My kids watch everything with closed captioning on (ages 10 and 7)! I think now I know why, and it's my fault: I used to always tell them to turn the dang volume down. I guess then they couldn't hear the dialogue, so they figured out how to turn on closed captioning.
Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
251–260 of 738 posts
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#252Earlier quoted context omitted.
I have the same issue but instead of using subtitles I've embraced not knowing what's going on with the show. If it was important that I know for my enjoyment then I'm probably not watching the show anymore. Like if what the actor said was unintelligible I'm going to go with that's part of the plot, a puzzle for me to figure out on the show subreddit or something, but I'm not going to deal with the shitty blinding su…
That’s how I watch movies in general. Maybe it’s a symptom of ADHD or lack of interest but I find it hard to remember people’s names and plot reveals that require me to remember to specific locations or details. I just watch movies and enjoy them “generally”.
I do some of that, because I'm bad with remembering names. If the plot involves talking about someone, I just learned to ignore it and consider non-important.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#253My favorite movie of all time is City of God, which is entirely in Portugese. Somehow the captions don't lessen that movie for me at all.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#254One more vote for terrible audio mixes and one for actors who mumble their dialog. Whenever I watch movies with my wife, we constantly have to fiddle with the remote control. The loud parts (including explosions and music) are too loud for her, so we have to turn the volume down during those parts, but the dialog is too quiet and mumbly for me to hear, so we turn the volume up during those parts. We now just keep the…
The Apple TV has a setting called "reduce loud sounds" which helps with this problem. I'm sure you can find it on other devices too. My Sony TV also has a sound setting for enhanced dialogue which might help as well. Can't really help with the actors thing, though I think I'd rather characters that are truer to life than sound like they're acting on stage, personally.
so you have people in real life that emit slurred intelligible sounds instead of speaking properly? that sounds terrible.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#255Earlier quoted context omitted.
I watched Super 8, on I think Amazon, when it came out. I thought it was about the weirdest movie I'd ever seen, a narrated in real time action movie. Come to find out, for whatever reason, it had audio description turned on by default. As someone who can see and hear fine, I found it rather odd(before learning what it was). But for a vision impaired person, such a thing must be a game changer.
I had the opposite experience watching a vampire film called 30 Days of Night! For whatever reason my DVD player didn’t show any subtitles, even the translation from the Aramaic spoken by the vampires. So, I got to watch a bunch of undead growl unintelligibly at each other throughout the movie. It actually improved the experience because not knowing what they were saying made it so much creeper!
Related: Joel Haver - "When a character speaks a different language but doesn't get subtitles"
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#256The fact that there's a claimed generational gap here speaks more to the values of the generations re: passive vs active entertainment. I could also ask: "Why do all these 60-Somethings have the TV on as background noise while doing other tasks?" To me it seems closed-caption usage is correlated with actually paying attention to television consumption. People who have their TV on at all hours, as background entertain…
This whole framing is bull. People who grew up without closed captions are just used to watching a show without it. For them, it’s distracting to constantly have words to look down and read when they are trying to pay attention to what is happening on the screen. Like trying to read the words on every single road sign when you drive somewhere.
You may notice that in movie theaters—the most focused and immersive watching experience there is—they don’t show captions except maybe when translating foreign language.
Or you may not, if you only watch movies at home on your TV.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#257One more vote for terrible audio mixes and one for actors who mumble their dialog. Whenever I watch movies with my wife, we constantly have to fiddle with the remote control. The loud parts (including explosions and music) are too loud for her, so we have to turn the volume down during those parts, but the dialog is too quiet and mumbly for me to hear, so we turn the volume up during those parts. We now just keep the…
To be fair the consumer audio stack is crap in the average home. I bet a CRT TV would be a big improvement in audio quality compared to most flat screens on the market.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#258The fact that there's a claimed generational gap here speaks more to the values of the generations re: passive vs active entertainment. I could also ask: "Why do all these 60-Somethings have the TV on as background noise while doing other tasks?" To me it seems closed-caption usage is correlated with actually paying attention to television consumption. People who have their TV on at all hours, as background entertain…
Closed captioning only very recently become not crap. It used to be mainly served as those black bars with white text coming in about 30 seconds too late and with ridiculous typos.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#259One more vote for terrible audio mixes and one for actors who mumble their dialog. Whenever I watch movies with my wife, we constantly have to fiddle with the remote control. The loud parts (including explosions and music) are too loud for her, so we have to turn the volume down during those parts, but the dialog is too quiet and mumbly for me to hear, so we turn the volume up during those parts. We now just keep the…
If you know a foreign language, an option that works is to watch the dubbed version. I sometimes do this, especially for action movies: the foreign dubbed version is often easier to understand than the original english, because people doing the dubbing want to be understood.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's an article that's been floating around that notes this phenomenon started after Nolan's movies became the style to emulate, and there are various sound engineers who state they would like to do what you want but they have to produce what the paying entity asks for. Someone should feel free to link it here - I'm mobile at the moment so can't dig it up. But anyway, I just wanted to jump in and say... all the ti…
Wait it isn’t because 5.1 became the norm for recording movies bust most people have a 2.0 or a 2.1 setup at most? I thought that was the conventional wisedom.
Yeah; playing 5.1 mixes on stereo equipment make the side and back channels too loud and the center channel too quiet.
Also, it is now fashionable for actors to mumble.
I'm reasonably sure I am not going deaf, since I have no problem following audio fiction podcasts with the windows down in my car during my commute.