Why More and More of Us Are Using Captions/Subtitles to Understand Dialog

[jesse_the_k]

Just found a great episode on 20,000 Hz, a favorite podcast of mine.

SUBTITLES ON: WHY IS MOVIE DIALOGUE SO HARD TO UNDERSTAND?

Answer at access_fandom, a comm I co-mod where we talk about making sure the full fandom experience works for all of us, no matter how our bodyminds work. Like many DW comms, it hosts useful knowledge going back a while, and is always ready to be revived.

Comments

[bibliofile]

Thank you for cross-posting.

[fflo]

Years ago some Serbian buds with great English came over to watch The Big Sleep with me, which film I'd seen a dozen times by then; they asked for subtitles as an assist. I then realized how many lines I'd not caught. In the time since then I've habitually had the captions on, and dig how they often include inaudible or barely audible sound elements. I've also found out more about what an art it is to do good captions, including needing to make a line of dialogue more concise, for sufficient reading time.

It's not quite true that I need them now for my somewhat failing hearing. What I really need is either to cave and get a huge TV or to convince filmmakers and TV show people not to keep using texts, shown terribly small on the screen, as part of their storytelling. It's so irritating to have to pause & zoom in on them with my phone, take a pic & then zoom in on the pic. Do all people in Hollywood have wall-size TVs? Or just amazing eyeballs?