rear window CC at movie theater
- Thread starter yagazn
- Start date
Better than nothing
The good: it lets you see the movie showing in that theater at any of the showing times which allows for more flexibility, it allows you to see it with hearing friends without any issues, you never lose sight of the captions on a background of the same color.
However, the bad outweighs this in my experience. First, only certain seats in the theater really get a decent reflection and you can't exactly kick out a (hearing) person in that seat. Secondly, its really hard to get a reflection that fits in the right spot on the screen AND sit in a natural position. The devices get worn out and are not able to hold their position, you are constantly having to readjust it after it begins to droop. The glass makes the screen darker, or only half the screen darker depending on how you position it. I hate the two-tone and in some of the darker scenes you can barely see the picture through it. For taller people its even more uncomfortable to squish down to get a good view or you have to angle it to such a degree that the captions are not even on the screen- causing eyes to dart back and forth.
I dont mind carrying the device through the theater. Mostly because I visited a theater that was popular with locals and tourists alike. The theaters policy was to not let people into the theater more than 15 minutes before show time for crowd control. By getting the device I usually was able to get in early and try for a different seat. I admit I took advantage of the situation in order to get what I wanted. Was someone really gonna come tell the deaf person to wait outside? A couple of times they tried and I mentioned that I needed an accessible seat and only certain seats were accessible- that threw them off since they dont know the law.
I used to live in a city that had four rear-view window theaters and 1 open captioned theater. I always took the 30 min highway drive to the captioned theater rather than go to the rear-view theaters that were closer and had more convenient showing times. I would go to the rear-view windows only on those rare occasions they played a movie the captioned theater did not show or if I was unable to work the captioned showings into my schedule.
However, I think there should be a little more advertisement of this service. Not everyone who would benefit from this is connected with the Deaf community. I had gone to several movies that the newspaper said were captioned adn waited in vain for the captions to appear- I had no idea that there was a special device needed! People may not know about the captions or if they do, even how it works. It was only after I began taking ASL lessons that I found out about RW. When I got to the theater I had to ask around to find out where to go- its not like there was a sign saying pick up the captioning device here. I took it into the theater and looked for an "on" switch but never saw it. So I waited patiently for the movie to start expecting that to be when it pops up. Never saw the captions. Finally I had to leave and told a manager that mine was broken and the captions weren't coming up. I had no idea it was used as a reflector! I felt like an idiot.
The good: it lets you see the movie showing in that theater at any of the showing times which allows for more flexibility, it allows you to see it with hearing friends without any issues, you never lose sight of the captions on a background of the same color.
However, the bad outweighs this in my experience. First, only certain seats in the theater really get a decent reflection and you can't exactly kick out a (hearing) person in that seat. Secondly, its really hard to get a reflection that fits in the right spot on the screen AND sit in a natural position. The devices get worn out and are not able to hold their position, you are constantly having to readjust it after it begins to droop. The glass makes the screen darker, or only half the screen darker depending on how you position it. I hate the two-tone and in some of the darker scenes you can barely see the picture through it. For taller people its even more uncomfortable to squish down to get a good view or you have to angle it to such a degree that the captions are not even on the screen- causing eyes to dart back and forth.
I dont mind carrying the device through the theater. Mostly because I visited a theater that was popular with locals and tourists alike. The theaters policy was to not let people into the theater more than 15 minutes before show time for crowd control. By getting the device I usually was able to get in early and try for a different seat. I admit I took advantage of the situation in order to get what I wanted. Was someone really gonna come tell the deaf person to wait outside? A couple of times they tried and I mentioned that I needed an accessible seat and only certain seats were accessible- that threw them off since they dont know the law.
I used to live in a city that had four rear-view window theaters and 1 open captioned theater. I always took the 30 min highway drive to the captioned theater rather than go to the rear-view theaters that were closer and had more convenient showing times. I would go to the rear-view windows only on those rare occasions they played a movie the captioned theater did not show or if I was unable to work the captioned showings into my schedule.
However, I think there should be a little more advertisement of this service. Not everyone who would benefit from this is connected with the Deaf community. I had gone to several movies that the newspaper said were captioned adn waited in vain for the captions to appear- I had no idea that there was a special device needed! People may not know about the captions or if they do, even how it works. It was only after I began taking ASL lessons that I found out about RW. When I got to the theater I had to ask around to find out where to go- its not like there was a sign saying pick up the captioning device here. I took it into the theater and looked for an "on" switch but never saw it. So I waited patiently for the movie to start expecting that to be when it pops up. Never saw the captions. Finally I had to leave and told a manager that mine was broken and the captions weren't coming up. I had no idea it was used as a reflector! I felt like an idiot.
Sosie
Well-Known Member
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- Oct 20, 2007
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Is Rear Window Captioning a Failure? (A lot of people are not too happy with rear-window-captioning. Me, too, I prefer watching the movie with open-captioning.)