The Dark Knight
"When the menace known as the Joker emerges from his mysterious past, he wreaks havoc and chaos on the people of Gotham. The Dark Knight must accept one of the greatest psychological and physical tests of his ability to fight injustice."(Imdb, 2008)
(Imdb, 2008)
As I've been working on a surround sound project I thought I'd take an in depth look at the surround mixing for the opening scene of this film. This film was nominated for the Best Sound Mixing in 2008 at the 81 Academy Awards. (Wikipedia, 2018).
Here is a look at the scene in question:
(FAVROx Media, 2013)
5.1Mix
So what is 5.1, simply put it is 6 discrete channels of audio that consist of Front Left, Front Right, Centre, LFE (Low frequency effect or Sub) Rear Left and Rear Right. With that in mind I will be splitting this case study in relation to mixing aspects into 5 parts Centre, Fronts, Rears, LFE and Overall. So lets begin.....
Centre
The Audio
Breakdown
Listening to this audio its amazing just how much foley and background track is being routed through the centre channel. This leads me to think that all the foley sounds are placed betweens channels on the panning wheel allowing the sound to be placed better in the designated space. The voice is very clear and you can hear just how compressed and limited it is. Interestingly enough at no point does the vocal dialogue go over -9dB. Reverb is another interesting finding listening to this channel on its own. For different space the reverb is cent through the centre channel, my thoughts are this is done to create a larger room without using the rears and by doing this allows more dynamic scenes to go through the rear and make this film really pop in the theatre.
Another interesting thing worth note is when an actor is talking and not on screen there is an EQ applied removing some upper and lower harmonics as well as a drop around 2kHz, automating this to be bypassed when the actor is on screen really give the feeling of indirect sound without compromising on dialogue intelligibility or amplitude. I also really like the EQ used to replicate the actors talking inside a mask by using a high shelf with perhaps a 3-5dB reducing low shelf.
Loudness
Here is the breakdown from iZotopes Insight plugin for this channel only.
Peaking at -2dB with an integrated LUFS of -14 and dynamic range of 20dB is right on the money as far as 5.1 best practices are.
Fronts
The Audio
Breakdown
The front left and right are the heavy hitters in any production, this mix is a great example. The use of rhythmic click like a ticking clock and pulsing tones moving from left to right really create great tension and the sudden drops to silence are well executed. What surprises me the most about this scene is the amount of reverb in the fronts and the amount of dialogue. There is also a lack of many foley elements of foley that are predominantly in the centre which is an interesting technique. Another very interesting note is that all the loud gunshots are only heard in the sides as the first reflection, I think this technique is very cool and redirects attention back to the front after a loud transient.
Loudness
Left
Right
As you can see these are optimised again following the industry stndard mentioned above. What I found the most interesting is the level of foley to the dialogue, however I believe this is to compensate for the explosions and loud music.
Rears
The Audio
Breakdown
The first thing that strikes me with the rear speakers in this mx is the amount of low frequencies. They are used sparingly and in time with important parts of the music, I believe this is to fill the room with sound without effecting the overall perceived loudness. Reverb is generally hear through the rears however, I think that the is no first reflection in the rear speakers so this is more about being felt as the tone of the room rather than distracting from the action in front. To achieve this I'd use a transient shaper to remove the first reflection.
Loudness
Left
Right
Rear speakers are a little different with a integrated LUFS of -30 and a larger dynamic range. This is done to avoid the dreaded exit sign syndrome where if a noise is too loud in the rears the audience will turn their head and lose focus from the film.
LFE
The Audio
Breakdown
This is probably the most surprising channel of them all as there is very little information in there. To my reasoning this is due to signal processing at the other end. The mix engineer relies on the bass frequencies being extracted from all the other channels and routed to the LFE during playback. The little information that is in the discrete channel is there to boost what is important to the mix and add emphasis to aid in story telling.
Loudness
As you can see it still peaks rather hard at -1.5dB but the integrated LUFS is the same as the rears sitting at -30.
The Mix
Feel free to jump back and watch the YouTube Video to get a feel for the overall mix. This opening scene in my opinion is very strong the use of low frequencies off all speakers really makes the whole sequence pop. Creatively breaking the "standard" rules is what sets it a part and I love the room creation using the fronts rather than the rears. Here's a snapshot of the overall loudness of this scene.
I really like that the introduction of this film is loud, it sets the tone for the film and gives the audience a wow factor to get things going. Looking at this snapshot makes me think that the mixing engineer relies on quieter sections later in the film to balance out the impact at the start. Great film awesome mix and to be honest I'd relish the chance to work on something of this magnitude any small way.
References
FAVROx Media. (2013, December 13). Batman - The Dark Knight Robbery Scene HD [Video file]. Retrieved from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yqvbv-SB4bg
Imdb. (2008, July 7). The Dark Knight (2008). Retrieved from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0468569/
Wikipedia. (2018, April 11). 81st Academy Awards. Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/81st_Academy_Awards