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Why we need subtitles - pretty much always

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https://sigforum.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/720601935/m/3720080894

January 23, 2023, 08:50 PM
konata88
Why we need subtitles - pretty much always
Yea. I don't like his suggested solutions. Weak and woke.

I want to be able to enjoy the visual aspects of movies and TV - otherwise I'd just listen to audiobooks or something.

News flash, Mr Nolan, if we can't understand the dialog then we aren't enjoying your fucking movie. If he's just trying to drive us to theaters in order to enjoy the movie, then he's lost a customer. I'll now know to avoid Nolan movies.

This has been a pet peeve of mine. It's why I turned off THX recently so that I can get tone controls back to try and enhance dialog.




"Wrong does not cease to be wrong because the majority share in it." L.Tolstoy
"A government is just a body of people, usually, notably, ungoverned." Shepherd Book
January 23, 2023, 09:55 PM
ensigmatic
quote:
Originally posted by konata88:
Yea. I don't like his suggested solutions. Weak and woke.

I want to be able to enjoy the visual aspects of movies and TV ...
We've been using subtitles/closed captioning for so long we don't really notice it anymore.

Good luck getting Hollyweird to change its ways Wink

Btw: His suggested solutions aren't "woke" just because you think they're lame.



"America is at that awkward stage. It's too late to work within the system,,,, but too early to shoot the bastards." -- Claire Wolfe
"If we let things terrify us, life will not be worth living." -- Seneca the Younger, Roman Stoic philosopher
January 24, 2023, 08:37 AM
RogueJSK
quote:
Originally posted by P250UA5:
I just don't want the descriptive text of what song/music/background noise is happening.
I just want audio subs without being told that a car door closed, or 'brooding music'.


That's the difference between standard subtitles and SDH ("closed captions").

The former is just the dialogue text. The latter also includes important audio cues (like sound effects, music, and non-word verbal noises), for those who are deaf or hard of hearing.

Streaming services and BluRays nowadays often let you pick between English and English SDH in the subtitles/captions menu, though not always.

quote:
Originally posted by ensigmatic:
Btw: His suggested solutions aren't "woke" just because you think they're lame.


I got a laugh out of that as well. Big Grin

The solutions were "Buy some better speakers instead of relying on the tiny cheap ones that come built-in to TVs nowadays", "Sit back and enjoy the film anyway without worrying about catching every single syllable", or "Turn on subtitles"... All of which have zero - absolutely nothing - to do with any woke agenda.

And as for "weak", those are literally your only three options. There's no insidious media conspiracy to obfuscate some magic alternative option that's out there. A few people bitching on an online forum is not going to cause the entire entertainment industry to modify their approach to audio recording and mixing, the entire acting industry to go back to an old-fashioned unrealistic stage-acting voice projection manner of dialogue delivery, and the entire electronics industry to start including large, high-end speakers in the TVs they produce. Wink


I happen to like a number of Nolan's films, and I have no problems enjoying his movies at home with a high quality sound system.

His trademark vivid, bombastic soundscapes in films like Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk, and the Dark Knight films enhance the movie for me, not detract from it. They add significantly to the film's tone, pace, immersion, etc. (Tenet, his latest, was a let-down, but not because of the sound.)