sound quality

[Elizabeth Dalton]

I've only seen it once, more than a week ago, and I was distracted by a 
squirming seven-year-old. :) But did anyone else think the sound was kind of 
off? Specifically, it seemed to me that all of the actors were sitting right on 
top of the mic. There was never any "distance" to show position relative to the 
audience or each other. And it didn't seem like they were using stereo much. 
Maybe it's just that the volume was turned up a bit too much when I saw it (or 
the theatre is too cheap to run movies in stereo....) I know they re-record all 
the dialogue (and other sounds) to get the cleanest possible sound, it just 
seemed like it was "off" in this film. (Sorry I don't know the technical terms 
for what I'm trying to say-- maybe one of our film students could enlighten me?)

Elizabeth

PS - A guy I work with who knows way more about film than I do just walked by. 
He says the term I'm looking for is "imaging" and that in the theatre he saw it 
in, the quadrophonic sound was used to good effect, and he didn't notice any 
problem with the imaging. So maybe it was just my theatre. What did the rest of 
you think?

PPS - He also said he very much enjoyed the film, despite not having read any of 
the books yet. (He and his wife *immediately* went out and bought the first two 
books after seeing the film. She's done with them now, and he plans to read them 
soon.)