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manicsounds wrote:Why aren't there more titles with blue subtitles?

Those are horrible (and remember, I say that as someone who shrugs off the yellow ones). So much so that I waited until I could get my hands on a screener with burned-in subs (not great, but preferable) -- and, as part of that process, a friend who knows Puiu ended up sending him the Beaver link and saying, in essence, hey, look at these godawful subs on your film! Puiu was not consulted beforehand, predictably. There's now a Romanian special edition DVD that's vastly better on all counts.

That's odd. In both examples they mix blue and white to make weirdly distracting subtitles.
Just blue by itself might be okayish, or at least better than yellow.
Actually I don't much mind yellow subs on color films, and for b&w films I just turn off or way down the color. Anyway, it's good that subtitle technology has evolved where you no longer have to watch white subtitles occasionally disappear on white backgrounds.

Someone needs to put out a disc with Black Subtitles.

I actually saw an Indian film once with black subtitles (and no borders). I can't remember what it was but I believe that a lot of the film took place at night. Perhaps this explains why I don't remember much about it.

Perkins Cobb wrote:

manicsounds wrote:Why aren't there more titles with blue subtitles?

Those are horrible (and remember, I say that as someone who shrugs off the yellow ones). So much so that I waited until I could get my hands on a screener with burned-in subs (not great, but preferable) -- and, as part of that process, a friend who knows Puiu ended up sending him the Beaver link and saying, in essence, hey, look at these godawful subs on your film! Puiu was not consulted beforehand, predictably. There's now a Romanian special edition DVD that's vastly better on all counts.

So the Romanian Edition of Lazarescu is pretty good? I was hoping for a good release of this, and I doubt it will would surface again in the near future.

bdurden wrote:and we eventually settled on yellow subtitles (not necessarily my personal preference), which was decided as it is more common among European releases

I really don't know how you got that impression. Talking about releases of silent/early cinema, if I look at the major European companies here - MoC, BFI, Edition Filmmuseum -, they've always used white subtitles. Yellow subtitles are only common on broadcasts by arte TV, annoyingly.

Tommaso wrote:Yellow subtitles are only common on broadcasts by arte TV, annoyingly.

Is that foreign language subtitling or HoH? In France Arte seems to follow HoH standard practice, which is white subtitles for on screen speakers yellow for off screen speakers and two shades of claret for sound effects or description of music. Perhaps, more likely, I have just pressed the wrong button.

NABOB OF NOWHERE wrote:

Tommaso wrote:Yellow subtitles are only common on broadcasts by arte TV, annoyingly.

Is that foreign language subtitling or HoH?

Foreign language subtitling on arte Germany.

Tommaso wrote:

bdurden wrote:and we eventually settled on yellow subtitles (not necessarily my personal preference), which was decided as it is more common among European releases

I really don't know how you got that impression. Talking about releases of silent/early cinema, if I look at the major European companies here - MoC, BFI, Edition Filmmuseum -, they've always used white subtitles. Yellow subtitles are only common on broadcasts by arte TV, annoyingly.

I concur with Tommaso. Yellow subtitles are ABSOLUTELY NOT more common on European DVD or Blu-ray releases. If like you say that was the basis for your decision, it explains why so many people are upset by it.

I've watched hundreds, very possibly thousands, of foreign-language European DVDs and BDs over the last fourteen years and, hand on heart, I can't think of a single one with yellow subtitles - they've pretty much exclusively been of US/Australian origin.

Unfortunately, I can think of one: the German Jacques Rivette edition ("Marie et Julien"/"La bande des quatre"/"Noiseuse", both versions). Really annoying, as otherwise it's a pretty nice set.

david hare wrote:Please, white only.

Outlined white. ;~}

Given that Flicker Alley often work in partnership with Lobster, I think their erroneous impression of yellow subtitles being more common in Europe may originate in the fact that Lobster do tend to use them on their DVD releases (e.g. the Retour de Flamme series, the two Duvivier silents). Lobster in turn often work with Arte who, as already mentioned, favour yellow, so perhaps Lobster were following Arte's requirement.

It might be useful to flip the argument around and ask if anybody has ever complained about legible white subtitles.

I've watched films where white subtitles were almost invisible against a white background. It's rare on silents, of course, since the background is usually black; but the version of Faust shown at the San Francisco Silent Film Festival (from 35mm) did have some illegible subtitles because they were printed across original German Fraktur letters that filled most of the screen. One small case where yellow would have been an improvement--neither white nor black would have been easily read.

Back to Flicker Alley, they've got the French Masterworks: Albatros Films collection on pre-order at an attractive price.

When I was in college one of my film classes screened a 16mm print of Persona that had white subtitles which were essentially half there for a majority of the film. Suffice it to say many students had difficulty with the class that week....

No one is arguing in favor of white subtitles that don't have black borders.

Also, in the celluloid screening situations mentioned, coloured subtitles were never an option. That would entail extensive optical work and the prints would then need to be printed on colour stock, which is not an option economically and would have been a disaster aesthetically, since colour stock fades in colour.

Subsequent to our last white-vs-yellow subtitles argument, in which I was basically neutral but puzzled over the vehemence of the anti-yellow contingent, I watched a black-and-white Scope film (Taxi For Tobruk) with white subtitles. It seemed to me that yellow, by standing out more against the mostly white & grey image (the film is set in the desert), could've taken a fraction of a second less time to read than the white did, thus giving me a smidgen more time to look at the image rather than read the words. So there's that argument ... although it's certainly not enough to make me a zealot for yellow. And on the other hand, had the film been set entirely at night instead, the white would've been just as good and yellow might have seemed much more gaudy.

Why are no DVD companies using the advantages of the format and put two types of subtitles on their releases? Why not include white AND yellow subtitles (and green ones, just for good measure)?
I also think it would be neat to choose between two different font sizes (a bigger one for smaller screens and vice versa).

Your first suggestion is silly, but the second one is a great idea.

If I remember correctly, the first suggestion was actually realised on the second 'supa-dupa special edition' of the R1 "La dolce vita", which I don't have ( I have the first one with only yellow subs, and I always have to turn my TV to 'pure' black and white manually to get rid of the coloured subs). So I think it's a good idea indeed. And the second suggestion is even better. Would love to have it on many MoC discs which almost always have too large subs for my taste.

Both are good ideas and it does beg the question. A similar one is why companies don't offer both HoH subs and vanilla ones at times. It takes literally seconds to strip all of the sound effects annotations out of HoH subs.

Speaking of subtitles, I think I'm actually becoming in favour of subtitles being mandatory on all releases. I used to be against it on principle, but if France can do it then why can't other countries? It's so annoying to see the lack of German subs on DVDs of films from their own country. The knock-on effect is that fansubs are less likely to get made too.

I think we'd need some EU legislation to realise that, but I'm all for mandatory subs of some kind, ideally indeed with both HOH and 'normal' versions. It would only be in the interest of the labels themselves as it would allow them to sell more copies. Of course, there's the licensing problem which only a label like Filmmuseum probably doesn't have (speaking of their silents only). But even subs in the original language might be helpful. For instance, I'm somewhat able to read French even if I don't understand it acoustically. But the HOH subs on the Gaumont à la demande releases which always tell me "music continuing" or "gunshot" - and switching from left to right according to which character is speaking - are a complete no-go, which then makes me rely on custom-subbed versions and, alas, loses them a customer.

smergo wrote:Why are no DVD companies using the advantages of the format and put two types of subtitles on their releases? Why not include white AND yellow subtitles (and green ones, just for good measure)?
I also think it would be neat to choose between two different font sizes (a bigger one for smaller screens and vice versa).

Animeigo in the US actually do do your first suggestion with the option between colour subtitles that switch colour for each speaker and white subtitles that go into a light gray for a second speaker.