Like this.
Coincidentally, just last night we were watching something that expected you to read the text message on a phone that I’d only be able to read by pausing, squinting, or getting up and walking close to the TV.
Other shows and movies, like ‘House of Cards’, solved this problem years ago-- when a character was texting, the show itself would show a large onscreen caption of the messages at the bottom of the screen so it was easy to read. Don’t know why that’s not just universal by now.
I’ve never seen any option to select where closed captions appear on the screen on my TV, or with any of the streaming services I use. (In some of the latter, I’m lucky if I can figure out how to get them to show closed captioning).
Handy hint: figure out how to turn on the closed captions BEFORE you’re in the middle of a show and asking your wife “Whadshe say?” “Can we back up?” “How do I do that?” “Where’s the closed… wait, where’s the remote?”
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I’ve figured it out for each service, but some I had to google.
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fyi, I wish they all had options for size of type.
Netflix has problems with shows that are a mix of languages that I still can’t figure out how to solve. Let’s say I’m watching something where the characters speak Spanish and English at different times. If I set the closed caption to English with no subtitles, then the characters don’t speak at all, and the only sound is the sound effects. If I add the subtitles in, then the characters speak, but there’s also a narrator describing everything going on “Juan opens the cupboard and sees only one can” “Juan and Maria prepare breakfast, putting bread in the toaster and coffee in the coffee maker” and things of that sort. Using Spanish as the default language isn’t any better.
I always watch with the closed captions on, because I often have problems following some people’s dialog. The thing is, some of the streaming services do not always keep the closed captioning function on when you switch from one service to another, so when I start watching some shows I’m sometimes partway into it before I realize it isn’t showing.
With my TV, I can choose the position, and also whether to seperate generated from included CC:
I have a Toshiba FireTV. I don’t think it has the option to choose the position, but I’ll have to check the Accessibility options to see if they hid it there.
Sometimes a phone or computer screen isn’t meant to be read, just lightly and quickly perused. Maybe the filmmaker wants to convey that Sue just got 7 texts in a row from John.
So they’ll use a closeup of Sue holding the phone, quickly scrolling through texts. We see the name ‘John’ go by a whole bunch but we cant read his texts and we’re not meant to.
OTOH, sometimes it’s shot in such a way that it’s clear we’re supposed to be able to read at least part of it but it’s poorly conceived/executed/edited and it can’t be comprehended without pausing it.
The “Close up of Text” shot is trying to replace the even-more-awkward one, that I just saw last night in an otherwise-smart movie (“Monk’s Last Case”):
Characters A and B walk into the house. A picks up a note and reads it, Character B says “Is that a note from C?” A hands over the note, and B reads the note aloud: “Ran to the corner store. Back soon.”
Reading it slowly, to the person who had just read it to themselves.