Captions AND Sound!

A few days ago, I drove back to my hometown to see an Open Captioned movie—Eclipse—with Josie.  (And no, we’re not Twilight groupies, and we don’t argue about Team Edward vs. Team Jacob!)  When I bought my ticket, I asked the kid at the box office, “It is captioned, right?”  I ask this every time, since they no longer inform us when the movies are captioned.  I also do it as a reminder for them to turn on the captioning, since they used to forget and I’d have to run back to the lobby screaming “TURN ON THE CAPTIONING IN AUDITORIUM 6!!!”

Josie and I walked into the room and there were only 3 people seated.  I sarcastically said, “Gee, I wonder where we’ll ever sit!”  One of the middle-aged ladies in the back of the theater asked us, “So did they try to sell you tickets to the 7:30 show instead of the 7:00?!”  She was very upset about it.  “Um, no, I don’t think so” I said, checking my ticket.  7:00.  The lady continued complaining, wondering why on earth they would make her wait another 30 minutes for the 7:30 showing.   Just to make conversation, I asked her, “You know it’s captioned, right?”  I have no idea why I asked this, since I already knew what her answer would be.  She looked completely disgusted and said “Oh it is?!  No, we didn’t know that!”  I answered, “They used to post a sign at the box office and tell everyone buying a ticket, but they haven’t done that in years.”  She asked, “Is the 7:30 showing captioned, too?!”  She really sounded panicked about it.  “No, this is the only screen that’s captioned,” I said.  The lady whispered to her friends and then asked me,

“Well is it JUST captioned, or is there sound, too?!” 

I stifled a laugh and said politely, “Oh yes, there’s regular sound.  It just has the captioning at the bottom so you can understand it better.”  With that I sat down, straining to hear their conversation (I wasn’t successful).  I waited for them to get up and go to the 7:30 showing, but they stayed put.  The couple right behind us, who came in a few minutes later, did get up and leave right after the movie started.  They never came back, and we wondered if they left because of the captioning. 

This is the first time I’ve ever heard anyone complain about captioning, although I’d never had an actual conversation with someone about it before.  I always try to listen for people talking about it when the movie starts and also when it ends, wondering if they’ll say something negative about how distracting it was, but I never have, in the 5 years I’ve attended Open Captioned movies.

My only complaint about the movie is the audio, which has been my (and Brandt’s) complaint about movies for years.  With the Open Captioning, I didn’t have trouble knowing what the actors were saying, but it was annoying just how muffled it was, especially when Robert Pattinson talked.  It sounded like there was a sock stuffed in his mouth!  I thought this was just a problem that the two of us were having with movies, but last week I read Megan’s post on Hearing Sparks, which referenced a recent article called “The Rising Problem of Inaudible Dialogue.”  The author, Simon Brew, blames this problem on two growing trends:  first, “very complex surround sound mixes,” and second, “actors are rediscovering the art of the mumble.”

I’m glad it isn’t just me that’s having problems!  In The Dark Knight, for example, I could understand maybe 80% of the dialogue.  Brandt and I saw it before our city had movie theater captioning, and he kept whispering to me, “What did he say?!  What’s going on?!”  All I could do is shrug and say, “I don’t have a clue what they’re talking about or who that even is!”  We had to watch the DVD with subtitles to figure out the details of the plot.

Mr. Brew has some wonderful advice for these mumbling actors:

“Make sure your audience can hear what it is you're saying.  Stop mumbling incomprehensibly.  If you're not mumbling, speak clearly.  You're an actor.  That's your job.  And let us all enjoy the dialogue in the script that presumably was one of the reasons you signed up for the project in question in the first place.”

And for the movie’s production team, his message is:

“...Never forget the audience at the end of it all.  Seriously.  If you're watching a first cut of a movie, and you can't hear what's being said properly, then what chance have the rest of us got?”

He ends his article by saying:

“I do accept that I'm lucky. My hearing is okay, but as I get older, inevitably—as it will with us all—it'll deteriorate.  And I wonder whether I'll get to the point where I'll watch more and more films and television programmes with the subtitles on.  Not because I've got problems in everyday hearing, but simply because I need the best chance of finding out what's going on.  The subtitles might just give me that extra leg up that film and programme makers may not be willing to offer.”

Frankly, I think more people need to embrace subtitles on movies (and closed-captioning on television), rather than looking at them as something you have to subject yourself to.  Trust me, you’re missing more than you realize, even if you have perfect hearing.  Try watching your favorite movie with the subtitles on and I guarantee you’ll have at least one instance where you shout, “So that’s what that line is!  I’ve been hearing it wrong all these years!”