Sunday, August 11, 2019

Home Movies: A Manifesto about Subtitles

Like many of our friends, we are fans of Netflix and enjoy watching recent and not-so-recent films at home.

The only problem I have has nothing to do with Netflix but with the DVD producers, who provide subtitles so small that they are mostly useless.

Last night, we watched "The Aftermath," set in post-war (1945) Germany. Though an English-language movie, it of course contains dialogue in German, some of it important but none of it intelligible to us since the small white subtitles were of no use.  The week before, we had an foreign film with white subtitles against snowy scenes and white backgrounds: we had to return the video, unwatched.  This is a common problem with a simple remedy.

There should be an industry standard requiring that all subtitles be done in yellow, in sizeable type. For some reason, most of the credits in contemporary movies are done in what I call an elegantly minimalist style: small and narrow, perhaps fine on the big screen but certainly not created with the home viewer in mind.

I hope that, in putting this issue "out there," someone will know whom to contact to make proper subtitles on DVD movies a reality.

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