Were they eighty years old? On average, I'm at the cinema more than once per week, and I've never witnessed anyone demanding a refund, not once, for any reason whatsoever.
That's your personal experience. A problem with sound currently exists in cinema because of mis-matched calibration with the Dolby dubbing treatres. This is caused by management who change the calibration due to customer complaints. Just because you are unaware of a problem, does not mean it does not exist.
Call me crazy, but I have a feeling neither White Goodman nor Mugato has perfectly unique footsteps with their own gait and timbre.
OK, you're crazy! You may be right about Mugato but I'd be very surprised if White Goodman did not have designed footsteps. There was a very good Foley team on that film. Maybe you don't know what "Foley" really means? Commonly film makers use the term Foley to mean any sounds created in post recorded in sync with the picture. But Foley is named after Jack Foley, who revolutionised audio post in the 1930's by studying how people walked and creating footsteps with a personality for each character. If footsteps haven't been designed with a personality, then really they are just footstep SFX rather than Foley. This is why the official credit is "Foley Artist" and not "Foley Technician".
Look, I CAN'T WAIT until the day in which I'll have enough of a budget to hire someone like you.
Why? The chances are that you would be wasting some or all of that budget by hiring me. I think you're missing the point of what I've been trying to say. At the end of the day, many of the value judgements about the use of sound are made by the director, not by me. If the director is incapable of making good value judgements then at least some of my work/skills/knowledge will be wasted. I've watched some of Take Shelter and IMHO, there is still plenty of room for improvement but the sound (and music) is of decent professional standards. Unlike the trailer, where the sound is truly dreadful and appears to have been done by someone without even the most basic understanding of sound.
I'm sure you could tell the difference between decent professional standards and dreadful when judging the quality of a script, the cinematography, the VFX, the acting or the set design for example, why not the sound? I'm not trying to be insulting here, it's just that unfortunately this situation is not at all uncommon and results the substantially poorer quality indi films than should be the case, with any given budget!
I just think it's a little over simplistic to break down and judge movies the way that you do, and I don't think general audiences are anywhere near as finicky as you.
I try to judge movies in two ways, as a film maker and as an ordinary film goer. Film makers and aficionados make subjective judgements based on their understanding of the various elements which combine to make a film. The vast majority of film goers have relatively little appreciation of the individual elements and judge a film purely on whether or not they enjoyed it. Were they excited or shocked or were they bored, were they moved emotionally or left uninvolved? In essence then, a good film maker is one who can manipulate the audiences' emotions and like it or not sound (including music) is one of the major players, if not the most major player, when it comes to the game of emotional manipulation.
The problem with much film making, which is particularly pronounced in indi film making, is the preoccupation of film makers with the visuals at the expense of the sound. A better balance between the audio and visual would result in a far better film for the same budget. It's no surprise this lack of balance exists because film schools spend about 95% of their time teaching students to create and manipulate the power of visual images, about 5% of their time teaching about the technical use of sound and about 0% of their time teaching the power of sound to manipulate the audience.
For those with a wider understanding of film making, it's obvious that one of the main differences between the legendary directors and the also rans is their approach to the use of sound. Unfortunately, many film makers spend years or entire careers blissfully unaware of this. In a way this is due to the fact that much of the great sound design get's it's power from the fact that the audience is not aware that the sound is being used to manipulate what they are experiencing and most film makers have little more understanding of this fact than the audience.
A movie doesn't have to be perfect, in every way, in order for me to enjoy it, and I think general audiences are the same.
I've never once used the word perfect in any of my posts. But the difference between perfect and dreadful is almost infinite! Very bad sound will not necessarily make a film unwatchable (although in extremis it could) but it severely limits the ability of the film to stimulate and engage the audience. If a film has bad sound yet is still judged to be a reasonably good film, what a terrible shame, with a little more appropriate planning (not necessarily a bigger budget) it could have been a great film or even a masterpiece.
As a filmmaker, I want my movie to be perfect, but I also have severe budgetary limitations, and difficult decisions have to be made.
With all due respect, if you want to aim for a perfect movie, then you need to be able to make value judgements to differentiate between perfect and dreadful and like it or not, in film that means sound as well as visuals. As a maker of audio / visual products you really should have been able to identify that the trailer had dreadful sound and therefore did not "work tremendously well". It might have worked well enough to inspire you to go and see it but how much better and more inspiring should it have been (with decent sound), is something you really should have some idea of, as a film maker.
G
EDIT: I've just read this through and it sounds rather confrontational, possibly even insulting. Not my intention at all, just trying to provide some information to help those who read it to understand film making a little better and thereby make better films.