monitor, and the drives where the DVDs go in.



Here's where it gets a little confusing.

AFTER the invention of the DTAC, they also realized they could actually get away with just using a small player, called a DFP. This was cheaper, because it eliminated the entire computer basically, and just called for a little DVD player. So, for some systems, they put in a DFP instead of upgrading to DTAC. But, on these systems, they couldn't play the trailer sound (just like before), so even though the unit was modern and cheaper the trailers still needed to be played out of the old Dubber.

In other words, soundtrack timeline went like this:

1) Dubber
2) Dubber and DDP
3a) DTAC
-or-
3b) Dubber and DFP

So, to make a long story short, there are still some systems where they have to play the trailer sound out of the Dubber.

And here's where it gets more confusing.

The DFP disks are the same as the DTAC disks. So, usually, they just call them all "DTAC" disks, even if you don't have a DTAC.

This note seems to be sent to one of those rare handful of theaters using the Dubber/DFP setup. That theater would have been running the "Magnus Rex" (official name for the "DKR Prologue") sound out of the Dubber, then switching to the DFP for the "MI4" film. This disc seems to encorporate both pieces onto one disc, meaning they can play it out of the DFP. (We call this "hardwiring", when a film comes with a trailer built onto it automatically and is considered part of the soundtrack of the feature. For example, "Happy Feet 2" came with a Looney Tunes short. The short was considered Reel 1, and the sound for it was built into the feature film's soundtrack.)

Now, as to lowering the "plane noises" and/or raising the dialogue, that's actually pretty easy to do with an actual DTAC. You can control the sound levels for the six channels. The narration is usually on Channel 3 (dead center). The score and other sound is mostly on Channel 2 (left screen) and 4 (right screen). You can easily go in and lower 2 and 4, and/or raise 3. When I started reading about the sound issues, I actually raised 3 myself by 1.5dB when I loaded it in. As a result, I don't seem to be getting as many complaints about inaudible dialogue. So, the handful of IMAX projectionists who know what they're doing can easily modify the levels to help out somewhat. It won't clean up the dialogue, per se, but it would help.

(I have not received a new trailer soundtrack myself. If I did, though, it doesn't even mean they cleaned up the dialogue; it could just mean that they changed those sound levels on the disc so they didn't have to ask the theaters to do it.)

[JD10367]

And I just realized I never actually answered the question, LOL.

So, the probable reason they sent this disc out, is that they might have actually found that the Dubber mix for the prologue was even muddier than the digital-disc version (which makes sense, since you're literally playing a tape, plus that old architecture of that sound system is nowhere near as clean... we're talking very old-school). By replacing the Dubber tape with a digital mix, it probably helps at those locations... but that simply means those locations now probably have the same muddy mix that I and everyone else has. (It was probably like this: at other IMAX theaters... "that sounds like shit". At the theaters still using a Dubber... "that REALLY sounds like shit".)

[KC Hawks]

The prologue is one thing, but people couldn't understand Bane's dialogue in the trailer? Really?

[Demonpenz]

Bane is a prawn from Disctrict 9 right?

[Tribal Warfare]

from Doğan Can Gündoğdu on Vimeo.

A fanmade credit intro

[Tribal Warfare]

New Images of THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Toys Including Adorable Bane and Catwoman

[Tribal Warfare]

[Jenson71]

Good morning

[beach tribe]

I think this cat woman BS just throws a wrench into every thing.
Anne H. Couldn't whip her way out of a wet paper bag. Seems just as bad as throwing Robin in there IMO.

[Al Bundy]

I can't wait.

[keg in kc]

We should get a trailer in a week. Looking forward to that almost as much as seeing the Avengers.

[Sure-Oz]

[Bowser]

Originally Posted by Sure-Oz

This movie, along with the Avengers and Prometheus, equals this.....