subtitling movies

[Aaron Gerow]

Thanks to Gavin for voicing some of the issues involved in the subtitling 
consortium.

As he says, the main one is the problem of actually doing the subtitles.  
Since I am not an expert on this, I will let others speak about the 
specific technology, but members of the consortium would of course work 
on exchanging information on how to do the subtitling.  Gavin mentions 
some of the costs involved in doing it on computer, but I do want to add 
that one could also do it using a regular character generator on a 
non-computer video editing machine.  Those of you at universities can ask 
your university AV lab if they have such editing facilities.  
Universities may also have non-linear computer editing equipment for use 
by faculty.

The next issue is image quality.  Since prewar films will be the focus at 
the start, we will already be working with images that are rough and 
scratchy.  The subtitling process should be done so that not too many 
generations are created.  Using a video editing machine, I figure one 
would have to use the master tape to create a tape with titles which will 
then serve as the master for dubbing copies for members.  The tapes 
members get will then be copies of copies.  This may not produce the best 
image quality, but that's part of what we will have to deal with.

Copy protection will be a problem in some cases, but few of the prewar 
films are so valuable that the commercial videos available have copy 
guard.

Knowing which films are in copyright is not so difficult: technically it 
is 50 years after release.  Knowing what has been subtitled is a problem, 
especially since there's a difference between subtitled films readily 
available (on film, video, or DVD), and those that are subtitled, but 
resting in some archive where few people can use it.  Ideally, we should 
be subtitling films that have never been done before, but in some cases 
we will probably have to so some films that have been subtitling films 
for which subtitles already exist, but are unavailable.  We do need to 
make a list of what is commercially available (Markus's list of 16mm 
films is a start).

Deciding which films to do is largely up to the person doing it, but to 
coordinate efforts, it would probably make sense for members to announce 
on a list (perhaps one made solely for the consortium) which films they 
are interested in doing and getting opinions from the others.  That way 
the films could be decided by all before anyone actually starts.

Another issue people addressed is finding screenplays.  Again, the best 
source is Tanikawa's _Shinario bunken_ (which will refer you to where 
scripts are published), but those in Japan can also reference Waseda's 
huge script collection.

So far, the reaction to the consortium proposal has been somewhat 
disappointing: only four people have announced their interest.  Anyone 
else out there?


Aaron Gerow
Yokohama National University
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