Les Mis film question

[philitalia]

Over on the continent here Les Mis opened last week.

I found the volume of the voices much louder than the music. Unbalanced. Very often the music was just in the background. I felt it was a pity we never got "immersed" in its music.

Though it is a modern cinema I suspect it was a technical issue due to wrong audio settings.

Did any of you have the same experience ? I hope it was a technical issue and not the way the film is recorded.

[SoonerOrLater]

Its not something I particularly noticed when I saw it. However the orchestrations are altered to the theatre score, and for some numbers (I dreamed a dream is one) the style/direction is markedly different so yes then the music is more 'background' which was I believe (hell I'm not Tom Hooper!) for dramatic effect. In the 'big' numbers the orchestra sounded fine for a film score-which I think by nature will always sound a bit muted in comparison to live theatre.

[philitalia]

Thx

I think something went wrong either at the cinema or in post production over here.
Unfortunately only 1 version was shown over here, so I had no choice.
The singing was in English with subtitles and the dialogue was dubbed in Italian. It lead to some ridiculous scenes, eg. you'd have Jean Valjean singing and then when he spoke one sentence during a song that would be dubbed. HORRIBLE.

Not a success over here. 30 people in the cinema at the beginning of the film and even less by the time it ended.

[jaqs]

Sounds terrible! Hope you get to see a better version.

I saw it in the IMAX and the sound quality was amazing.

[philitalia]

I'm "glad" that the sound problem seems to have been a local one. I usually wait for films to be released on BD/DVD to watch them in their original language. I was just too impatient for this one

Looking forward to the DVD release

[SoonerOrLater]

Ugh nightmare. One of my friends is Italian and now living in the UK and still revels in discovering films that had previously only been seen dubbed!

Hopefully you'll be able to see a dvd version soon and hear it as it should have been!

[bob8rich]

Such a shame the sound quality should spoil it for you. It's a pretty brilliant movie. The sound quality was fantastic when I saw it - though when Mr Crowe was singing, that was not necessarily a blessing lol.

[philitalia]

LOL, imagine then Mr Crowe doing his "singing" with almost no music accompanying him ...
Despite the technical issue I loved the film.

I did the reverse - I moved to Italy a couple of years ago (isn't love a beautiful thing ?) and I tell you : I HATE DUBBING.

Though the Italian version of the Phantom film was REALLY good with excellent singing. Someone messed up on this one though.

[turquoisefish]

That reminds me of when I went to Disneyland Paris and I saw Hairspray in the cinema because it was on. I wasn't sure if it would be dubbed but had an evening free so thought why not. The singing was John Travolta etc... and subtitled but the talking was dubbed into French. It seemed a little silly to me to dub some but not all of it! Anyway great fun and it seems they id better than Les Mis's Italian Job

[theatergeek3]

It's probably because Tom Hooper had them sing the songs a capella and then music came after.

[ClapYo'Hands]

The orchestra is placed very low in the mix which doesn't really work in a lot of places. Another musical film where this is used is Jesus Christ Superstar (1973). In that film, however, it is used to great effect. Mainly because that film actually features good singers.