•4/22/2009 04:29:00 PM
Hello, my name is Autumn and I'm an addict. My weakness is movie captions; I can't seem to kick the habit. And I'm not trying that hard, so that could be the reason. It's pretty rare that I watch a movie and don't turn the subtitles on immediately.
*Note to reader: I am vaguely aware that there is a difference between captions and subtitles, but I don't care and will be using the two words interchangeably throughout this post.*
I remember when I realized how dependent I was on subtitles. It was a couple of months ago. I was watching a movie before I went to sleep, a bad habit I'm aware but I don't care. And I pressed the subtitle button per usual, and it had Spanish and something else, Korean I think, but no English. And I was so irritated. And then I had to stop and realize that I was irritated due to a lack of captions. Wow.
It's hard to remember where it started. I think watching foreign films like Life Is Beautiful first got me accustomed to reading captions and watching a movie at the same time. After awhile you get so engrossed you don't even realize you're reading them.
From there I started turning them on briefly to catch dialogue I hadn't heard or understood the first time. I'd rewind the movie a bit, turn the subtitles on and watch the part I hadn't heard to see what they were saying; then I'd turn them off again.
At some point I jumped straight from that to full on watching every movie intentionally with subtitles. And there are pros and cons to doing this.
I am much more of a visual person than an audio person. My retention when someone is talking to me is much less than when I read the same information for myself. So for me I get more out of a movie when I see what is being said as opposed to just hearing it.
Plus there are a lot of actors out there with accents I can't always decipher and others whose diction just is not good. And I like knowing how characters' names I like knowing how they are spelled; it makes them more real.
Something else I've noticed is that there are many movies where characters in the background make comments you'd never hear naturally, but are included in the movie's subtitles. It's quite interesting.
On the down side, you miss more facial expressions and such. No matter how fast you read, you have to look away from the action to read the captions. I remember when I was watching the BBC's recent version of Sense and Sensibility. I love the scene where Edward proposes to Elinor, and I really liked it in this movie. I watched it once with subtitles, then turned them off and watched it again without so I could watch their faces more closely.
I'm not really going anywhere with this. I still use captions almost all the time, and as I said it's not like I'm trying hard to stop. But admitting it aloud is a start, and I guess I was curious if anyone else is in the same boat as I am.
*Note to reader: I am vaguely aware that there is a difference between captions and subtitles, but I don't care and will be using the two words interchangeably throughout this post.*
I remember when I realized how dependent I was on subtitles. It was a couple of months ago. I was watching a movie before I went to sleep, a bad habit I'm aware but I don't care. And I pressed the subtitle button per usual, and it had Spanish and something else, Korean I think, but no English. And I was so irritated. And then I had to stop and realize that I was irritated due to a lack of captions. Wow.
It's hard to remember where it started. I think watching foreign films like Life Is Beautiful first got me accustomed to reading captions and watching a movie at the same time. After awhile you get so engrossed you don't even realize you're reading them.
From there I started turning them on briefly to catch dialogue I hadn't heard or understood the first time. I'd rewind the movie a bit, turn the subtitles on and watch the part I hadn't heard to see what they were saying; then I'd turn them off again.
At some point I jumped straight from that to full on watching every movie intentionally with subtitles. And there are pros and cons to doing this.
I am much more of a visual person than an audio person. My retention when someone is talking to me is much less than when I read the same information for myself. So for me I get more out of a movie when I see what is being said as opposed to just hearing it.
Plus there are a lot of actors out there with accents I can't always decipher and others whose diction just is not good. And I like knowing how characters' names I like knowing how they are spelled; it makes them more real.
Something else I've noticed is that there are many movies where characters in the background make comments you'd never hear naturally, but are included in the movie's subtitles. It's quite interesting.
On the down side, you miss more facial expressions and such. No matter how fast you read, you have to look away from the action to read the captions. I remember when I was watching the BBC's recent version of Sense and Sensibility. I love the scene where Edward proposes to Elinor, and I really liked it in this movie. I watched it once with subtitles, then turned them off and watched it again without so I could watch their faces more closely.
I'm not really going anywhere with this. I still use captions almost all the time, and as I said it's not like I'm trying hard to stop. But admitting it aloud is a start, and I guess I was curious if anyone else is in the same boat as I am.
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1 comments:
That is quite a strange habit! As a film student I'm obsessed with details, so I always get frustrated when I watch a foreign film and can't take in the entire frame because I have to read. Amélie is one of my favourite films, and on the up-side there is so much more to gain each time you watch. It's the kind of film where you notice something new every time, but I think using subtitles helps to draw that out even more.
I do notice, though, that when a particular channel has the subtitles set to 'on' (dunno why this happens with my parents' tv but it does!) I get used to them being on and after they're switched off I worry that I"m missing something. Pretty interesting!