Stuttering actors, poor speakers or lazy listeners? Why does everyone watch TV with subtitles? TV

youHere’s one reason Bradley Johnston watches “literally everything” with subtitles. It’s not an accessibility issue – the 25-year-old is a native English speaker and not hard of hearing. He is “the kind of viewer who just doesn’t want to work for her.”

“For example, if there is a subtle moment that some people might miss that is integral to the plot, please let me know,” he says.

Take, for example, the recent season of the HBO hit The White Lotus. “There’s so much going on on that show… I know I’m being shown something I need to pick up on, so just tell me what it is.” Or the horror film Barbarian, which Johnston first saw in the cinema, and then rewatched at home with a closer look. “Honestly, I think it was better to watch it the second time because of the subtitles,” he says.

Johnston isn’t the only one living in what he describes as a “caption home.” Last year, Netflix revealed that 40% of its global users have subtitles on all the time, while 80% turn them on at least once a month, statistics that far exceed the number of viewers who need subtitles due to a disability. auditory.

There are, of course, a myriad of reasons why someone might turn on the subtitles: a sleeping baby in the other room who they don’t want to wake up, a noisy flight path upstairs, or an unintelligibly strong accent from an international actor (something that is becoming becoming more common as streaming brings television from around the world into our homes). The online terminals among us can turn them on to catch their way to viral meme success, so they can be ready to catch pithy phrases as they drop.

When it comes to prestige TV with intricate plots, subtitles can help you follow what’s going on if you’re prone to scrolling through Instagram at the same time you tune in.

But if you’re turning on subtitles because you just can’t understand what the actors are saying, it’s (probably) not your ears to blame. Hard-to-hear dialogue is a known problem in the industry, says sound mixer Guntis Sics, who has worked on movies like Moulin Rouge. and Thor: Ragnarok.

There are many contributing factors but paradoxically it all comes down to technological advances.

“As technology evolved, especially when it went digital, there was a tsunami of sound all of a sudden,” says Sics.

The problem begins on the movie set. In decades past, actors had to project loudly into a fixed microphone. The advent of portable microphones has allowed a shift towards a more intimate and naturalistic style of performance, in which actors can speak more softly or, as some would say, whisper.

It’s an approach to acting that Sics says has been around for a long time, but it’s something he’s certainly noticed more in younger performers.

“Tony Hopkins in Thor spoke like a normal human being, whereas in many other films there is a new style with young actors: it is as if they speak to themselves. That might work in a theater, but not necessarily when it gets to people’s living rooms,” he says.

Other technological advances have also complicated things. As audio technology became more sophisticated, filmmakers began to include more sounds: where once we would have heard a door slam as someone stormed out of an apartment, today we also have a doorknob turning, a clock ticking, and heavy breathing. of a character. And when sound is mixed with the best possible audio experience in mind, say in a theater, much of that detail can be lost when folded to laptop speakers or even TV. Often it is the dialogue that suffers the most.

Because back in the day, “when TVs were just TVs,” as Sics puts it, the small, metal speakers they came with pushed out the high frequencies where the voice sits clear and loud. But as technology advanced, Sics says, electronics companies began to expect consumers to buy their own sound system separately. Relying on the TV’s small built-in speakers could leave you with a subpar experience.

But even if you invest in an expensive speaker setup, not tuning them perfectly in your living room means you may end up hearing the big bangs better, but not the vocals.

“Think of old black and white movies and how clear the dialogue is; partly it has to do with speaker technology,” says Sics. “[Today] you might get lucky, plug in your speakers and it sounds perfect. But most people plug it in, and all the frequencies bounce off the walls and confuse what you’re hearing. If you install it in a room with no carpet and just floorboards, it will sound like crap. Whereas the tiny old speaker made it through that.”

This may explain why local audiences are missing words or lines that include crucial plot details and letting subtitles pick them up. In last year’s White Lotus season, for example, subtitles suggested the return of a character who didn’t actually appear on camera. In Euphoria, closed captions noted inaudible “scratching noises” from inside a closet, hinting at a character’s nefarious intentions and generating many fan theories.

So what is it like for an audio professional to know that their hard work is being wasted when people turn down the volume and search for subtitles?

“Feels horrible. And I think it’s time we really dealt with that,” says Sics. But he believes that some acoustic problems can be solved with a couple of quick fixes at home.

First, find the speaker settings on your TV that are optimized for voice; Turn up the treble if that’s an option, as it will allow you to hear vocals more clearly. Try to reduce background noise by turning off noisy appliances like the dishwasher before you sit down to watch TV. And throw in a rug if you have a lot of hard surfaces in your living room, to avoid reverberation.

But for viewers like Johnston, it may not be the audio quality that’s the real sticking point.

“I don’t know if it’s a hearing problem or an attention span problem,” he says. “Because I feel like my attention span requires me to actually read the screen to make sure I can get through a long [TV show or movie].” That is a problem that a rug will not solve.