soundwriting, visual design, inclusive media, rhetoric
The release of Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens on DVD and Blu-Ray last week gives us a welcome opportunity to take a much closer look at the closed captions.
The BB-8 droid provides an instructive case study. How do the closed captions convey the changing meanings and emotions of the droid’s electronic beeping sounds?
Read the full post on ReadingSounds.net.
How often are sirens described as wailing in closed captioning? What else do sirens do in closed captioning other than wail? Does it matter? An analysis of nonspeech descriptions of siren sounds in a corpus of DVD caption files.
Read the full post on ReadingSounds.net.
Every sustained sound in the closed caption track creates a sonic timeline that continues to persist until it is terminated through a change in visual context or a stop caption. Multiple timelines may co-exist, with sustained sounds/captions building on each other. Sound is simultaneous, and one way of creating simultaneity on the caption track is by layering up sustained sounds.
Read the full post on ReadingSounds.net
When the same nonspeech caption is repeatedly associated with a specific character or recurring context, it comes to serve as a kind of leitmotif for that character or context.
Read the full post on ReadingSounds.net
How writing homogenizes speech and how the non-speech manner caption attempts to re-embody speech.
Continue reading “Drunk speech but sober captions: How manner captions do the heavy lifting”
Recurring sounds on TV shows allow us to explore questions of consistency and accuracy in closed captioning. Consider the Hypnotoad as a compelling case study.
Captioners make meaning. They caption programs. They don’t caption sounds.
How would you caption this phone sound? If it can be captioned in more than one way, how do you choose the way that is best? What if the option you prefer depends on the variety of English you speak?
When a character’s accent is meaningful or when a scene or line of dialogue hinges on how a character speaks, manner of speech needs to be indicated in the closed captions.
Just because words are spoken doesn’t mean they need to be captioned.
Does every repetitive sound need to be captioned? What visual cues are sufficient to indicate a repeating sound in the absence of a caption?
Continue reading “Captioning the faintest sounds when they’re part of a repetitive series”
Inspired by the notion of dramatic irony, I begin to explore in this video what I call “captioned irony.”
Continue reading “Captioned irony: How captions manipulate narrative time and viewers’ knowledge”
Should a running gag be captioned the same way each time it occurs?
Continue reading “[Groan] or Ahh? Series awareness and alternative captions”
How should cultural allusions be closed captioned?
Continue reading “Sonic allusions and cultural literacy for captioners”
What if closed captions were bought and sold as a form of product placement?
When speaker IDs, musical lyrics, and sound descriptions have their own distinctive stylistic treatments, they can be extracted from closed caption files and studied as separate units of discourse. The only efficient and practical way to study hundreds or thousands of sound descriptions at one time is to use a program to separate speech from non-speech.
Continue reading “Stylistic standards for closed captioning and data mining”
An analysis of three captions from Shaun of the Dead (2004) suggests how sound descriptions need to be informed by the sounds and captions that surround them. In this case, “moaning” is suggested as a better fit than “groaning.”
Continue reading “Why that zombie is really moaning (and not groaning)”
An analysis of one scene from Moon (2009) starring Sam Rockwell. The scene’s captions make use of Speaker IDs to identify speakers who are off-screen. But in doing so, the Speaker IDs fill in a major piece of the narrative puzzle.
Continue reading “If it weren’t for Speaker IDs, I’d have no idea what’s going on”
Closed captions can help viewers recognize themes and patterns in movies that might otherwise remain latent.
Continue reading “Captioned thematics: How captions make interpretative patterns visible”
Which sounds are significant? How does the captioner choose which sounds to caption? Are some captions unnecessary? Why isn’t it possible to caption every sound in the environment?
Continue reading “Overcaptioning: Which sounds are significant?”
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?
Continue reading “Twilight: Captioning the “gaspiest” movie ever”
Consider the much-discussed whisper that occurs at the end of Lost in Translation, Sofia Coppola’s critically acclaimed and prized 2003 film about two Americans who develop a friendship during lonely stays at a Tokyo hotel.
Continue reading “Whispers and other sounds you were never meant to hear”
![A frame from Prophecy 3: The Ascent featuring a cityscape at night and the closed caption: [SIRENS WAILING IN DISTANCE]](https://seanzdenek.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Prophecy3-SirensWailingInDistance.jpg)
