Subtitling
My aunt, uncle, and two of my cousins are deaf on my mom’s side of the family. In preparing the DVD of The Lionshare, I realized it would become necessary to create a subtitle track so that they would be able to watch it.
A quick google search revealed to me all the ins and outs of subtitling in DVD Studio Pro. I decided to play around a bit and see how it might work out. It was then that I realized that there are a million issues at play here.
Firstly, the obvious (or maybe not-so-obvious) stuff. As someone who has seen plenty of foreign films subtitled I thought I knew the basics. Text should appear in a sans-serif typeface with a black outline to stand out against the picture. When characters speak the text should appear relative to their location on screen. It occurred to me that maybe there are some kind of standardized rules for use of italics, dashes to denote different character dialog, etc. I decided to look it up. Not only do I want to do a good job for the benefit of my extended family, but now I was interested.
In the US and Canada there is a distinction between subtitles and closed captions. Closed captions assume the viewer is hard of hearing. Subtitles assume the viewer can hear but does not understand the language of the program. So closed captions would not bother translating, say, the text of a sign. Subtitles would, because the sign (presumably) is in another language. Closed captions make note of sound effects and music cues; subtitles do not, because there’s no language barrier there. Interesting stuff.
Another technical difference between closed captions and subtitles is, traditionally, closed captions refer specifically to a sub-signal of text broadcast concurrently with programming. You used to need a special box to decode the signal for captions, but today all TVs have it built in. Also, the ‘closed’ part of closed captions refers to the option to opt-in or out of the captioning. IE, it’s a closed system. So, technically, that means the subtitle track on a DVD is also ‘closed’.
For my purposes, I am going to combine characteristics of both for my subtitles. I am going to include text for sound effects and music, because I assume that if you turn on the english subtitles for an english language program, it means you are deaf or hard of hearing. Come to think of it, that’s probably the norm. But I don’t really know.
I was looking for some kind of guide for caption/subtitle etiquette. In other words, is there a standard usage for italics? If there is, my deaf family would be familiar with that, and I don’t want to confuse them. Turns out there really doesn’t seem to be a definitive approach. One guy says you should only use italics for off-screen dialog, such as narration, and nothing else. But I’m pretty sure I’ve seen it used to indicate the speech of a second character. I was also confused about the use of dashes to denote different character speech in the same shot. There doesn’t seem to be a ruling on this. There seem to be some strong opinions about what is ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, but it seems like no matter what I do, it’ll break somebody’s rules.
But here’s where things get really interesting. In transcribing my own movie, I have the opportunity to recontextualize it. I can subtly alter the language of the dialog. I can place more emphasis on certain points or phrases. This is almost unconscious. I can choose to indicate certain sounds and not others. This is not as straightforward as you might think. Because of the loose style of the movie, there is a lot of overlapping dialog, colloquialisms, grunting/muttering, etc. Stuff that doesn’t really have consequence. But shouldn’t I include it not matter what? I mean, it’s there, and I want my deaf family to have as close to the same experience as hearing people do as possible. But there are instances when I feel including certain ‘non-dialog-dialog’ in the captioning would give it weight it wasn’t meant to have. It’s just there because it sounds natural, but when it appears in text, it’s given more importance and changes the meaning. So it’s not so clear-cut.
Strange things come up, like whether to spell ‘cum’ like the porn sites do it or like ‘come’ that seems to me like some strangely sanitized explicitness. Is it equally as shocking to read ‘come’ as it is ‘cum’? But do I want it to be shocking? There’s a lot of control in that subtle difference.
Plus there’s the issue of sound quality overall. Because this was a production with extremely limited resources, some of the sound recording isn’t the best. Some dialog has a different quality than in other scenes. Some lines aren’t as loud or clean as I’d like. But for my deaf family this is a non-issue. The lines will appear as clearly as everything else. Sound, which is what separates the men from the boys in film production, is a non-issue for them. It will not weigh into their reading of the film at all.
Basically, there’s a lot more at play here when you start getting down to it. I’m sure deaf people are caption-saavy, and they know how to interpret the different conventions in use in captions and subtitles. So I’ll just do my best and trust that their smarts will make up for my deficiencies as a transcriber.
Short Synopsis
I’ve been struggling with writing a synopsis for festival submissions, press purposes, et al. Here’s the 250-word version that I wrote yesterday:
The Lionshare is an exploration of the connections we make with music, movies, and other media. Through Nick, his roommate Matty, their musician friend Bracey, and the girls in their lives, we see how music and movies inform our interpersonal relationships. How we identify with particular songs, particular stories, and the experience of sharing them with others.
We live in a world where creativity is currency. Such strong personal associations with media give us a sense of ownership over ideas and creative works both personal and implicit. We participate in a cultural conversation through these works and they allow us to interact with the world. This sense of ownership, however, is not always a legal one. The speed with which memes and ideas travel via the Internet have outpaced the bounds of the law. But this doesn’t cross our minds when we want to make a mix tape for a girl or connect with a distant father by watching the latest James Bond movie. Yet we’re still annoyed when an inside joke with friends spreads to someone who wasn’t in on it.
Our characters relate to each other through their media, some theirs, some not. They consume without thinking, and produce when inspiration strikes. When inspiration is not there, they consume more to fill the void.
The Lionshare was made in this spirit. Shot with consumer equipment and an honest, improvisational style, writer/director Josh Bernhard has produced a movie that is a product of all that he has consumed.
Update
Lots of changes are coming. Stay tuned.
a few words
Here we are, the night before the premiere of the movie, arguably the night before the movie is “real.” I’ll explain what I mean by that in a second, but first I need to mention that, in a perfect instance of bad timing, I am recovering from a nasty bout of the flu. “You should have gotten a flu shot!” I hear you say. Well, I did. Apparently ‘influenza A’ didn’t get that memo. I’m feeling much better, but since I decided to leave a bunch of last minute details to be done, well, at the last minute, I find myself with less than 24-hours to go and I am currently rendering the final final version of the end credits.
About a week ago I attended the premiere of Sujewa Ekanayake’s new documentary, Indie Film Blogger Road Trip, at the same theater at The Anthology Film Archives where we’ll be tomorrow night. Truth be told, I hadn’t really been looking forward much to our premiere until that night. Seeing the theater, seeing his work on the screen, and realizing that we were going to be there in short time. I realized, perhaps a little late, that for the longest time I’d been ignoring what is an essential part of the filmmaking experience: sharing it with other people. I always had some vague notion of that part, but in the thick of things I was primarily concerned with just getting the damn thing done. But what I’m realizing now is that premiering this thing tomorrow night for a room full of people will be the cap of my own personal journey making this movie. There’s a reason why I’ve felt strange and numb when people ask me how it feels to have finished a movie. I guess because I won’t be finished until tomorrow night.
It’s hard to express what this project means to me. I feel accomplished, I feel proud of what we did, but I don’t feel the way that I thought I would. It’s not all smiles. I feel like a literally birthed this thing into existence and am now experiencing some kind of bizarre post-partum depression. I have an intimate perspective on this movie that no one else has. That includes recognizing its flaws. I’ve accepted them. But the point I’m trying to make is that no one else is going to see this movie the way I do, and thank god for that. I wonder what everyone is going to see tomorrow night.
I hope they like it.
The Lionshare VS Flight of the Conchords
So, this is neither here nor there, but Russ happened to be watching an episode of the new season of Flight of the Conchords a couple weeks ago and noticed that they shot at Bar 169 in Chinatown, the same location where we shot our big show near the end of the movie. Here are some comparison shots:
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THE LIONSHARE Premiere
The date is set for the unveiling of the movie: Monday February 23rd at The Anthology Film Archives. Seriously. I made a Facebook event and everything. I threw together a little movie poster one-sheet for all the Facebook stuff, and I actually really like it. I’ll just have to figure out how to create something similar since the screen captures, while being 1920 x 1080, aren’t high rez enough to print anything larger than about 8 x 10. I mean, I guess I can make little lobby cards or something. Anyway, here it is:
The Word is In
…we did’t get into SXSW. But that’s okay. I’m honestly not all that upset about it. The odds were stacked against us with submitting a rough cut, by the late deadline to boot, and I knew less consideration was going to be given to it based on that alone. And, while I did get to overnight the (basically) final cut on January 15, I was told there was no gauruntee they would be able to review it.
But this is not the endgame for this movie, nor was it ever meant to be. My goal was to finish a movie in time to submit to SXSW 2009, and I achieved that. I’m almost certain if it weren’t for their deadlines, the movie would not be finished yet. So, in that sense, the festival has already served its purpose. Bracey and I have a list of literally dozens of festivals that we’re going to send the movie out to, and there’s the whole DIY (do-it-yourself) approach to distribution that I’ve been intending to do all along (which should be a fun project all its own).
Also, thanks to help from Sujewa Ekanayake, it’s looking like the premiere screening is going to be at The Anthology Film Archives some time late next month. I still have to work out the details.
So, while it certainly would have been nice to play at SXSW this year, it hasn’t gotten me down. Not by a longshot. (Is that one word or two?)
Long Overdue Updates
First off–we made the December 12 deadline for a rough cut submission to SXSW. The rough cut, while rough, is pretty solid and everyone seems to be responding very well to it.
I can’t help but get a little meditative on the eve of a new year, so forgive me now or just stop reading. The Lionshare is a small movie, probably not that impressive in comparison to the glut of fantastic, inventive, passionate movies that are out there now and that are being made as I type. But it’s my movie, made with my friends, and it was something that I honestly wasn’t sure I could do. And we did it. Even though there’s a little more work to do, the knowledge that we came together and pulled something off that we’d always talked about doing is pretty amazing to me.
So I just wanted to thank everyone who believed in me and in the project and contributed to its making, in whatever small way.
Feedback Loop
I wouldn’t be the first to compare the editing process to the writing process. That said, I have a love/hate relationship with both. When you’re in the thick of it, and it’s working, it’s bliss. When it’s not working, killing yourself starts to sound like a good idea.
There have been moments of great satisfaction editing the rough cut so far, and there have been moments when I’ve lost steam. The frustration of losing steam is only compounded by the looming deadline for SXSW.
Editing, like writing, is a mostly solitary task. Which is part of why I like it. But I’ve found that poking my head out and into the world and getting feedback really energizes me and gets my head back in the game. When I show something to Bracey, Russ, or Jon, among others, and they like what they see, they help give me perspective on the whole thing. And their enthusiasm is infectious, and suddenly pushing on is less of a chore. Everyone is excited by this project, and that’s inspiring to me. I can’t lose momentum. Life won’t get in the way. A rough cut of this movie will be done by December 12 if not before, and it will be finaled by January 15. So say we all!
lionsharemovie.com
New updates can be found at lionsharemovie.com
