Thursday, November 02, 2006

An interesting Cineplex Survey

I went to a movie at Cineplex the other day. With my ticket they gave me a contest entry to fill out a survey and win something. I don't remember what the prize was.
I filled the survey out partly to give some input and partly to see what they were asking.

Most of the questions were the usual, was the seating comfortable (no) was the picture okay (no-out of focus even after I told them), did you buy any food (no-too expensive)?

There was one that caught my attention. They asked what my reaction would be to movies that were always subtitled, even movies in English. I can see where they are going with this. The theatres have been under some pressure to figure out some way to offer a movie theatre equivalent of closed captioning for the hearing impaired.
Subtitling all the films would be the cheapest and most effective way to do this. Right now the only way to do it is a system called HV. One of the theatres at the Silver City has it. An LED sign across the back runs the captions in mirror image. Anyone using the system puts something like a mirror in their cupholder and reads the text off it. Besides being a bit awkward the system has two other downsides. It requires a CD-Rom to play the captions. If the CD doesn't arrive with the film the system doesn't work. The other item is cost, I've heard these systems are $20,000 each. Considering what some other theatre equipment costs this could be accurate.
I don't think captioning everything would bother me personally, I've seen a lot of subtitled movies. I don't even notice that I'm reading the movie any more. I do have 2 questions.

What happens in a dialogue heavy scene, would they have to simplify the text to compensate for slower readers. That could get really distracting.
Would the general public go for it? Quite often if I tell someone at Western Film the film is subtitled they won't go see it.
Any thoughts?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's easy to ignore text on the screen because you become accustomed to it five minutes in.

Does choosing the subtitle method mean that only those films offered with subtitles will be shown in the future? How will the presence of subtitles, in each particular film, be advertised to those who take advantage of this service?

WesternFilm said...

Most people do become accustomed but some either read slow or just find it's 'different'. Sort of how people first reacted to letterboxing on video.

I got the impression every film on every screen would be subtitled.

Anonymous said...

A Canadian product called Surtitles is used in operas to give translations. The text is projected to a screen above the stage. Although I don't usually mind subtitles in a movie, I do find that text laid on top of the picture can get in the way sometimes.

See http://www.surtitles.com/intro.html for a better description of Surtitles and sample shots of it in action.

Anonymous said...

Television shows have constant logos on them, on some channels the extra graphics take up 25% of the screen at times. TV shows are paid for by advertising.

We pay for movies and now we are going to have to "ignore" or "become accustomed" to subtitles on the screen.

I can't help but believe it would be a constant distraction and, in fact, sometimes get in the way of the scene.

The same thing happened with movie advertising. They hoped we would get used to it. And I guess we have, or at least accepted it grudgingly.

But can anyone honestly say it has improved the movie going experience?

I hope they find a way to make it work but, at the risk of seeming indifferent to the needs of others, it should not be at the expense of everyone.

WesternFilm said...

Movie advertsing is a constant complaint of moviegoers and considered one of the main reasons more people are watching DVD. Although it's different in the US, here we get a few minutes of commercials, there they can get up to half an hour!? I'm not including trailers as commercials BTW.
Running a movie theatre is pretty expensive so putting up with the advertising helps keep the ticket prices down.

Unfortunately except for the system mentioned in the post at this time there isn't any way of 'closed captioning' in a movie theatre. On a tv you can turn the captions on or off.

Anonymous said...

I'm used to watching tv shows and movies with closed caption. My parents have to use it and I found that when I watch a movie with them, I noticed that I understood the dialogue better. In some cases, depending on the type of movie, I am glad I saw the film with closed caption because the film makes more sense. I watch CSI with closed caption all the time so I can get a better idea of the forensic talk.

I also enjoy foreign films and obviously would be lost with subtitles. I think that special viewings indicate closed caption could be an option, only because some people who don't need to read the caption would be distracted by it. When you're lost in a movie, you can't help but feel close to reality when you can "read" what's going on.

Anonymous said...

I think personally that it would make me crazy because I have a hard time ignoring the words. Whenever I do get caught up in something subtitled even though I can hear the words I still read the writing and end up missing half the plot.
That's not to say that there can't be theatre rooms that are specifically for that purpose. I mean there are what 15 different theatres at Silver City and how many aren't in use every night ?

We can all share