AUSTIN CHAPMAN
Staff Writer
Every time I see a commercial for “Juno” on TV I’m reminded that I need to wait about six more months until I see it. I was born profoundly deaf, so if I see a movie in the theater, it’s exactly like watching a TV program on mute.
Usually I wait it out and buy the film on DVD and enjoy the captioning or subtitled feature. Current laws require all DVDs and TV shows of a national scale to be captioned as part of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Because of this law, physically handicapped people have wheelchair access to all movie theaters and have designated parking spots in lots that exceed a certain size. Unfortunately, making the movies in theaters accessible to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community is not as simple as providing handicapped access.
Today, two captioning methods are being used in select theaters. The first method, “open captioning,” is a method you may experience when you watch a foreign film with English subtitles on the bottom of the screen.
“Open captioning” means you cannot turn the subtitles off. In a theater with open captioning, the text is burned onto the film.
The other method, “closed captioning,” which is the technology used in television, can be turned on and off. Closed captioning has been required since 1990 on all TVs larger than 13 inches manufactured for sale in the United States.
The WGBH developed the first working closed captioning system for moviegoers in November 1997. This technology is called “rear window captioning,” which is similar to the scrolling text used for the stock market on Wall Street. However, this red text is a bit hard to read because the message is created using dots.
With this method, the rest of the audience is not subjected to the captions and can enjoy the feature presentation the way it is made.
But the two biggest movie theater chains have elected different methods of captioning. Edwards Regal Entertainment Group, the largest motion picture exhibitor in the world, has 6,386 screens in 539 locations in 40 states and the District of Columbia. None of these are equipped with rear-window captioning units; instead they use open captioning to accommodate the deaf population. Of course, only a fraction of their theaters have open captioning. After checking the list on their Web site, I could not find any films showing in open caption near my home in Orange County or near Pepperdine.
According to the Vice President of AMC Communications, 150 of their 360 theaters are equipped with rear-window reflectors and very few theaters owned by AMC offer open captioning.
I interviewed several deaf people to find out what the deaf community preferred, including 40 year-old John Walton, who has been deaf since birth. Walton said the rearview mirrors took up too much time to adjust and were not as useful as they should have been. I interviewed three more deaf people all over 30 years old and they agreed with Walton’s opinion.
Personally, I understand his point, and the box office does too. To make matters even more complex, two new means of captioning in theaters have surfaced in a recent conference held by Regal Entertainment Group. One is a mini-projector that projects the caption onto the screen, much like open captioning except that it is possible to turn captions on and off. But in this case the whole audience will see the captions.
Another proposed method is a dimly lit green text that is displayed below the big screen and only visible to those who wear special glasses. While there is little information about this method, it shows some progress.
It might be years or decades before a standard can be agreed upon. The battle of the best captioning format is analogous to today’s skirmish between HD-DVD and Blu-ray. However, the goal is not profit but rather accommodating to America’s deaf.
01-31-2008
