Timing – Sean Zdenek, PhD

A frame from Apollo 18 showing Nate being pulled into a moon crater.

March 6, 2012

The power of dots and dashes to tell the future

Sometimes, punctuation in captions can provide important clues about what’s going to happen, regardless of how well or poorly timed the captions are.

Captioning/Timing

A screenshot from Pirates of the Caribbean 2 featuring Johnny Depp

August 23, 2009

Prematurely revealing the natives as cannibals in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

Movie captions should never reveal information prematurely. In this example, the captions give away a key plot detail before the narrative is ready to do so.

Captioning/Timing

Screenshot from an episode of Dollhouse featuring Eliza Dushku

August 14, 2009

If movie characters could read closed captions, they’d glimpse the future

Caption users sometimes know what’s happening before the characters themselves. In this way, captions tell the future.

Captioning/Speaker IDs/Timing

A screenshot from Taken (2008) featuring Maggie Grace

August 12, 2009

How captions tell the future

In this example, the caption user recognizes a heartbeat before the non-caption user that because the bad guy’s captioned sentence is unfinished (“We can nego-“), he will be shot before he can finish saying “negotiate.”

Captioning/Timing

Category: Timing

The power of dots and dashes to tell the future

Prematurely revealing the natives as cannibals in Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest

If movie characters could read closed captions, they’d glimpse the future

How captions tell the future