Barn Raising Dance Scene - 7 Brides for 7 Brothers

[naimajc]

I have searched a few times online and can find no information about why the dancing and music are not in sync during the first 3rd of the dance scene.  It really bothers me. (I am a musician) The  music does seem to be in better sync midway through the dance scene. 

Maybe if I understand what happened to cause this I can deal with it better.  It is such a fantastic movie.  I love it and I both highly anticipate and cringe at this scene.    Anyone have a clue?

Naima

[txfilmfan]

27 minutes ago, naimajc said:

I have searched a few times online and can find no information about why the dancing and music are not in sync during the first 3rd of the dance scene.  It really bothers me. (I am a musician) The  music does seem to be in better sync midway through the dance scene. 

Maybe if I understand what happened to cause this I can deal with it better.  It is such a fantastic movie.  I love it and I both highly anticipate and cringe at this scene.    Anyone have a clue?

Naima

Agree - the footsteps are not in sync with the beat of the music, at times a half-beat off, and it messes with the metronome in my head.  OTOH, when the dancers change from one position to another, it seems to be in time with the music.

One thing that doesn't help are the footstep foley effects at the beginning.  They are so loud as to be intrusive, and I think the fact that they are off the beat amplifies the problem.  This may be why the middle seems better, because they're no longer dancing on a wooden floor, and the added foley effects are softened in comparison with those earlier in the sequence.

But even if you try to ignore the footstep sound effects and focus just on the music and dancing (which is almost impossible), it still seems like the dancers are a bit ahead of the music.  There's obviously a timing issue but as to why it occurred, we may never know, since filming dance sequences are very complicated (taking weeks/months) and there's a lot of places where things could've gone wrong.  I think the biggest problem are those foley effects.  If those were softened, you'd probably not notice it as much.

[Terrence1]

I'm so glad to hear of others that are bothered by this.  Being a musician myself, it is so noticeable.  It's amazing that MGM released this without correcting such an obvious flaw.