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Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

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Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#501

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What part of “seems like a problem for the producers of bad screens to solve” makes it seem like this is blaming the people who buy the screens and not the people that make the screens. Don’t make the art worse, hold the manufacturers accountable for selling terrible products.

Art is worse though. From intangible sludge https://www.vox.com/culture/22840526/colors-movies-tv-gray-d... to modern DPs and directors not being able to film a dark scene competently https://twitter.com/nikitonsky/status/1564633641828884483

> colors, what happened to them?

Did movies and TV copy video games' Real Is Brown trope?

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#502

One 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…

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…

I think this is the article you mentioned: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2020/sep/03/tenet-dialogue-...

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#503

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you spent much times in other countries? I just spent a week in the UK with a German who had culture shock that strangers were actually talking to each other, that waiters called him "sir", and that the trains were so high-tech. Mainly I find that Germans who disagree with these things have not lived in other countries, and those that do immediately agree.

Yeah, you prefer the forced fake-friendlyness of anglo countries, most of us actually do not want that. And yes, I have lived in other countries.

The fact that you think the friendliness of people in anglo countries is fake is very sad...

EDIT: trust me the banter between two strangers chatting in the UK is not fake. We are not americans. We are simply willing to talk to people we don't know. Germans do not do this. Isolating yourself from strangers is not something to be proud of.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#504

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would have paid extra for subtitles when I saw Tenet at IMAX. The audio mix made it extremely difficult to follow.

In Switzerland every movie has German and French sub-titles. Sadly you can't turn them off in the theater but it's helpful id you can't understand what the actors are mumbling.

Taking up a lot of screen space too?

Reminds me my dad said when he first moved abroad before he learned the local language, everyone would read the subtitles and laugh at the joke and then he couldn't hear what they had just laughed at.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#505

One 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…

I'm very much outside of the age range mentioned in the article but +100 for crappy audio mixing. When my family was going through all the Marvel movies at first I tried to control the volume by making it higher during the dialog and lower during the battles etc but it was an exercise in futility, as I'm only human and there would be some delay in volume change and we would still miss what the guy/gal said or my hous…

When I had a 5.1 setup, I had the center channel volume set higher than the side/rear channels and it made speech understandable while explosions weren't overpowering. Maybe the receiver you have allows the same?

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#506

One 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…

Having an audio receiver and cranking the centre channel helped a lot for me.

Turns out I’m also half deaf in one ear.

Anyway I’d recommend both a centre channel with adjustable volume and a hearing test.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#507

Tangentially: Youtube really likes to turn CC on randomly on its own, even when it's explicitly disabled. Both in the mobile app and the website.

I have the opposite. Youtube captions never stay on despite my account preferences and being logged in.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#508

Earlier 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.

The 5.1 vs 2.0 is a bit of a red herring, it used to be a big problem a decade or two ago, but today it is just a small to insignificant contributor to the problem.

The real problem now a days is not technical, it is 100% director's choice. Having deafening "wooooon" organ music, and ear popping explosions is simply in vogue, so all directors want that in their movie, and mix like that on purpose.

And it is not about theatrical mix vs home mix either. The cinema experience also changed with this latest mixing trend, watching a modern movie in the cinema also became uncomfortable with much louder explosions/music/"wooon" than two decades ago. (To the point where I'm considering using ear protection if ever going back to a cinema).

This is 100% a manufactured problem created on purpose by misguided (sound) directors.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#509

One 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…

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…

Interstellar is unwatchable to me because of the sound. It is literally painful.

Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?

#510
post #342
post #333

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That option actually works great for resurrecting the speech in a movie, but makes all the music utterly flat and boring. With this option on you might as well throw out your expensive speaker setup and use the built in TV speaker. If only there was a hotkey to toggle it on and off, instead of hidden 4 levels down the touch-and-swipe menu.

Even better would be for the compressor/limiter to detect whether the source is music, dialogue or explosion and adjust its parameters accordingly. Come on Apple, make it smarter!

Or movies could have separate audio tracks and volume sliders for dialog, sound effects and music, like a game from the year 2000.
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