Twilight: Captioning the “gaspiest” movie ever

Featured post from 2009: How should gasps, groans, sighs, grunts, scoffs, moans, pants and other assorted “breathy” sounds be captioned? When should they be captioned? What’s the difference between them? Why does it matter?

Gasping sounds in Twilight

Of the 190 non-speech descriptions in Twilight, thirteen involve gasping, and twelve of these are associated with Bella. Gasping is used in the caption track as an all-purpose placeholder for the audible intake of air when Bella is scared (during the attempted sexual assault in Port Angeles), startled (when she wakes to find Edward [Robert Pattinson] watching her sleep), aroused (when she and Edward are kissing), excited (when she is lifted by Edward high into the trees), and dying (when Bella gasps three times within a span of thirty-five seconds following the nearly fatal vampire attack at the end of the film). In fact, when we analyze Bella’s character through the non-speech descriptions associated with her, we have to conclude that gasping is one of her key personality traits, at least as far as the captioner was concerned. Bella gasps.