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Author Topic: white-on-white laser subtitles? John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 03-13-2004 10:31 PM                     We're running Amores Perros this weekend (I'll post to FITA later...), and one of the annoying things about it is that the laser subtitles are sometimes on top of a white background, and thus are quite difficult to see. I wondering (pretty speculatively) if there are any creative solutions to this problem, perhaps making use of the differences in the filmstock between laser-etched text and "apparent white." In particular, I wondered if something creative could be done with polarization filters or gels to try to enhance the visible edge between the subtitles and the surrounding image? I suppose another option would be something horrid like mixing food coloring dye with filmguard (no, I'm not going to try it). I don't know if there's some optical way to enhance the grain (since the laser subtitles should be free of grain). Does anyone have any experience mitigating this sort of problem? --jhawk  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 03-13-2004 10:40 PM                        You could try stopping up the lens to decrease the depth of field.  |  IP: Logged John Hawkinson Film God Posts: 2273 From: Cambridge, MA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 03-14-2004 12:05 AM                     Why would decreasing the depth of field/focus help to improve the appearance of the subtitles? In any case, I don't have a stock of slower lenses of the right focal length... --jhawk  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 03-14-2004 12:07 AM                        You might get enough blur to make the text stand out.  |  IP: Logged Carl Martin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1424 From: Oakland, CA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 03-14-2004 03:05 AM                        i would think a blurred field of white would look exactly the same as a sharp field of white. and sometimes subtitles on a white background simply cease to exist. they may be visible on the bench under reflected light (haven't tried) but on the screen they simply are not there. does the laser etch even if there is no image? does white (clear) film have visible grain at all, if it's completely unexposed? carl  |  IP: Logged Robert Harris Film Handler Posts: 95 From: Bedford Hills, NY, USA Registered: May 2003 posted 03-14-2004 08:23 AM                     Generally, making the assuption that the distributor cares enough, this title problem, which goes back to the '30s, with long conversations in the Marcel Pagnol films taking place in kitchens against checked table cloths... would be to create a special titled negative with a drop shadow. With that exception, and by all other methods, via which a title is either held back with a title band, or burned in with a laser, is still going to be white.  |  IP: Logged Mattias Ohlson Expert Film Handler Posts: 180 From: Falun, Sweden Registered: Mar 2003 posted 03-14-2004 08:28 AM                     I am visually impaired and subtitles can be a big problem for me with white in bright surroundings. Are there systemes to project subtitles below the picture. It must be an advantage for everyone if subtitles are projected below the picture.  |  IP: Logged John Walsh Film God Posts: 2490 From: Connecticut, USA, Earth, Milky Way Registered: Oct 1999 posted 03-14-2004 09:17 AM                     Maybe you could stretch a dark-colored cloth across the bottom of the screen and set it's height such that the titles project onto it. Black would probably be too dark, but a grayish color might provide a good enough contrast. Not a very good idea, but if they can not be read at all......  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 03-14-2004 10:32 AM                        I guess we're into the realm of theory here, but surely it would be possible to laser-burn the emulsion side of each print with an intensity strong enough to burn through one or two of the dye layers but not all three, thereby creating a text colour other than white (or, in the case of b/w stock, a shade other than completely transparent)? If so, then you could theoretically adjust the shade and contrast of the lettering to give some contrast in each individual shot. Not only would Pagnol's tablecloths be defeated, but I always have wondered exactly what Yves Montand mumbles shortly before blowing up the boulder in The Wages of Fear!  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 03-14-2004 11:59 AM                        Presumably, if the density of the print is within norm, even the whitest white created by the emulsion should still be darker than white created where the emulsion is completely burned away. This print must be unusually thin. Perhaps it is an anomoly and other prints might be more dense and would show subtitles more distinctly. Any possibility of asking for a substitute print? It might be a far shot, but one worth trying, because once those titles are burned, there isn't much else you can do to change the contrast. Projecting them thru a filter or on a darker surface will change both the titles and the background equally, resulting in exactly the same indistinction between the two, only darker. Laser etched and even chemical etched subtitles are supposed to FIX that problem of white text on white backgrounds. The difference in density is supposed to be enough that text can be easily read over white images. If they aren't then this really sounds like a print which was processed out of spec and is much less dense than normal. I never could figure out why, with all that film geography wasted on 1.85 and even 1.66 titles, why they don't just print subtitles in the black area below the image. Yes, you would need a special lens for these prints, but if you are running a theatre that plays foreign, subtitled films regularly, chances are you would buy a lens sized for just that kind of process. Subtitles against black instead of the image itself -- what a concept. And as long as we are talking in the "what if I were the king" mode, and we are printing titles in the black hard matted area, I would decree that translation text be etched ABOVE the picture instead of below -- super-titles as they are called; we do it all the time with live opera. No more craneing of one's neck to see over the shoulders of the guy in front just to read the subtitles; they would be up there right at the top of the picture, against black, not against the picture. And hey, as long as we are in the realm of fantasy and etching titles in the hard matted wide frame-line area, my system would go one step further -- no reason why you couldn't put one language above the picture and another language below the picture. Depending on how you frame the thing, you'd have a tri-language film ....i.e.,the soundtrack language, the supertitles and the subtitles -- you'd see this on the reel-bands (or hand scribbled on the leader when there are no reel-bands as is common for foreign releases) --> "In Spanish with German sub and English super titles." And of course, in the country of origin, you would use the normal lens and there would be no translation at all. Pretty neat, no? Frank  |  IP: Logged Carl Martin Phenomenal Film Handler Posts: 1424 From: Oakland, CA, USA Registered: Feb 2002 posted 03-14-2004 05:21 PM                        maybe it's a result of poor q/c, but i have seen many prints where the laser titles have dark borders around the letters until they hit a pure white background, where they just disappear. i suppose this might predominantly be the case on old b&w dupes with too-high contrast, but i've seen it on newer color prints as well. i do like your idea, frank, though i think most theaters would balk at the additional plates, etc. (it might be advantageous to have the aperture off-center vertically, so the image itself is centered without accounting for the text. there is a system of electronic subtitles which i'm told the pacific film archive experimented with, although i never saw it. apparently there was a lot of negative feedback. perhaps it was hard to read, or perhaps the audience didn't like looking back and forth between the image and the text. i don't know. given that there are foreign films for which no english-language prints exist (shocking, i know), though, i think they should have retained the system as a last resort if nothing else. carl  |  IP: Logged Christian Appelt Jedi Master Film Handler Posts: 505 From: Frankfurt, Germany Registered: Dec 2001 posted 03-14-2004 05:29 PM                     There is no easy solution because any type/color of subtitles will get into conflict with some kind of background image pattern. I often have to subtitle (on video, however) for film theme exhibitions, and often there is no other choice than changing the subtitle color between scenes, because with certain background patterns even the drop shadow font will not really help. When only certain scenes have to be subtitled, I don't understand why they cannot afford doing a DI with good drop shadow subtitles instead of fuzzy white titles. Right now, here in Germany there are many complaints because of the subtitled scenes in TIMELINE which are totally out of focus. The craziest subtitles I remember were in Russ Meyer's SUPERVIXEN'S (1975), they said "I wonder if the f***ing you get is worth the f***ing you get" and were superimposed in a pseudo-germanic "Old English" type font - but at least sharp and IIRC drop shadowed...  |  IP: Logged Dominic Case Expert Film Handler Posts: 131 From: Sydney NSW Australia Registered: Aug 2003 posted 03-14-2004 11:51 PM                       quote: laser-burn the emulsion side of each print with an intensity strong enough to burn through one or two of the dye layers but not all three, thereby creating a text colour other than white No cigar for this one, Leo;-) Unfortunately, with both the current laser systems, the chemical etching system and the printing overlay system, you have the same problem. There is little or no image-forming colour dye in the white parts of the scene. So even laser burning one or two layers won't produce a title with any colour in it. Laser-etched subtitles sometimes leave a little burn-mark around the edges (like a cigarette burn) which helps. Chemical etching is much less readable against white, so is the overlay system. Surtitles at the top of the frame would be far worse: there is far more white sky in scenes than white ground! Japanese and Korean titles are sometimes printed down the right hand side (sometimes with English or another language across the bottom). More problems! I believe Dolby have a system for projecting subtitles using a low-end video projector, and a title list cued by a framecount or timecode driven by the film projector. And there was another one around a few years back which used one of those LED displays used in shop windows etc.  |  IP: Logged Daryl C. W. O'Shea Film God Posts: 3977 From: Midland Ontario Canada (where Panavision & IMAX lenses come from) Registered: Jun 2002 posted 03-15-2004 12:23 AM                        I think you're thinking of the DTS-CCS Cinema Subtitling System.  |  IP: Logged Dominic Case Expert Film Handler Posts: 131 From: Sydney NSW Australia Registered: Aug 2003 posted 03-15-2004 01:11 AM                       I said: quote: I believe Dolby have a system for projecting subtitles Daryl said: quote: I think you're thinking of the DTS-CCS Cinema Subtitling System. Actually I'm thinking of the Dolby system Dolby Screentalk  |  IP: Logged

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