What brought these thoughts on was watching a recent (2010) movie last night, "The Book of Eli". A pretty good movie overall except for the annoying (to me anyway) feature that it seems most of today's movies have of varying sound levels. The dialogue can be so low with people almost whispering at levels that just wouldn't work in everyday conversation in the real world. So we crank up the volume to hear them better and suddenly some special effect or event comes crashing through the speakers that would nearly wake the dead. You don't dare fall asleep during a quiet spell of these movies or you risk being jarred into a state of startled wakefulness that is not only disturbing , but annoying too.
Turn the volume down and suddenly we need to become lip readers again to understand what the actors are saying.
While I may have some age related hearing loss after 40 years around farm equipment I don't usually have a problem hearing normal conversation.
Funny how that doesn't seem to be a problem on youtube videos. Set the volume and its usually sufficient for whatever is happening on the screen. And speaking of youtube, I've been watching a series of interesting farmer-created home videos at
farmin in Montana
Just a farmer with a webcam recording daily events on and off the farm but its strangely addictive and he has a lot of subscribers already. I wonder if they are the type of videos the lazy farmer would make if he was into that type of thing?
My wife and I went on a date to see "True Grit" the other night. Good movie, but I'm about done with the movie theater experience. Tickets were $9.75 apiece. We decided to split a Coke and a bag of Reese's pieces: $9.50. Then the obnoxious half hour of previews for god-awful thriller movies where they crank the volume up even higher than the feature picture is the most irritating part.
ReplyDeleteI find it funny how for years OHSA and other agencies have been railing for hearing protection from agricultural and industrial noise, yet so many of our children's toys (made in China, of course) have little electronic speakers that would wake the dead. I've used cotton balls and masking tape to "modulate" the volume a bit on some of my son's toys. I predict a spike in the number of teenagers with hearing aids in about ten years.
I like the Cockshutt. What model?
I've heard that a lot of the younger generation are showing noise induced hearing loss at an early age. Its a noisy world but doesn't have to be.
ReplyDeleteThat Cockshutt is my 40. See it at work on youtube.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVNpHP0i47E