AMC to Add Onscreen Captions at Some Locations

[Marcel Birgelen]

The first time I saw Rear Window being used was actually a Disney theme parks in their "auditorium" type attractions, like "The Hall of Presidents." It is so unobtrusive that I'd say that 99.99% of the people are completely unaware that they were there.

They use those same or very similar LED screens in some of their pre-shows using live actors. They're usually hidden in the rear of the room and are used to give those actors their cues... I've actually programmed one of those in the past...

The caption person has a LOT more to process in the same amount of time. I'm amazed at how short amount of time those captions actually stay on screen (or on the captioning device). I'm sure people that depend on captions develop speed reading, of sorts because you can barely read the words before they are gone...and that is if you are staring the right spot. I've found that this is true even if there are not more captions immediately behind the current ones.

Since I more or less "grew up on subtitles", I can tell you that you'll get used to reading those subtitles and matching them up with the action happening on screen. It's a bit like learning to drive a car. You need to train your "subconscious part" to do most of the actions as an automated reflex, otherwise you easily get overwhelmed with inputs and actions you need to take. Also, you don't need to read them word for word, it's often sufficient to get "the gist of it", your brain is pretty good at interpolating stuff where there is some information missing. But I have to admit that this is harder on a cinema sized screen than your average TV, as scanning the subtitles takes more time and efforts, that's why in a cinema, I try to ignore them, if I don't need them.

In most captioned TV shows, there will be some text that describes the sounds or music of the program at the bottom of the screen. Something like [DRAMATIC MUSIC] or [GUNSHOTS]. Many times, the action (gunfire) happens in the background or at one side of the frame. With the caption at the bottom of the screen, it is often hard to connect the on-screen action with the caption. The timing of the captions is often off, too. The caption will appear before the shots and may still be visible for several seconds after the action is over. That's confusing to me, who can hear, so I can only assume that it can be even more confusing to a non-hearing person.

I know that the timing and X-Y position of text can be controlled when the captions are created but I don't see it actually happen very often.

It usually happens when those captions interfere with some other information on-screen, like burned in subtitles, some other captions like "New York, USA, 11:00 am". Like Steve indicated, having them follow the action will only make them more distractive and the whole thing more like a comedy show. What's next? Placing the spoken words where the mouth is? Your average audio mix doesn't even do this. :P
Lots of stuff has been tried over the years, including different colors for different actors speaking, etc.

Timing of captions/subtitles is often done pretty sloppy. While most subtitling systems allow you to time those things up until the frame itself, not all subtitles are created equally. Often, they can ruin the experience pretty badly, for example by revealing the punchline of a joke, before it's actually spoken.

USL also developed a captioning system that used an LCD projector without a polarizer to project a dim green rectangle on a screen below the cinema screen. Someone wearing polarized glasses could see the captions on that screen. However, theaters did not like the green box, so it never went into production.

Thanks for your informative post and sorry I just focus on this little tidbit, but I've never heard about that system before, but I find it highly intriguing. I can understand that theaters don't want a green, lit-up box below their screen. I would probably also consider that to be pretty distracting, just like an emergency exit light just below the screen for example.

But why was that green box needed anyway? Couldn't you just project the polarized light of the subtitles themselves onto that screen without a green background? Or was the contrast simply too low otherwise?

I understand you are an end user, and from my years of reading your comments, probably the sort that exhibitors curse under their breath when they see you walking in

From the years of reading Bobby's comments and even though I had my fair share of disagreements, I suppose that his expectations of what a well-presented show in any cinema should look and sound like, are very much in line with mine. If an exhibitor takes my well earned cash, I expect to get value in return, not some shitty experience I can have for less at home.

If your shit stinks, then I'm the one complaining about it and you should be lucky I am actually telling you what I think, because a whole bunch of others will not go to that lengths and will simply not return.

Who said anything about hearing *other* people eating their concessions? I’m talking about the viewer themselves enjoying their concessions while “suspending disbelief”. Apparently words on the screen ruins this, but the greasy bag of popcorn doesn’t.

The difference is: I can decide for myself if I want that big bag or bucket of popcorn and I myself decide when to eat from it. Suspension of disbelief is seldomly broken by your own actions, it's usually broken by unexpected events. Words on screen may have that effect. I live in a region, where "words on screen" are pretty much the norm, I know quite a few people that therefore almost never visit a cinema, because they're telling me that they find those "words on screen" highly distractive.

I personally seek out shows without subtitles/captioning and without dubbing, because I find both to be disturbing (the dubbing even more so than the subtitles) and some smaller cinemas and art-houses cater to that specific market. This is one of the advantages of digital cinema, as it was very difficult to get film prints without subtitles burned in around here.

Those so-called SDH captions, which include audio description information like [loud bang], [emotional music playing], [wind blowing] are probably even more distracting than just dialog captions and subtitles.

[Bobby Henderson]

I understand you are an end user, and from my years of reading your comments, probably the sort that exhibitors curse under their breath when they see you walking in

You can take your little ad-hominem jab (and insult to others earlier) and cram it. End user? Try customer. You're in here talking down to the rest of us as if we're a bunch of old farts who just can't change with the times, simply because we're not going to put on a happy face and roll it if the most distracting version of subtitles are displayed on-screen for all shows.

I have no obligation to visit a commercial movie theater. It's already hard enough to do so when I want to go to a movie theater. I have to carve out a big enough chunk of the day for the movie's run time as well as the time it takes to drive to/from the theater, getting situated before the show, etc. There is plenty of other things going on, chores to do, etc to use up "free time."

It's increasingly very easy for me to shrug off a trip to a theater. There is hardly any wait time between when movies play exclusively in theaters and when they're available to watch at home. Back in the 1990's it was possible to wait upwards of a year or even more in some cases from when a movie debuted in theaters versus when it arrived on VHS or DVD. Today the window is just a few weeks. In some cases there is no wait at all. The technical quality is similar. Everything is digital. The 2K image at the cinema looks essentially the same as the 1080p image on TV at home. Even the letter-boxing is similar. I haven't watched a movie in a commercial theater in over a year now. Last week I was going to watch Dune on our local IMAX-branded theater screen, but that trip got ruined thanks to a broken water line at the theater. I would watch Dune via HBO Max on my home TV screen, but I haven't got around to it yet. That probably means being entertained by movies isn't as important to me as it was in the past.

So, yeah, if open captioning for hearing impaired people is applied to all show times at theaters across the board I won't spend my money at cinemas anymore. They'll lose me as a customer.

I wonder if the people floating this idea of open captioning for all shows realize they're opening the door for other additions. If a cinema has to accommodate hearing-impaired people at all shows then they surely cannot forget sight-impaired customers either. So why not have a narrator doing descriptive talking all through the movie too? For good measure let's turn down the audio and turn down the screen brightness for viewers with other sensory issues.

The quality of the movie-going experience is bad enough at so many theaters as it is. Adding more levels of degradation to it won't improve it. You know what you get when you have some shit and you pile some shit on top of it? You get even more shit.

Who said anything about hearing *other* people eating their concessions?

You did with this sentence: "The notion that words on screen affect suspension of disbelief in a business based around people slurping down soda and munching away at popcorn for 2 hours seems like quite the stretch."

That sounds like you're talking about the entire audience, not an individual movie goer hearing any noises he makes on his own. Yeah, I'm all too familiar with the various ways how audience members can distract attention from the movie. The eating/drinking noises, talking, rummaging through popcorn bags or purses, seat kicking and Goddamn compulsive phone use are reasons why I try to visit cinemas at off-peak times. Be it matinees on weekends or evenings during the week. Now the only first run multiplex in my town is doing this open captioning shit on those show times. That just makes it even easier to not bother visiting the theater at all.

[Harold Hallikainen]

I may not have been clear on how the USL "green screen" captioning system worked. A typical LCD video projector has two polarizers, one in front of the LCD and one in back. If the LCD does not change the polarization of the light, the light passes through. If the LCD changes the polarization, the light is blocked. With this system, the polarizer between the lamp and the LCD remains and the other is removed. The result is a field of light with even luminance, but the polarization is different on pixels where the text is. People wearing polarized glasses see the text, but people without the polarized glasses see just uniform green. This is similar to the Zola patent ( https://patentimages.storage.googlea.../US4859994.pdf ) except an LCD projector is used instead of a very large LCD display.

Another system used the DLP projector to project an area containing the captions in both positive and negative text on alternate flashes such that vision persistence averaged them out to not being visible. This is discussed in https://patentimages.storage.googlea.../US7414698.pdf . From the patent, "The present invention is a system and method which provide caption text within the small, dim light strip that is continuously displayed at the bottom of a standard movie. The caption text is encoded in that light strip in such a manner that the normal persistence of vision prevents the ordinary viewer from seeing the text. The light strip will appear to be stationary so that it will not distract the ordinary viewer of the movie."

Both these systems present a dim strip of light at the bottom of the screen. The LCD projector method requires a silver screen strip and has low cost polarized glasses. The visual persistence system has a low installed cost (it uses the same DLP projector as the movie), but a higher per user cost for shutter glasses.

It would be interesting to have real numbers from theaters.

If an open captioned and closed captioned movie are playing in different auditoriums at the same time, how many people choose which?

How many people request assistive audio / descriptive audio receivers? How does this compare with the ADA requirements at http://ftp.uslinc.com/Products/IRC-2...ent_171129.pdf ?

How many people request closed captioning equipment? How does this compare with the required receiver count?

How do these numbers vary with locality and theater type (art house vs block buster)?

If a theater has 16 auditoriums and devotes half of them to run content with open captions simultaneously with the other auditoriums using closed captions, how would ticket sales be affected versus showing a larger number of films or showing the same films with different start times?

Harold

[Philip Jones]

I'm in the UK and demand for subtitled screenings is very low. We do them weekly but only average about 5 admissions (and half the time it's people who didn't really want subtitles but the showtime was most convenient).

We showed No Time To Die in all our 3 screens the opening week and it sold out every single show (capacities of 169, 92 and 74), except the one subtitled show which had 15 admissions.

[Andrew Thomas]

You guys are being grumpy olds who are missing that grumpy olds always stop going to theaters over time (and other entertainment venues) precisely because the wants and desires of younger generations are different and industries stop catering to the old ways. There are many things I personally find peculiar about consumer preferences, for example the fact that my drive in business has always dominated my indoor business despite a much superior AV experience indoors is strange to me as a person who appreciates good presentation.

But I don’t care, I’ll keep building more drive ins as long as consumers want that experience. My only job is to generate profit by identifying consumer preferences and in the aggregate giving them what they want, not what I want. The fact of the matter is there are a lot more people who are happy to watch a low contrast picture with audio delivered over FM radio than care about what the Bobby’s or Andrew’s of the world care about when it comes to presentation standards.

Oh well, sometimes we don’t have the popular opinion and don’t get our way. There is always something else you can do with your time and your $$$ if the industry moves too far away from your personal preferences.

And it amuses me that you quoted the piece about eating concessions and still didn’t realize you read something into it that matter of factly is not there!

[Mike Blakesley]

And it amuses me that you quoted the piece about eating concessions and still didn’t realize you read something into it that matter of factly is not there!

Well if there's one thing Bobby knows about (besides graphics), it's sentence structure. He is right, the way your sentence was built, it sounds like you're talking about the whole audience, not just the one person. But what do I know, I'm just a "grumpy old" who got A's in English.

You guys are being grumpy olds who are missing that grumpy olds always stop going to theaters over time (and other entertainment venues) precisely because the wants and desires of younger generations are different and industries stop catering to the old ways.

Not all change is good. Some changes are stupid. When something is stupid it's worth complaining about.

Requiring open captions in all shows in theaters, when 99% or more of the audience does not want it, and it would positively result in less business, is stupid.

You make it sound like a desire for a well-presented movie in a theater is an old-fashioned idea. It's not "old fashioned." It is an idea that's been around for a long time, but it's still something every theater should strive for. Not diluting the experience into something that will drive away customers, just to appease a bunch of reactionaries. The hearing-impaired probably wouldn't go to more movies if their desired "amenity" were granted to them anyway.

I'm all for helping people with disabilities, but not if it's going to drive away regular customers. We spent thousands of dollars about 20 years ago to build a handicap seating area in my theater, but do the handicapped people who swore they "would go to a lot more movies now!" keep supporting us? They do not. We have one (1) guy in a wheelchair who is a regular customer today, and he was coming to a lot of movies before we had the handicap area. But the handicap area didn't chase away our regular customers, so it's all good -- if a wheelchair user comes in, we're ready.

We spent a bunch of money last year on upgraded hearing-impaired equipment (HI and VI headphones, and caption readers). Since we installed it we've had exactly four requests for it -- three by the same person. But, it's not driving away business, so I'm all in favor of having it available for the people who need it.

The fact of the matter is there are a lot more people who are happy to watch a low contrast picture with audio delivered over FM radio than care about what the Bobby’s or Andrew’s of the world care about when it comes to presentation standards.

Just because a lot of people want something doesn't mean it's a good thing. Like my favorite political comedian, Will Durst, once said: "Politicians say they are trying to do what the American people want. Are they crazy? The American people want 'drive-thru nickel beer nignt.'"

Someday you will be old too, and just you watch -- as much as you might deny it today, I guarantee you will get grumpy too, just like we are. It will be for the same reason -- because clueless younger people will berate you for being "out of touch," when really all you want is for things to be done correctly and sensibly, not in some dumb "new" way that is not as good as the old way was.

[Frank Cox]

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Mike: That's me on the left because of the moustache, so the guy on the right must be you?

[Marcel Birgelen]

I'm the chair in the back.

[Martin McCaffery]

Damn Kids. Get out of my theatre!

[Steve Guttag]

Andrew, [sit back...I get wordy at times...this is one of those times...if you take this as an attack or gripe...please don't it wasn't written in that manner. It was written with more of a dialog in mind.]

It isn't necessarily an "angry old" but also experience. Something a younger person has a hard time grasping when they look at a condition of the moment. Sure, old-timers can certainly miss a sea change and be stuck in their ways. But, far more often, a young person will make rash decisions based on a trend or gimmick. Chasing those will bankrupt a low-profit industry, like cinema.

Since you made a reference to my perspective being technical...well yeah but not always. In my 4+ decades in cinema, I've been on the exhibition side for over 2 decades, including being one of the people running a local chain of theatres in the DC-Metro area. So, whether you agree or not, I do have a perspective from, not just technical, but also exhibition and consumer. My wife remains a theatre manager and I have a son heading into the prime age group for movie goers. I'm not completely blind and deaf to the current generation.

As I read your statements regarding how others (and I presume myself) are exposing our limited experience or how we wished things would be, trust me, that is exactly how I, and I presume, other experienced exhibitors viewed your statements. They sound like someone that sees a small portion of how young people, possibly even yourself (I presume that you are in your upper-20s/lower-30s) believe and then are trying to apply that to trending movie going audience. Even setting aside all of that, you are also trying to apply how people will view movies at the home setting and expect a facsimile of that in a theatrical setting. That is rarely the case in most any industry, including cinema.

Heck, you indicate that you don't understand why your Drive-Ins out do your hardtop. Well, first, they aren't the same customer. Yeah, they all want to see a movie but they are not seeking the same experience. Drive-Ins are, to a degree, a novelty and one that is not easily replicated without the space. No, it isn't a mystery that the Drive-In customer isn't so concerned about about having the latest sound system and is quite content with FM or, even better, speakers on a pole for the full nostalgia thing. That is part of the Drive-In thing, the nostalgia, in addition to the much more relaxed setting. Being located in Houston also gets you a much longer season, if not year-round. We support a Drive-In in Maine...their season is considerably shorter but it is still a beloved theatre by its town, despite its short(ish) season.

This doesn't preclude a successful indoor but the clients, while overlapping, are seeking a different experience. What my experience has shown is that better cinemas do better than worse cinemas. What makes a cinema better? Everything from how a customer chooses the movie to see through their return home and a desire to see another show due to their positive experience. It is entirely holistic. It is as unreasonable for a patron to understand the granularity of what goes into a good cinema presentation as it is for the average consumer to know what every part was used in the manufacture of their car. They look at it as a whole. The more things you put in the "positive experience" column, the better it is perceived as a whole. Everything you do to make the actual movie part of the experience better goes into the positive column. That includes EVERYTHING, with some things having more influence than others. The basics are great projection and sound. Delivering whatever was put into the movie. Keeping distractions to a minimum (Exits signs should indicate where the exits are not light up the screen with a red or green haze). Clean and comfortable...may seem obvious but you'd never know it in some cinemas. And whether cinemas want to acknowledge it or not, well masked and curtained presentations. Don't have the cinema look like the home, have it look like a theatre. This latest trend of unmasked screens has not helped the bottom line...it just makes the image look thrown up there. Curtains...either you're 1st class or your not. Perhaps that isn't the customer one is seeking. Curtains are expensive to buy and maintain but they are a dramatic statement on the show...something the home does not have (except in the Belaire circuit...which almost always have curtains). The home cinema puts their speakers outside of the screen. Are we to replicate that too? Again, not every market will benefit from them but there are definitely some where it would change the perception of the movie going experience from McDonalds to Sit-down restaurant (or move it in that direction).

Trendy things like 3D have bubbles of success for the curiosity seekers. Yes, there are devotees of most any "process," including 3D but, by and large, the gimmicks, and 3D is one have bubbles (this last bubble was a bit long lasting but it is mostly gone now and, due to digital, was an easier switch to flick, on distribution). Younger people, like yourself, jump on these things because that is what is hot an happening. I, again, saw a lot of money thrown at 3D and it is, again, fading away, leaving behind, crappy silver screens that ruin presentaitons.

There are things that go into the negative column...take on screen advertisements...they are, by and large, viewed negatively. At best, they are viewed as neutral. They lower the class of the theatre. Does it turn a sit-down restaurant into McDonalds? Probably not but it narrows the gap. As a business, there is the revenue from the ads versus the negative customer impact to weigh in. I think if they were better incorporated and done in a way that didn't detract from the presentation, it would improve perception. I would rather have a separately masked advertisement screen that either rolled down or the curtains opened up on and present them like someone cared than how they are just thrown up there with a one size fits all (regardless of aspect ratio) and BS 2-channel sound. Do a curtain call and move the masking for the trailers with the lights dimmed. Make a it a show. That's part of what an indoor theatre is selling...a show.

Eating popcorn or "slurping" a soda has nothing to do with the suspension of disbelief you are seeing on screen And, if you have a noisy eater next to you, it can be a distraction (and a challenge for cinemas). Text on the screen is an absolute distraction and goes into the negative column. How big an impact will vary by audience and, as Marcel has indicated, by region/custom.

The Art House peeps use subtitles as a badge of honor (or sophistication) but those are typically not the younger set either. Some of my favorite movies, of all time, are not in my native language (English). Cinema Paradiso is Italian and I've seen that movie 9-ways to Sunday. I've seen it subtitled, dubbed, theatrical cut, extended-extended-extended cut. Subtitles don't ruin it for me but I am conscious that the translations are quickie versions and don't always convey the real meaning of what is said. For Das Boot (German), I MUCH prefer the dubbed version as most of the actors dubbed their own voices (except the chief). The emotion and translation was good. The subtitles got out of sequence (I know a tiny bit of German).

As has been pointed out, seeing text to translate a different language is FAR different than seeing text translating your own language. Plus the wind storm of music and other audio cues. It takes away from the movie, for the 99.99% of the people that don't need it. I would predict that 100% captions on 100% of the shows would lower a theatre's attendance over time as who it is catering to is such a small portion of the public versus the people that would find it distracting.

But hey, by all means; you own and operate cinemas, give a shot and let us know, over time, how it does. You may very well be correct. I just don't think so but that is my opinion. It's tough to track such things as it does take time and you are not using the same product at all times so each audience is a different group though there may be similarities. If it doesn't do well, don't be mad at the people that didn't like 100% captions because they too were just expressing their viewing preferences with their ticket dollars, which is how they mostly do it...not with complaints.

[Randy Stankey]

The biggest reason why I seem to be a grouchy, old bastard is when I tell some young upstart how to do something properly and they ignore my advice but, a short time later, they come back to me complaining that it doesn't work. Not only do I end up putting my own work aside to do a job that they should have been able to do, themselves, but I have to clean up their mess before I can start.

I can understand that people make mistakes. I make mistakes, too. Everybody does. It's normal. I don't get upset when people make natural mistakes. Sometimes, I might say something like, "Aw, shit," or, "Ya' big dummy," but it's normal to express frustration when things go wrong. I say things like that about myself when I make mistakes, too. People making mistakes isn't my problem. It's REPEATED mistakes or mistakes made when people have been advised how to do something right but they ignore that advice and forge ahead with some hair brained plan.

Just last week, I was at work, tinning the leads on some parts. They were some high-precision, board mount connectors with EMI shields.
The work order traveller specified that the tinning was supposed to be lead-free. The words "LEAD FREE" were stamped on the work order in red ink.

I went over to the lead-free tinning station to finish up an order that somebody else had started. The job was mostly done but the station was left in a mess.
Parts (product) was disorganized, laying all over the place. I had to run around for ten minutes to find the traveler packet before I could start work. The top surface of the tin pot was caked with burned flux and there was sticky flux all over the table. It took me a good twenty minutes to clean up the work area before I could start.

I was a good half hour behind the clock. I could have been well into completing the order if I had not been forced to clean up some other guy's mess, first.
Just as I am putting on my gloves and safety glasses to start work, I look down and find a spatula with a blue handle sitting on the table. "Aw, SHIT!"

Some of you older guys already know where I'm going... Contaminated tin!

There is a very, very strict rule about lead-free soldering and tinning. No lead based solder is to be anywhere near a lead-free tinning area. There is a color code in order to prevent it. All lead-free tools have green handles and all lead based tools have blue handles. (Or blue/green tape on the handles.)

Some dumbass used a leaded tool to do lead-free work! That means that every part on that table has to be SCRAPPED! At least $5,000 worth of finished goods have to go in the shit can!

I know that everybody in that shop has been told about this. I know that I, myself, have pounded my fist on the table and said, "No fucking lead!"
I guaran-fucking-tee that everybody knows or should know about mixing up lead and lead-free work!

So, I stood up and shouted, "Dammit!" I picked up the tool and the tray of parts and took them to the supervisor. He looks at me like I'm being that crabby, old man.

It wasn't until I reminded him that we BOTH would have to work mandatory overtime in order to make up for this mess that he understood why I was upset.
(A lot of the work we do is for Defense and orders have to be shipped on time or else. That means O.T!)

Just remember! We "old farts" know more about what it's like to be young, dumb and full of cum than you know about being a dirty, old man!

Gettin' old ain't for pussies!

[Bobby Henderson]

Here's another glaring problem with this guess that young people are perfectly accepting of on-screen captions in theaters (and that us old fuddie-duddie types just can't get with the times): how do we know the very convention of watching a movie in a commercial movie theater isn't a concept just for "old people?"

We've seen the sales pitch numerous times to rationalize questionable movie distribution choices that undermine commercial theaters: pushing a new movie to homes faster and onto more devices faster is supposedly something that will appeal more to younger customers. The conventional thinking is that young adults and teens don't care at all about the difference between watching a movie in a theater versus watching it on a tiny smart phone. I think the reality is probably very different and that there is some very biased or even duplicitous, self-serving motives behind those claims over what young adults supposedly want. The people selling some new scheme are insulting the intelligence of adults in those age groups and perhaps misrepresenting the preferences of those people in order to sell their product.

[Steve Guttag]

How many times have I seen the death of cinema predicted and more recently due to C19 and day-and-date outright declared? Many times. What has been found (and hopefully progressively so) is that day-and-date releases shrink the pie for the distributor. Even if the younger crowd likes the convenience of home/instant accessibility, the group that HAS to see something opening day remains a small portion. Once that group has shot their wad, so to speak, that brand new $200M movie is sitting right next to the 50-year old movie...no more valuable nor incentive to watch it.

There are multiple ways of viewing statistics and, unfortunately, people carry their own biases when they view them. The decline of movie attendance, particularly as a function of population, is undeniable. However, I see it trending with the shrinking release windows. The solution, to me, is obvious, lengthen them. Get people back into the knowledge that "only in theatres" means that for some time (like a year or more for tent-pole movies, 6-months for lesser ones) and see where the revenue goes. All the collapsing release windows has done is also collapse the time it takes to make money off of the movie. It gets the studio a faster but smaller satisfaction. They've already thrown away the sub-run market with their absurdly short release windows. That is money that is just thrown away. Do they really think that "kids" will boycott a movie when it makes it to the home a year later? They'll watch it then because they may not have watched a quick-to-home release before a year either.

The bottom line is, people DO want to get out of the house and do things. People that are dating do not want to always "Netflix-n-chill." Going to the movies remains a popular activity and despite the griping, also remains one of the cheapest forms of going out. Making the theatrical experience as special as financially feasibly possible is key to keeping that value. Captions on the the screen doesn't do that, unless you need them. I do think society will (gladly) accept an increased number of open-caption shows, if they know which ones they are (helps both the people that want them and those that really don't want them). Deep down, I don't think people like denying people access. Where resentment and dislike comes is when one is expected to accommodate on the off-chance an accommodation might be used in a very small percentage. Movies are better for almost all people when captions are not present. They do take away from the show.

[Marcel Birgelen]

One of the reasons why I don't think Open Captions will become the norm any time soon, is because this runs contrary to the kind of developments we've seen over the past years, like multi-dimensional sound, wall-to-wall and ceiling-to-bottom screens, stereoscopic 3D, motion-base technology, "expanded" screens, etc.

Generally speaking, cinema technology has always been "in motion" right from the beginning. There may have been periods of "relative stability", but in general, there always have been attempts at "expanding the experience" and making it more "immersive". And while many technologies have proven to be just temporary fads and gimmicks, most of those technologies at least try to increase the level of immersion for the paying patron, not taking them away.

The idea of having captions on screen runs contrary to that concept. No matter how you look at it, those captions are, for most parts, a distraction for all the people that don't need them to comprehend the movie.

In a non-cinema setting, people usually enable those captions, because they don't want to or simply cannot turn up the volume, or there are a lot of distracting noises in their surroundings. I've also turned on captions on YouTube videos and the likes, because I didn't want to disturb other people in the room. None of those factors should be a problem in any normal cinema, so I don't really see the need for always-on captions, especially if alternative captioning solutions can be provided for those who need so, in order to enjoy the show.

Cinema has been proclaimed death at least as often as the end of the world has been foretold. Meanwhile, it looks like the industry itself is rather resilient, but it's evident that the industry has changed over time and has adapted to both technological progress and cultural changes. In the last decades, in order to cater to the film industries increased output, many multiplexes have been built. In turn, this allowed the industry to cater to a broader appeal, as many more movies could be presented in parallel. With the decreasing release window, the seemingly general decline of quality in recent releases, it looks like people are less willing to pay to go see those "lesser movies" on the big screen. This will leave rooms unused and if those rooms can be filled with alternative versions of the main presentation, I'm all in favor of it.

[Steve Guttag]

Marcel, I do not agree that the technology of the industry has really been all that much in motion. Sure...there is a very, very gradual trend line up. But, really, look at it over its history. It took nearly ½ a century before it went to a wide screen (I'm not talking about attempts but actually adopting something with semi regular use). Until around the late 1980s, you had a better than 80% chance of hearing a movie in Mono...sound which came on line in the 1920s. Around 1985 or so, there was a stronger trend to stereo sound (4.0 in today's lingo).

Theatres got smaller yet more plentiful. So yeah, you had relatively large screens for the room, but the room was small. And, as screens got bigger, light went lower, quality went down. Digital audio did usher in a greater acceptance of 5.1 as sort of an audio standard (now about 90 years after film became semi-popular and 40 years after 4.0 sound was, at least, semi-available. Even with that, you had major chains like Carmike that would run their theatres with mono sound..including when Digital Cinema came into being in the later part of the 2000s.

What has the picture part done in the century of being? 35mm from day-1...in the 1950s and onward...very limited 70mm and even more limited 70mm origination. Even the sound part of 70mm was cannibalized for fewer channels...though we did get bass...so there is that from the late 1970s until digital hit in the early '90s (how far after sound was introduced?) Really, 5.1 debuted in the late 1970s and remains our defacto standard. We are coming up on half a century since then.

As for immersive...There are some that have tried to use 3D for that with the genuine belief that it has and will improve it. Maybe someday but that day is not here. For the most part, it is a gimmick with a headache that lowers presentation standards (lower light levels, lower contrast, lower light uniformity, causes headaches to a sizeable part of the population). Shaker seats...all gimmick (and a retread gimmick, at that). Immersive audio. Perhaps. However, it remains a niche format (IAB and the varieties associated with it, like Dolby's Atmos). You know it is a gimmick when exhibitors put lights around the speakers to show them off to you. I think Dolby Atmos can be spectacular but only if the the movie is mixed spectacularly and if theatres don't put in the "K-Mart" version. So...we'll see on that one.

What's left? Oh Wall-to-wall screens...oh yeah..mostly dark, no masking and no curtains. This is an improvement? Does it make the movie better? I'm sure the super-hero movies benefit with big-ass screens but they would benefit more if they were lit well and properly masked. Real or not, images appear to be more contrasty if there is a deep black masking around all four sides of the image.

Stadium seating was an attempt to correct an architectural screw up of poor sight lines. We have one customer that is rehabbing theatres without putting in stadium seating but is paying attention to sightlines. Problem solved AND it is inherently more handicapped friendly while being safer to navigate the aisles in the dark.

The bottom line is, aside from the gimmicks, I haven't seen a very strong trend towards great technology changes. The biggest one was moving from film to digital. That was done at the studio's behest to lower their costs. No extra tickets were so for the transformation to digital. The biggest upside is that the print quality remains consistent from first show to last. Then again, every Wednesday - Friday I get to deal with some sort of KDM screw up. Even this past weekend, KDMs got screwed up to the tune of show cancellation because they thought they had their keys or the automatic KDM delivery didn't get all of the keys (Halloween Kills via automatic distribution didn't distribute all of the keys...just some).

Other than 5.1 audio...how much as the average movie patron seen improve in the last 50 years on the "typical" movie? And, with MOST of those 5.1 movies...how much as the volume gone up to the point of annoying the patron? At least with Mono, they HAD to mix it so that the dialog was intelligible with the music and effects. Not so with discrete 5.1 mixes.