subtitles

[Aaron Gerow]

>> Izuchi & his producer
>> explained that they had actually timed the subtitles to correspond to 
>> actual
>> utterances, rather than having them printed & legible throughout the 
>> entire
>> shot.
>
>Could you explain this again? I'm curious, but can't make sense of it!

I'd also like to hear what Anne meant by this, but timing titles to 
actual utterances is standard practice in subtitling. That's what a 
spotting sheet is all about: counting the number of frames (or seconds) 
for a particular phrase and then having the subtitler come up with titles 
to fit that time. The resulting title is usually placed on those exact 
number of frames. You can sometimes fool around with the time if you need 
more time to communicate a difficult expression (starting the title 
before and/or ending it after the utterance), but some subtitling 
companies actually prefer you just keep to the time of the utterance, 
perhaps because it's just easier to manage that way. For a film my wife 
recently did, the company did require this of her for procedural reasons.

Aaron Gerow
Associate Professor
International Student Center
Yokohama National University
79-1 Tokiwadai
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JAPAN
E-mail: gerow at ynu.ac.jp
Phone: 81-45-339-3170
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