Do you use subtitles for games/TV/movies? - Results (128 votes)
I use subtitles more than 50% of the time.
75.78%
(97 votes)
97
I use subtitles less than 50% of the time.
24.22%
(31 votes)
31
This poll is strictly for me to gather some preliminary info. All I want to know is the frequency of subtitle use.
I know that if I put "I use subtitles sometimes (like if I'm watching anime/K-Dramas/British Television/a Christopher Nolan movie)" most people would just click that and that wouldn't mean anything to me.
You put on a movie, play a TV show, turn on a video game. Are you turning the subtitles on, or leaving them off?
That's all I would like to know.
Okay I might as well post my rant here because why split it up into two topics lol:
I think anyone who creates media needs to pay more attention to the Subtitles they put out with their stuff.
With the advent of a lot more realistic, slower, almost mumbling-like acting in Movies/Shows/Video Games, people are a lot more inclined to turn on the subtitles. But as such, I think the majority of people who use subtitles don't need it because they are part of the Deaf/Hard of Hearing community, and need to literally read every single word (and Closed Captioning) provided to know what the heck is being said/conveyed. They need subtitles they can kinda glance at in case an actor gets real quiet in an intense scene, or even when they're yelling during an action scene with lots of explosions.
The problem arises when the Subtitles that are provided are done so lazily. Sometimes it feels like they literally just copy and pasted the whole script into the subtitle file and tinkered with some timings, which might have been fine when acting wasn't subtle way back when, or to Deaf people who need to read every line.
The biggest problem this makes is that you can read the entire sentence, sometimes even two sentences, before the actor has even gotten halfway through acting it. You like prematurely spoil yourself on whatever delivery was going to made before it even happened. When I'm watching comedy shows I often laugh before the punchline is even said because I glance at it before it happens. I watched a ton of anime so I feel like I'm good at glancing at a line of subtitles and looking back at the scene, which is why I want subtitles: just to be able to hear whatever the heck is being said. When I was watching Creed III, I felt like I needed subtitles for whatever Dame/Jonathan Majors was saying.
The way to make this fix is to put some effort into implementing your Subtitles (not closed captioning). Subtitles for the average person should be paced so they don't reveal things before they happen. If a character is going through a long monologue, nice and slow with a lot of emphasis that has you on the edge of your seat, don't just put the entire fucking line there! It destroys any tenseness of the scene! I was watching a movie recently and I knew a major character who had a gun to their head was gonna get shot in the middle of his sentence because the subtitles said "Blah blah blah bl--" Like what the heck!
I think this used to be brushed off as "barely anyone reads subtitles unless they are Deaf, in which case they need to read every line at once, along with sound effects and stuff, and that is a small majority of our viewers anyways." But that's not true anymore. So many people just turn that shit on because every once in a while a character says something you can't understand so you just have the subtitles on the whole time.
I kinda hate how it's either, "can't understand a thing" or "ruin the tension of any scene." If you're making a movie/game, and you know a large chunk of your viewers are gonna turn on subtitles, you should put effort into how they're presented so it doesn't fuck your viewers over.
I,
Apherosy
, Goddess of Love.
https://i.imgur.com/erQyTk5.jpg https://i.imgur.com/73ExkyN.jpeg