Subtitles

1swollen1

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I understand how to write subtitles into a script..........but what if I don't want the subtitles to match what is going on in the story. How would you write that in?
 

nmstevens

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I understand how to write subtitles into a script..........but what if I don't want the subtitles to match what is going on in the story. How would you write that in?

Well, it's rather an unusual situation, but I guess I'd do it like this.

BOB
Hola, que tal?
(subtitle in English)
Is that a wildebeest in your armpit?

Something along those lines seems about right.

NMS
 

1swollen1

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That is the best response that I have ever seen........I think readers would get a pissed off though..
 

nmstevens

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That is the best response that I have ever seen........I think readers would get a pissed off though..

Well, the maxim you want to try to follow is that the experience of reading the script, as much as possible, should try to mirror the experience of watching the movie.

So you want to try to get close to someone hearing the original dialogue -- and then reading the sub-titles.

And the way we take in information off the movie screen is that we "hear" the spoken word much more quickly than we can ever read a sub-title beneath, so it's always going to make more sense to have the "un-sub-titled" dialogue come first, and then the faux English sub-titling.

Plus, whether your goal is funny or not -- it's still obviously some kind of "punch-line" -- so it still makes sense that way.

I just can't think of any way to make it clearer.

And just in case you're thinking -- well, maybe I'll just do it the first time and then not bother about the parenthetical instruction after that -- don't.

I'll tell you a story about that. I once worked on a script where, for reasons I won't bother going into, a 12-year-old boy's consciousness was transferred into the body of a six-year-old girl and he had to pretend to be the little girl. The only trouble was -- when he/she spoke -- his *boy* voice came out.

So the way he got around it (in the story) was that he just spoke in a whisper -- because all whispered voices are sort of the same -- and he just pretended that he/she had lost his/her voice.

The trouble was, one might reasonably suppose that whoever was making this movie would actually read and comprehend the script. So the parenthetical (whispers) was simply included the first time the little girl spoke and left out in all the subsequent dialogue -- reasoning that, since he/she would always be trying to conceal his/her identity, that he/she would have to whispering throughout and wouldn't revert, after one dialogue exchange, to his normal voice.

But no. When they made the movie, they had the boy actor whisper one time and then for the rest of the sequence, incomprehensibly, his normal boy voice came out of the little girl -- without anybody commenting on it or finding it strange.

And I catch things in movies all the time that I know are there because somebody simply mis-read or misunderstood something in the script.

So whatever it is that you're going to do -- whatever format you decide on, however awkward it may seem -- do it every single time.

NMS