Exactly. Cinematographers spend so much effort to put everything in the scene in exactly the right place, lit exactly the right way.
Watch, for example, this breakdown of how Akira Kurosawa frames everything in a scene to draw your eyes in certain directions. If you look away and don’t see the character looking left and right with shifty eyes, you miss a key part of what’s happening. Or, take some of the more famous individual frames in movie history and imagine them with white text on top of them. It’s especially bad when it’s a very dark scene, or a scene where the key elements are in the shadows.
And the words appear on screen at a different timing from how the actors speak the words, which further worsens the emotional impact you can receive.
Not only that, but sometimes the subtitle ruins the suspense. Like, in the audio version there’s a faint sound you can’t quite make out, but that’s how it’s meant to be. But the subtitle says something like [sound of coffin opening].
It does suck that a lot of dialogue mixing these days is terrible. But, I’d rather have to go back and listen again if I missed something than have the entire movie downgraded by constant subtitles flashing up on-screen.
Besides, I think you need to train your ear. It’s the same way that people have trouble with foreign accents. When they haven’t heard them before it’s initially hard to understand. But, over time, you learn to hear that accent better. Similarly, I think people who always use subtitles are losing and/or never developing the ability to hear the dialogue properly, so they have more problem with it, so they continue to rely on the crutch of subtitles. Even though movie dialogue mixing is significantly worse these days, it’s very rare that I actually have trouble hearing and understanding the dialogue. It’s an effort sometimes, and it’s annoying that they’re so badly mixed, but I can still understand what’s being said and don’t need to either go back and listen again or turn on subtitles.
Exactly. Cinematographers spend so much effort to put everything in the scene in exactly the right place, lit exactly the right way.
Watch, for example, this breakdown of how Akira Kurosawa frames everything in a scene to draw your eyes in certain directions. If you look away and don’t see the character looking left and right with shifty eyes, you miss a key part of what’s happening. Or, take some of the more famous individual frames in movie history and imagine them with white text on top of them. It’s especially bad when it’s a very dark scene, or a scene where the key elements are in the shadows.
Not only that, but sometimes the subtitle ruins the suspense. Like, in the audio version there’s a faint sound you can’t quite make out, but that’s how it’s meant to be. But the subtitle says something like [sound of coffin opening].
It does suck that a lot of dialogue mixing these days is terrible. But, I’d rather have to go back and listen again if I missed something than have the entire movie downgraded by constant subtitles flashing up on-screen.
Besides, I think you need to train your ear. It’s the same way that people have trouble with foreign accents. When they haven’t heard them before it’s initially hard to understand. But, over time, you learn to hear that accent better. Similarly, I think people who always use subtitles are losing and/or never developing the ability to hear the dialogue properly, so they have more problem with it, so they continue to rely on the crutch of subtitles. Even though movie dialogue mixing is significantly worse these days, it’s very rare that I actually have trouble hearing and understanding the dialogue. It’s an effort sometimes, and it’s annoying that they’re so badly mixed, but I can still understand what’s being said and don’t need to either go back and listen again or turn on subtitles.
Can we take a moment to appreciate the irony of the first image in the header of that site you linked having white text superimposed over it?