I'm sure the audio mixes have something to do with it, but I also just like to read. I hear just fine but I wish I had closed captioning in real life!
Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
531–540 of 738 posts
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#532Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 watch…
> 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. Well, it just tells you come from the English speaking country. For the rest of us, subtitles in a movie theatre are among most normal things in the world.
I bet they don’t show subtitles when the film is in your native language.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#533One 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 also suspect the hardware they master for is not the hardware most consumers have. My cheap soundbar isn't going to produce the sounds they want, and im not going to hear dialog. But when I visit a theater, I have no problems hearing the dialog.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#534The 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…
I wish there was a CC mode for “I’m not deaf, I just don’t catch the quiet mumbly dialog sometimes so give me captions only of the dialog.” Bonus if it’s delayed by exactly 2 seconds, so that it doesn’t spoil jokes, and I can quickly reference it if I missed something someone said (helping me avoid fixating on the captions.) Because it’s the CC descriptions of music swells and things like “[laughs] and “[crying]”, et…
[pants] is my favourite. I'm waiting for [t-shirt] but it never arrives.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#535Wsj knows their audience. They're the folks who want to frame everything in terms of all the weird and entitled things that 20-somethings do. They're sure to get their clicks with that title.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#536Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, we’re living in a world where piracy and exploded budgets mean every movie needs to be a hit. One flop and the studio is gone. So the studios produce movies that are certain to be not flops, like the endless sequels, and that will draw people to cinemas where there is no piracy, which means impressive spectacles with explosions.
No one pirates anymore. That’s such a tiny tiny minority in a post Netflix world. It’s actually difficult to even do now the community is so small.
How will the studios ever deal with that given last years excuse, that piracy actually increases sales!
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#537I have never understood surround sound: just mix the audio in mono and make sure that every word can be cleanly heard by my father who is 85 and uses a hearing aid. As an unintended side effect your movie will be more widely appreciated by every other demographic.
The premise of surround sound is that it is extremely important to know the direction that the sound is coming from -- but when you sacrifice the audience's understanding of what is happening in the movie to achieve this sound directionality, then you've completely lost the plot.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#538Earlier quoted context omitted.
X.Y (e.g. 5.1) means X wide range speakers and Y subwoofers. You also sometimes see it like S/T.Y where S+T = X, and it refers to front/surround speakers. There are standard values and configurations, such as 2.0 (aka stereo) both at the front, 2.1, 3.1 adds a centre channel mostly for on-screen dialogue positioned close to screen, 5.1 (3/2.1) adds a second stereo pair behind you, 7.1 - adds an extra surround stereo…
For real enthusiasts, also X.Y.Z, adding ceiling/bounce speakers for vertical spatial audio. The real "stuck so far behind" that I don't get is why we use speaker arrays at all -- instead of binaural stereo tech. That virtual haircut demo, apparently from the 90s,[0] sounds incredible on my cheap headphones, yet the technology seems to have gone nowhere since. Is there even spatial audio in VR setups? If the difficul…
Binaural audio starts to really fall apart when you don't have the sound exactly as the microphone setup was. Moving the speakers even a couple of feet away, and then not having them exactly lines up with your ears, it ruins the effect.
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#539Earlier quoted context omitted.
99.9% of the audience will strain to see what is going on, but let's blame their screen buying acumen (and their viewing practices - even the best screen will not make those scenes easily watchable in a sunny room, which is how most people watch TV) instead of making them actually watchable.
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.
> Don’t make the art worse, hold the manufacturers accountable for selling terrible products.
A big part of this is the viewing conditions. The best screen in the world will not make a dark scene watchable in a bright sunny room. And lots of people watch TV in bright sunny rooms.
Also, better screens = more money. A lot of the time, people just bought a cheap screen, and they would still like to know what happens in the series or movies they watch.
I am absolutely for quality interesting dark scenes in cinema, where both the screen and viewing conditions are normalized. But TV is not the same (and HBO and Netflix are TV).
Re: Why do all these 20-somethings have closed captions turned on?
#540I vote for subtitles as an over-40. I started literally requiring subtitles due to the presence of children (whom I dearly love) in the house and all the other various household sounds like kettles boiling or dishwashers or washing machines or toilet flushes or whatever the fuck else.
But I can't go back. I've re-watched movies with subtitles and found explanations of things (non-plot critical, but contributory or interesting) that were previously drowned out by mumbling or poor mixing or just not having the volume high enough to vibrate the foundations.
Subtitles explain all!
(I actually find it's harder to multitask if I'm watching a show, because I need to read the screen - this isn't necessarily a bad thing if it's a show I've actually chosen to try to watch).
P.S. 2nd episode of the latest season of Rick and Morty has an ... interesting ... differentiation between the subtitles and spoken words for one specific word starting with c, in which the subtitle was the original, category* 0, word, whilst the obviously replaced word also started with c but is a somewhat more acceptable category* 2 word.
*categories made up by me on the spot.