For me, this all started in 2014 with a BBC1 dramatization of Daphne du Maurier’s novel: Jamaica Inn. Hundreds of complaints were received about the sound levels on the show. The audience for the first episode was over 6 million and and that rapidly dropped to 4 million with many of those watching having to resort to subtitles to understand what was being said. The event was much talked about in the media but it was over three years ago, I thought this was all water under the bridge but it turns out it is still very controversial. The main issue is who’s fault it was and that is far from being resolved.
The obvious person to blame is the sound recordist, after all they have the headphones and sound meters on the recorder. Leaping to their defense, from the audience, was a higher up from the IPS (Institute of Professional Sound). They called the sound recordist and asked whether he would like their support. Stating they had validated his/her work and confirming it had been done to professional standards. It did surprise me though, do the IPS go on set and validate your work? It sounds like a good idea but I didn’t know they do that.
Discussion then switched to a “blame the director” theme. I asked myself “how can the director affect sound?” It turns out the director can be very influential. It all starts with the sound recordist calling “cut” when an unwanted noise appears, e.g. an airplane in a scene set in the 19th century. This is where the controversy starts, many directors get very upset when anyone but them calls cut. This can start as a minor annoyance but can progress to “all out war”. It does illustrate the difference between TV drama funding and top level Hollywood funding. For example David Fincher is notorious, at least in the blogs, for the number of takes however some TV directors only want one take. For me this changed my view of a director from being an artistic role to that of what would be called a Project Manager in the Software industry. Meeting the budget and deadline overriding all other considerations.