Deaf Moviegoers Have Few Choices

From: Hartford Courant - Hartford,CT,USA - Feb 23, 2004

By LARRY WILLIAMS, Courant Staff Writer

When a huge winged serpent bursts out of the Dead City to scare the pants off Frodo and Sam, the audience at a recent special showing of "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" at Hartford's Crown Palace 17 got something extra.

"GRWWWAH" appeared on the screen in white letters, giving the mostly deaf crowd some idea of what the serpent's roar sounds like, and why the Hobbits are hightailing it.

The usefulness of that particular caption may be debatable, but there was no question the audience loved the captions overall. They were relishing their first chance to see the biggest movie of 2003, two months after its worldwide release.

"It's wonderful to have captioned movies. I wish they had more of them," said Kim Silva of Hartford.

She and her husband, John, are frequent viewers of the screenings at the Crown, which offers open-captioned films most Sundays. "The Last Samurai" was screened Sunday, and "Mystic River" is scheduled March 7.

The Crown is one of four theaters in Connecticut showing movies captioned by InSight Cinema, a nonprofit organization in California that, by arrangement with the studios, adds captions to about a dozen prints of Hollywood's biggest hits. The other theaters, in Winsted, Stamford and Orange, show them less frequently than the Crown Palace.

Another theater in central Connecticut is expected to start captioned screenings in the near future, using a newer technology that projects the captions and film separately onto the screen. The name of the theater is being kept under wraps until the equipment installation is complete.

While most deaf people wish for more, some also worry about preserving what they have. It wasn't so long ago that they had nothing.

"The important thing is not to lose the captions," Kay Carver, of Hartford, said after the movie. "We used to have to wait until the DVD or the video comes out."

While the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990 has dramatically increased captioning on television, it does not require movie captions. The reason is obvious: Unlike TV captions, they can't be turned off. The studios and theaters convinced Congress that captioning would reduce the overall audience for movies.

Since then, there has been progress in developing a technology that provides captions to people at their seats. "Rear Window Captioning" posts captions in reverse on a light-emitting diode (LED) display in the back of the theater. The viewer uses a plexiglass reflector that attaches to his cup holder to read the captions while watching the screen.

It's been installed in about 100 theaters in North America, including two Crown theaters in the Midwest. Jeremy Welman, vice president of operations for Crown, called those installations a "test," for which the results are not yet in.

It costs about $12,000 per screen to equip a theater for Rear Window Captioning, whereas showing prints captioned by InSight Cinema doesn't cost anything. The drawback to InSight, Welman said, is that, at least so far, Crown has been unable to get new releases shortly after they open.

"Our attendance tends to be rather light," he said. If the deaf community would "get more out to support the films, that would help us to get more films sooner."

There was no lack of support at the Feb. 15 matinee of "The Return of the King," as 87 of 100 seats were sold. (Sales for three more screenings weren't so hot - 56 tickets in all.)

Candace Low of Windsor was there with her hearing son, Chris, attending their first movie together since "Jurassic Park" in 1993. She loved the first two "Lord of the Rings" movies and hoped for a captioned version soon after it opened internationally Dec. 17.

"I was so disappointed I could not find it anywhere," she said. "What I want is when a movie is released I would like to have the opportunity to see it on opening day like everyone else."

InSight Cinema's executive director, Nanci Linke-Ellis, wants the same thing, but says the studios rarely provide prints for captioning soon enough. And the number of prints is so small, typically 10 or 12, that it takes a while to reach all 300 screens that show captioned films.

Although many in the deaf community feel underserved, Linke-Ellis said they should keep in mind that the studios are not required to do anything.

"Everything we've done has been done on a voluntary basis," she said. "I'm grateful to both studios and theaters for what they allowed to happen."

An on-screen alternative to InSight captioning would overcome the problem of scarce prints by making captions available in any specially equipped theater.

The DTS-CSS Cinema Subtitling System is produced by Digital Theater Systems, whose main business is theatrical sound. The captions, as well as an audio description for the blind, are on a CD-ROM disc that is synchronized with the film. The captions are projected onto the screen, and the audio description is transmitted to special headphones.

DTS-CSS has been installed in 52 theaters in the British Isles, and installations are underway in about 30 theaters in the United States, including at least one in the Hartford area, said Michelle Maddalena, director of cinema services for DTS.

Among the system's advantages, she said, is that a theater can use any print of a movie for which it has a corresponding CD-ROM. This has allowed multiplexes in the British Isles to show captioned versions of major releases immediately, using one screen among the multiple screens the movie is showing on.

"The deaf community is getting more captioned films with more regularity, at more convenient times," Maddalena said.

Dolby Labs, the pioneer in movie theater sound, has introduced a captioning system similar to DTS, but cheaper (perhaps half the $10,000 to $12,000 cost of DTS-CSS) because it requires less special equipment. The number of screens using this system was not available.

Rear Window Captioning, which uses the same CD-ROMs as the DTS system, was developed by the nonprofit Media Access Group at public television station WGBH in Boston, where TV captioning was born in 1972.

The obvious advantage of Rear Window is that nobody else has to see the captions. The disadvantage, some say, is that it can be hard to use.

Low said she's tried Rear Window captioning and couldn't keep the screen and captions both in focus because she wears bifocals.

"I had to read the captions or watch the screen," she said.

Mary Watkins, outreach director for the Media Access Group, said most complaints are from people who don't want to use an at-seat device.

"They would prefer open captions, and they see any alternative or other option as a compromise they're not necessarily willing to make yet," she said.

InSight's Linke-Ellis said theaters are foolish to spend money on extra equipment that will soon be obsolete. When the studios and theaters convert to digital projection, she said, that equipment alone will be used to show a film with or without captions. An LED screen and plexiglass reflectors may still be needed for Rear Window Captioning, but even that isn't certain, she said. Watkins said other ways to deliver at-seat captions are being explored, including hand-held devices and special glasses.

Copyright © 2004 by The Hartford Courant