subtitles Tagged Articles at Cinematical
Fan Rant: Those Subtitles, They Need A-Changing
Filed under: Exhibition »
Subtitles. Some people love them, some people hate them. As I see it, the hate often turns into love once movie-liking turns into movie-loving. It's quite hard to be an insatiable movie lover and be a fan of the dub -- not being bothered by lips that don't synch with voices, and the voiceovers that fail to offer the same powerful inflections as the original.
Unfortunately, while I love cinema, I'm really growing tired of the subtitles -- to the point that I sometimes avoid films if I'm not geared up to read them. But wait -- I'm not suggesting that I'd rather hear it dubbed, but rather the whole world of subtitling needs to change. There are two reasons:
1. Lazy Subtitles
While the words that run along the bottom of the screen are usually saved for foreign languages, they are sometimes pulled out when heavy accents come into play, or tricky dialects. This is fine, and often handy. But it has to be accurate. While it's okay to adjust words to flow when translating, it's not okay to change them when people understand the language.
There is nothing more annoying or distracting than following the subtitles and hearing entirely different words. I don't know how many times my mind de-railed from the plot of Red Road because I'd hear something like "excellent," but the subtitles would say "great."
The same goes for certain words in foreign languages. You can change adjectives and what-have-you, but it's quite distracting when the subtitle powers that be get tired of writing down the same title/name and decide to switch it up. In Indigenes (Days of Glory), soldier's titles would often get switched. I might not speak French, but it's pretty easy to understand titles like "Staff Sergeant."
How do you make subtitles appealing to kids these days?
Filed under: Action », Drama », Foreign Language », Horror », Sci-Fi & Fantasy », Thrillers », Distribution », Fox Searchlight », Cinematical Indie »
Fox Searchlight, the company that will be
distributing Night Watch in the US starting
later this month, is facing some rather substantial challenges in tracking down an audience for the film, a massive hit
in its native Russia. According to an article in the New York Times, the film's
story is very difficult to follow for viewers who haven't read the book on which it's based - and then there are those
pesky subtitles. Instead of throwing in the towel and just dubbing the film into English, Stephen Gilula, Fox
Searchlight's head of distribution, has elected to turn reading subtitles into what he calls "an interactive
experience." Thanks to Gilula, instead of just your normal, everyday, yellow subtitles, Americans who see Night Watch will be faced with words that "change color and position on the screen, simulate dripping blood, stutter in emulation of a fearful query, or dissolve into red vapor to emulate a character's gasping breaths." Uh...ok. So, the movie is confusing to start with, and now the subtitles are going to running all over the damn screen, changing colors and dissolving? Dear God no.
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