I was watching the director’s commentary track on the Shrek DVD last night, and noticed that they have closed captioning for the director’s commentary! I thought that was really cool. I’ve often wondered if hearing-impaired people feel gypped when they buy or rent DVDs and are unable to watch the commentary track because 95% of the time, there is no closed captioning for it. I frequently watch DVDs at night turned down low to avoid disturbing other members of the household who are sleeping, so I often turn on closed captioning to catch bits of dialogue that are spoken softly or drowned out by background noise or whatever. I’ve never had the option before (that I’ve noticed) to do so on the commentary track, though.
And while I’m on the topic of closed captioning, does it drive anyone else crazy that the DVDs of The Sopranos aren’t captioned?
When I watch commentary tracks, I usually keep the captioning on for the movie dialogue, so that if the commentators refer to a line, I’ll know what it is. I don’t knopw that I could watch two sets of subtitiles simultaneously.
No, they didn’t appear simultaneously; you had the option of either watching the captioning that showed the actual movie dialogue, or you could watch captioning showing the director’s commentary.
I just thought it was a nice option. (I sometimes flip on the regular closed captioning during the commentary track, also, so I know what you’re talking about.)
As someone who is deaf (and currently using a cochlear implant), I certainly do appreciate anything that is captioned on DVDs. But, as rjung indicated, this sort of thing costs time and money, which is why most DVD extras aren’t usually captioned.
In my current collection of DVDs, “Almost Famous: The Bootleg Edition” is the only one that has subtitles or captions for the commentary track. While non-captioned commentary tracks are not impenetrable to me, I do miss a certain portion. For this reason, the presence of a commentary track is not a DVD extra that I usually look for when considering a DVD purchase.
As long as we’re on this topic, I just wanted to give props to the creators of the extended edition DVDs for the “Lord of the Rings” movies…all of the extras, hours upon hours of them, everything, is closed captioned (except for the commentary tracks). I was impressed that New Line Cinemas was so willing to undertake this extra expense. I hope they continue that trend with the extended edition version of “The Return of the King.”
I liked “Shrek”, and didn’t know that the commentary was captioned. Guess I’ll have to add that to my DVD collection in the near future.
I liked the captioned Shrek director’s commentary because it allowed me to listen to the actual audio while reading the commentary instead of the usual other way around.