Featured Image Credit: Getty Stock Photo
Topics: Film and TV, Technology, Viral, Streaming
Alice Wade
As you slump into the couch on an evening and go to stick on your favorite show, do you find yourself immediately reaching to turn on the subtitles?
Well, if you do, you're not alone.
According to a survey by Vox, a whopping 57 percent of people say they always watch TV with subtitles, simply because they feel like they 'can't understand' the dialogue without them.
Edward Vega, a video producer at Vox, explained that there's actually nothing unusual about this - and rather than it being a worldwide hearing issue, the answer as to why people need subtitles lies in the changes in sound technology over the years.
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In a YouTube explainer, Austin Olivia Kendrick, a dialogue editor for Pace Pictures, told Vox that the question of why people now need subtitles is one that she is constantly being asked.
"I basically perform audio surgery on actors' words," Kendrick said, explaining her job. "I get asked this question all the time."
However, for those eagerly hoping to understand the phenomenon, there isn't really a straightforward answer.
The answer is 'layered and complex', according to the expert, but generally speaking, each explanation leads back to technology.
Where once, microphones were 'big, bulky and temperamental', often requiring creative solutions to be concealed, they are far more complex beasts these days - despite vast improvements in sound quality.
Old microphones were also wired and recorded onto hard memory, which would be waxed and eventually taped. All sound would then be recorded onto one single track, so performers would need to be carefully placed and facing the right angle to pick up the sound.
Now, microphones are smaller, better and wireless. Better yet, actors don't all need to be speaking into the same microphone and can each carry their own.
While this should be a benefit - allowing actors to be more naturalistic in their performances - they no longer need to project their voices to be heard by a single sound system.
This means actors can speak more softly and quietly.
"Naturalism isn't always the best for intelligibility, though," Vega pointed out.
In the past, if a scene featured intelligible dialogue, actors would be asked to come in to re-record in a process called ADR (automated dialogue replacement). It still happens today, but it is expensive and is usually avoided by producers.
Instead, Kendrick will work to make words 'sound better' to avoid paying for an actor to come back in.
After a dialogue editor has worked on the piece, it will then be sent to a 'mixer' who will ensure the frequencies don't overlap with other sounds in the movie.
"That is a big challenge, carving out those frequencies and that space amongst every other element of the mix for the dialogue to be able to punch through and not be muddied up by any other sounds that exist," Kendrick said.
But, it doesn't always make for TV that people can understand.
Kendrick said that a bigger push towards 'wall to wall, loud sound' also makes it even harder to hear actors' voices.
Turning up the dialogue won't work either, she said, explaining that simply increasing the volume will lead to a 'distorted' sound and it will sound too loud in comparison to other noises in the scene.
"You need that contrast in volume in order to give your ear a sense of scale," she explained.
Another impact in our ability to hear dialogue can depend on how you're watching your movies, as the thin speakers built into sleek modern TVs can't quite match the booming sounds of high-end movie theater tech.
So all in all, it's no wonder that most of us are struggling to hear what's going on, and it's not likely to change any time soon, so we might as well just accept the subtitles!