How to drown out a good documentary

Suppose someone like movie producer James Cameron, the man who filmed the Titanic on its most recent slide to the bottom of the ocean, has found he still likes water.

Suppose he decided to hunt for the Bismarck, Hitler's pride and joy, a battleship which was sunk off the western shores of France in 1941.

Perhaps he said, "Now who would want to watch such a show? Maybe World War II vets and history buffs."

So, researchers hit the books and buried themselves in old film archives. Survivors were contacted. The Discovery Channel agreed to bankroll the venture so Cameron could rent a Russian ship, complete with deep submergence vehicle, to dive to the ocean floor. Cameron's brother designed little ROV's (Remotely Operated Vehicles) to snoop into places where a submarine couldn't fit.

Cameron himself went down in the sub to view the sunken ship. He got some really great footage, then proceeded to weave it into a documentary to tell the entire story. Archival films showed how the Bismarck sank the British ship H.M.S. Hood; only three of its 1400 hands survived the icy waters off Greenland. How the English vowed to seek out the Bismarck and exact revenge. How the great German ship went down - with only 100 souls rescued to tell the tale.

Back at the studios - writers worked really hard to form Cameron's footage into an interesting plot. A script was written, edited and rewritten.

Then, Cameron - or someone else - proceeded to ruin the whole show.

How?

He hired a capable professional to read a competent, voice-over narrative. He hired somebody else to "score" the film, that is to produce the background music. And he urged them to go to war with each other.

Keeping in mind that an older audience may have hearing problems, the person in charge of "music" noodled something out on a computer, turned up the volume so it would be really, really loud. Then he added some exciting sound effects, the low boom of cannons and the constant thumping of drums. Just in case anybody should still be able to hear the narration, a chorus - wailing doom - was employed to fill the higher ranges, guaranteeing the narrator would never be heard.

Background music once served a purpose. Remember real violins? They were a dependable cue that our hearts were about to be tugged, we were about to shed a tear. Always, the effect was subtle.

Did you ever attend a cocktail party held in a bunker with concrete walls, ceiling and floors? Where the host hired a rock and roll band with amps loud enough to fill an amphitheater? Where the sound of conversation echoed back and forth as people raised their voices to be heard? Where you couldn't hear anything the person right next to you was saying? Where you were reduced to a nervous wreck and the only salvation was to flee?

That's the effect many documentaries have achieved.

It doesn't bother me so much, but my husband suffers. He sacrificed his hearing to his country when he served as an airplane mechanic in World War II, then as an aerospace engineer checking out noisy equipment.

There he sat before the TV, his ear cupped in a vain effort to hear, yelling back at the screen in frustration because he really, really wanted to know what the narrator was saying.

I don't single out Cameron for this problem. ALL documentaries suffer - in varied degrees - from the same acoustic turmoil. Could it be that an audiologist might be the best consultant a producer could hire?

This copyrighted column is the intellectual property of Virginia Cornell.
For permission to reproduce it in part or in whole please contact: vcornell@manifestpub.com. Inquiries from newspapers and newsletters are welcomed.