John Ottman

BACK TO VEGAS

Life is full of irony. I tend to get grumpy at premieres because the theaters chosen are often not good for sound, and everyone's so loud you can't hear the film or the nuances. Why anyone would go see a film at a premiere is beyond me, aside from the party afterward. It never sounds the way it was intended. I always ask if they can rig a volume control for me at the premieres. Because the main premiere was in New York (in a performance hall for dancing – not exactly a movie theater), my parents couldn't make the trek. For personal reasons, (in the aftermath of my break-up) I needed to get out of Los Angeles. So my parents and I met in Vegas for a non-traditional holiday. My mom was obsessed with one thing: Seeing Valkyrie. So we're sitting in the theater, the film comes on and the MGM Lion opens its jaws. But the roar is, well, more of a whimper. I knew right away this was going to be two hours of pure torture if the sound wasn't at proper levels. Valkyrie depends on the sound design and music to keep the tension under the skin. Like a total psycho, I high-tailed it out of the theater, grabbed some girl with a walkie-talkie, and they kindly adjusted the sound to my liking as I stood in the side of the theater. So I knew after that screening, there was at least one theater in the world playing the film at its correct volume! It was a digital theater, meaning the film looked exactly as intended. There's nothing you can do to screw up a digitally projected image. It's going to be in focus and look perfect. But there's no similar fail-safe standard for the sound. The trailers they were showing were perfectly clear and loud, but the film itself was set to a sleepy level. I strongly believe this has a tangible impact on an audience's experience of a film such as Valkyrie, where quiet subtleties in sound help create that experience. When these nuances fall just below an involving threshold, the film is at risk of becoming more passive. I guess most films are so one dimensionally loud and lack fine subtlties in sound, that if they're a little lower it's not such a big deal. But for the few that utilize quietness and surreptitious sound design, a sound setting just a couple DB too low can destroy the experience.

Well, that's the cliff's notes version of the year and a half on Valkyrie. I leave proud of what we all accomplished in pulling it off and hope it gets a good place in the lexicon of film. If I had it all to do over again, um,... let me think about that one.

John Ottman
Los Angeles, CA
October 2009