Unintelligible movies are creating subtitle addicts

Are you one of those people who routinely watches TV with the subtitle on because otherwise you can’t understand what the characters are talking about? You are not alone. Although there may be a tendency to wax lyrical about a golden age of crisp enunciation and crystal clear sound, there does seem to be some truth to the complaint that TV and film dialogue is getting increasingly hard to follow. Industry insiders acknowledge there is a problem, but few want to talk about it. Ben Pearson, writing at SlashFilm, describes reaching out to sound professionals, several of whom refused to go on the record for fear of repercussions, with one saying it would be “professional suicide” to do so.

So, if the intelligibility of film and TV dialogue is getting worse, the question is why? The answer is complex, but at least some of the problem appears to be a deliberate choice on the part of film makers and actors in pursuit of authenticity. In fact there is an entire film genre called mumblecore, which prides itself on naturalistic and sometimes improvised dialogue. It is true, of course, that in real life people do not speak as if they were fresh from their latest elocution lesson. Thoughts tumble out and are articulated while still half framed, with all sorts of repetitions, indistinct muttering, stuttering and stumbling. But in real life listeners get a chance to say: “excuse me” and “what was that again?”. In a film, you risk getting lost.

The HBO series The Wire became somewhat renowned for its unintelligible dialogue, but writer George Pelecanos had no sympathy with viewers who resorted to watching with subtitle to follow what was going on. In an interview with The Independent, he said, “We wrote it so audiences would have to work at it! We were not going to compromise in making it immediately accessible for everyone”. In fact, he accused subtitle viewers of turning his gritty crime drama into a comedy rather like the scene in the 1980s spoof Airplane, where “two black guys speak, and subtitles appear on the screen.”

In addition to naturalistic mumbling, there is also a suggestion that technological developments have tempted actors and directors to defer responsibility for the clarity of dialogue to the post-production team. Ben Pearson’s in-depth investigation into the deteriorating intelligibility of movie dialogue covers this issue in detail. Sound editor Karen Baker Landers describes the meticulous clean-up operation that goes on once filming is over “You go in and you volume-graph up a vowel, or one letter. You go in and you surgically […] slow it down.”

This kind of post-editing can take hours, which is why sound technicians often lament the lack of care given to dialogue earlier in the filming process. Oscar-winning sound editor Donald Sylvester complains that when the sound guy on set suggests a retake is required because the dialogue wasn’t sufficiently clear, the response is all too often a glib “We’ll fix it in post”. Sound editing technology has been revolutionised over the last few decades, but the manual labour involved in tweaking bad audio is considerable. Films are big business, so it seems surprising that industry moguls don’t have their beady eyes on the bottom line in this regard.

The above highlighted the way technological advances in sound editing have potentially tempted directors to defer responsibility for the clarity of recorded dialogue to the post-production sound engineers. Technology has had a huge impact on the modern film industry, enabling all sorts of tricks and special effects that would have been unimaginable in the early days of making movies. But in this case, somewhat ironically, instead of making things better, the ease of tweaking things and the number of the options available may be making film crews more slapdash about the way they record the original soundtrack.

Another technological evolution that has had a huge impact on the overall soundtrack and clarity of dialogue is the ability to add music and background sounds to build atmosphere. Again, with endless options available to refine the soundscape, some within the industry believe there is too much tinkering and adding in noise; all at the cost of intelligibility.

But surely the fastidious editing and post production process should be identifying and remedying unintelligible dialogue? This is where another factor comes into play that will be no surprise to anyone with a passing knowledge of psycholinguistics – the more familiar you are with the dialogue, the more easily you understand it. As the sound editor listens repeatedly to the script, they know what’s coming. The brain is brilliant at filling in any gaps, so the perception the editor gets is that the dialogue is perfectly clear. Sound editor Karen Baker Landers calls this “passive listening”. This underscores the importance of audience testing and getting naïve listeners to report back on the intelligibility of the dialogue.

Finally, the cultural shift towards home streaming rather than going out to the movies has also had an impact on intelligibility due to inferior quality home entertainment equipment. The home environment may also be subject to more ambient noise, although cinemas are often plagued with noisy popcorn munchers! And then there is the quality of the streaming audio mix itself, which may be different to the one created for a theatrical release. Sound editor Donald Sylvester suggests the creation of a stereo sound mix for home streaming is like “taking a beautiful steak and dragging it through the dirt.”

But intelligibility is not the only factor driving the increasing popularity of subtitles. Although they are primarily designed for the hearing impaired, subtitles are hugely popular with younger people who have perfect hearing. My seventeen year old has the subtitles permanently switched on for whatever she is streaming. A survey by the deaf-led charity StageText showed that 80% of 18-25 year olds use subtitles some or all of the time. By contrast, less than a quarter of those aged 56-75 said they do so, even though people in the older age bracket were more than twice as likely to describe themselves as being deaf or hard of hearing.

In my non-statistical sample of one young person, various reasons were suggested for her love of subtitles. The first is echoed in the StageText survey: having subtitles switched on enables you to follow the content despite multiple other distractions. You can scan the subtitles then quickly check your phone for DMs or Instagram updates, or you might like to chat live to a group of friends while watching programmes or movies with the sound turned off. My daughter highlighted another surprising bonus of subtitles, which is that they can make scary content less terrifying, for example by indicating “[scream]” before the relevant scream-inducing event takes place. This defuses the tension by signalling (or spoiling, depending on your perspective) an up-coming jump scare.

About the Author

Alison Tunley

Alison is a seasoned freelance translator with over 15 years of experience, specialising in translating from German to English. Originally from Wales, she has been a Londoner for some time, and she holds a PhD in Phonetics and an MPhil in Linguistics from the University of Cambridge, where she also completed her First Class BA degree in German and Spanish… Read Full Bio