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Speak up! How 'mumble acting' is ruining TV and film

Can't hear a word actors are saying now? Yes, it's a problem.

Michael Lallo

You're not going deaf. (Well, we all are, slowly, thanks to the Apple corporation's various iThings.)

But if you've ever found yourself grasping for your remote and asking, "What did he say?", you're not alone.

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Get ready to mumble

Film and television actors are using mumbling as a technique, and it seems to be working.

Chances are, you're watching an acclaimed American cable show. Or a BBC period drama. Or an Aussie arthouse flick.

Just as film and movies have become literally too dark – an over-used device meant to signal "quality" – they've also become filled with actors who mumble, whisper or growl their way through a script.

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This "mumble-acting" has even infected superhero films. As Slate memorably put it: "Christian Bale's Batman sounds nothing like Christian Bale. Or a human being."

No one expects Batman to have Malcolm Turnbull's patrician boom (or worse, enunciate every damn syllable like Eric Abetz). But at least Michael Keaton's Batman managed to whisper without making us go "Huh?" every five minutes.

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The latest season of Transparent is sublime; as near to perfect as TV drama gets. Still, it's blighted by a few stylistic tricks currently in vogue. Its sunny California is rendered bizarrely pallid by a hazy filter. Sometimes, its wobble-cam effect progresses from "realistic" to "earthquake". But sound is its biggest problem.

We find Josh (Jay Duplass) mumbling about a relationship he's just screwed up. (This isn't a spoiler; this is Josh's default mode.) The background noise makes him even harder to hear. (To be clear, the noise is in the show; to enhance its realism.) So we scroll back and play the scene again, this time cranking the volume up. Which simply results in louder mumbling.

Eventually, we cut to a scene with Maura (Jeffrey Tambor) in a bar. The thumping music is three times as loud as the dialogue that preceded it. Before I can stab the volume button, my neighbour is pounding our poorly-insulated wall.

Is it just me?

Apparently, no.

In 2013, BBC boss Tony Hall said the corporation should do more to stop actors "muttering" in its dramas, following sustained complaints from viewers.

Never have so many dedicated such effort to being understood by so few.

"Muttering can be testing [when viewers find they] have missed a line... you have to remember that you have an audience."

Among the Beeb's worst offenders, according to UK press reports, were the dramas Happy Valley and Jamaica Inn, which debuted the following year.

"Again a good show is spoilt by the sound, too much whispering and mumbling," tweeted one viewer.

"Shocking sound BBC. Hard to follow the mumbling," wrote another.

Some struggled to understand David Tennant in Broadchurch – and even Doctor Who. Then there was the BBC's adaptation of Birdsong, described by The Guardian as "the great granddaddy of all television mumbling ... never have so many dedicated such effort to being understood by so few. It's almost as if Eddie Redmayne was allergic to microphone, such was the herculean effort he put into his mumbling ... preferring to deliver his lines via a series of strangulated squeaks from the back of his throat."

Not that Americans are doing much better.

I stuck with True Detective until Matthew McConaughey's mumbling spawned this parody, and I gave up:

There's also The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, and almost everything with Kiefer Sutherland (his whisper-growl inherited from dad Donald). Mad Men was mostly fine, but threw in bursts unintelligible dialogue to keep us on our toes.

For a decent list of mumble-prone-but-highly-decorated US dramas, just watch this excellent Portlandia parody:

I adored Somersault, Candy and other unsparingly bleak works favoured by a certain breed of local filmmaker. But again, the spell was broken by cinema patrons whispering "Did you catch that?" whenever a character expelled some air while half-heartedly attempting to form a few words.

Just turn on the subtitles, I hear you say!

Well, directors can't have it both ways. If their creative vision includes characters in underlit rooms muttering unintelligible dialogue, with digitally-added car horns for "grittiness", that's fine. But are they cool with us blocking part the lower part of the screen with ugly text? And reading captions instead of the actors' expressions?

Just as technology enabled dark TV, it spurred the rise of mumble-acting. Small body microphones and post-production editing advances encourage actors to channel their inner Brando. And if things stuff up, the audio can be re-recorded and spliced in.

Freed from old tech constraints, "quality" producers try to distinguish themselves from mainstream productions in every way. Whereas over-lit reality TV contestant must clunkily re-cap what viewers saw just two minutes ago – driving us all mad – indie filmmakers have done the opposite: they've left everyone muttering in the dark.

Look. It's great to experiment. But there's a fine line between trying something new and being wilfully obtuse. Those who make film and TV are in the business of communicating, after all. That doesn't mean everything has to be spelled out. Perhaps this leaves us uncomfortable or disturbed, yet not able to articulate why. As it should be.

The last thing we want, of course, is a return to the stuffy "received pronunciation" mimicry that dominated early Australian television.

But incomprehensible drawl has become a lazy way of suggesting This Is A Premium Show. Let the writing shine instead.

If it's realism you're after, step outside. (Sure, there are those who affect a world-weary monotone but they're profoundly irritating and best ignored.) Reflecting the whole range of sounds and voices most of us use in a typical day? That's real.

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