Actors aren’t only ones to blame for mumbling, says leading TV writer
ARTS CORRESPONDENT IT HAS become the bane of a television viewer’s life: the mumbling actor who swallows his lines, leaving them reaching for the subtitles button.
But widespread sound problems should not be blamed just on its hapless stars, writer Andrew Davies says.
Davies, who has adapted some of Britain’s most acclaimed period dramas including and
said drama directors often fail to notice when actors are mumbling because they know the lines so well.
As such, he said, they assume the words are being said clearly, leaving the problem unnoticed until it reaches the screen. Speaking about his work adapting classic novels at the Emirates Airline Festival of Literature in Dubai, he admitted directors “get sick of me” constantly reminding them to make dialogue audible and scenes well-lit.
The topic of mumbling has become increasingly central after a series of onscreen disasters beginning in earnest in 2012 with and continuing to current BBC series
In 2014, received more than 2,000 official complaints after viewers lamented its dark setting and inaudible Cornish lines. Sound quality problems have also previously been blamed on modern televisions – which have speakers at the back – and actors choosing not to enunciate.
When asked whether he had any insights into why mumbling appeared to be such a problem, Davies said: “It can be a problem with flatscreen televisions tending to have not very clear sound.
“But I also think yes, actors who are trying to make it sound more like natural speech sometimes do tend to mumble. And directors know the lines so well that they can hear them and they think they’re being said clearly.
“I watch the rushes and I’m full of complaints. Directors get sick of me saying, ‘I can’t see, it’s too dark, and I can’t hear what they’re saying because it’s not clear’.”
He added: “Another problem of course is that a lot of people who complain are quite hard of hearing.
“My wife and I both tend to watch dramas with the subtitles on.”
Davies’ own dramas have not been the subject of any major complaints. He is currently working on a new adaptation of for the BBC, which he warned is likely to upset fans of the musical after he chose to go straight back to the Victor Hugo novel.
He told an audience: “I’m trying to rescue it from that awful musical. I know a lot of people who adore the musical who, if they watch my adaptation, are going to say ‘Where are the songs? He left the best bits out!’”
He has now written the first draft and is awaiting feedback from producers. Next, he said, he hopes to adapt Dickens’ and Vikram Seth’s
joking it would “give him a reason to stay alive” at the age of 80. He has also written a drama about the foundation of the NHS and Nye Bevan, confirming it had not been made by the BBC. He said the decision was down to concern about being seen to be too Left-wing. Jasper Shackleton is seated in his replica of the Bounty longboat in 1989 with, standing up from left to right, James Armstrong, Ian Lawson, Angus McCallum and Robin Todd