In last year’s White Lotus season, for instance, subtitles suggested the return of a character who didn’t actually show up on camera. This may explain why home audiences are missing words or lines that include crucial plot details, and are leaving it to the subtitles to pick them up. Relying on the TV’s small built-in speakers could leave you with a subpar experience. But as technology progressed, Sics says, electronics companies began to expect consumers to buy their own sound system separately. It’s often the dialogue that suffers most.īecause back in the day – “when TVs were just TVs,” as Sics says – the small, tinny speakers they came with pushed out the high frequencies where the voice sits clearly and loudly. And when sound is mixed with the best possible audio experience in mind – say, at a cinema – much of that detail can be lost when it’s folded down to laptop speakers, or even your television. As audio tech became more sophisticated, film-makers started including more sounds: where we once would have heard a door slam as someone angrily exited an apartment, today we also get the handle turning, a clock ticking and a character heavy breathing. Other technological advances have also complicated things. That might work in a cinema, but not necessarily when it gets into people’s lounge rooms,” he says “Tony Hopkins on Thor spoke like a normal human being, whereas on a lot of other films, there’s a new style with young actors – it’s like they just talk to themselves. It’s an approach to acting Sics says has been around for a long time now, but something he’s certainly noticed more in younger performers. The advent of portable mics has allowed a shift towards a more intimate and naturalistic style of performance, where actors can speak more softly – or, some might say, mumble. In decades past, actors had to project loudly towards a fixed microphone. “As technology evolved, especially when it took the leap to digital, a tsunami of sound appeared all of a sudden,” Sics says. There are a lot of contributing factors but, paradoxically, it all comes back to advances in technology. Hard-to-hear dialogue is a known issue in the industry, says the sound mixer Guntis Sics, who has worked on movies including Moulin Rouge! and Thor: Ragnarok. You gotta watch Real Housewives with the subtitles on because you could make a drinking game out of the amount of times caption read: "speaking indistinctly"- Shelby Black September 18, 2020īut if you’re switching subtitles on because you simply can’t make out what the actors are saying, it’s (probably) not your ears that are to blame. Or sometimes the fun can be found in laughing at how truly terrible some subtitling is. When it comes to intricately plotted prestige television, subtitles can help you follow what’s happening if you’re prone to scrolling through Instagram at the same time as tuning in. The terminally online among us may switch them on to screenshot their way to viral meme success, so they can be ready to catch pithy one-liners as they drop. There are, of course, a myriad of reasons why someone might turn on the subtitles: a sleeping baby in the other room they don’t want to wake, a noisy flight path above, or an unintelligibly thick accent from an international actor (something that is becoming more common as streaming brings television from around the globe into our homes). Last year, Netflix revealed that 40% of its global users have subtitles (more commonly known as “closed captions” in some countries) on all the time, while 80% switch them on at least once a month – stats that far exceed the number of viewers who need captioning because of hearing impairment. Johnston isn’t the only one living in what he describes as a “subtitles household”.
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