this is the first day since I started doing Going In Blind where I only watched one film. the Bridges Of Madison County. And because I cultivate a following of highly intelligent readers, and thus I’m convinced you put two and two together. Celebrating its 30th Anniversary this year is the romantic drama the bridges Of Madison County, directed by Clint Eastwood, from an adapted screenplay by Richard laGravanese, who took the best-selling novel and put it to script. My first time ever through on this film, and I enjoyed it. I’m actually more familiar with the musical, as Jason Robert Brown wrote the score for that, and he’s my favorite composer for the stage. I’ve been meaning to watch the film, and an Aniversary, mixed with impending Valentine’s Day, got me here. The direction from Eastwood is thoughtful, Meryl Streep is terrific as usual, and while I’ve never found Clint Eastwood appealing as a romantic lead, he does better than I expected here. It is a very mature drama, and worth your time. The problem is, you’ll have to get through TTS to watch it.
I pulled this off of Amazon, where the movie has a text-to-speech track (which sometimes is broadly referred to as AI), which put a voice actor/narrator out of work. A human definitely wrote this, because it is a well written track. It is poorly mixed, with audio ducking being a thing. And, also, I’ve heard much worse TTS. I’ve heard TTS that tramples the dialogue, that makes no sense, and is poorly written. Films like Jolt, The Terminator, and weekend At Bernie’s all still haunt me. This was a thoughtful writer, who has some nice detail, it just sounds awful.
However, we need to be careful, because what is it we are really looking for the most? The comfort of a human voice, the best mix, or a well written description? Honestly, the writing comes first. it just so often feels like it doesn’t, because in the credits, so many times we just hear which company made the track, and who narrated it. I can’t even fathom how many excellent writers have flown under the radar, simply because they work for an audio description company that doesn’t prioritize pushing for them to be credited in the end. And, writing matters the most. I hear human narrated tracks for film and television all the time that are woefully inadequate. I have no problem or quarrel with the voice talent, but the content in the description is staggeringly mediocre, to sometimes pointless.
If we really put our thoughts about TTS front and center, you can listen to something like this, which has an awful fake human voice, but is well written and be able to enjoy the film, or you can try and make it through the track I bitched about yesterday, The Notebook, and enjoy the warmth of a nice narrator, who has nothing to read. if there isn’t a lesson to be learned from all the discourse I’ve seen online about the context we get out of description for a sitcom like Abbott Elementary, or a reality show like The Traitors, or even the mix for the first half of this season of SNL on Peacock, where the audio description wasn’t mixed properly after having aired live, it is that the writing always seems to come first. You can have a boring narrator, but a great script. you can have odd mixing, but a great scriptt. What you can’t have, is an excellent human narrator, mixed beautifully, who has nothing to say.
Bridges Of Madison County:
Fresh, Final Grade: A-, Audio Description: B+
