But restricting the dynamics is essential especially for content to be consumed at home or on the move. It can be with the faders, clip level or compression. How you choose to reduce the dialogue dynamic range is up to you.

If you do, it makes the dialog harder to hear and understand.

When it comes to mixing, I do not believe you can mix TV shows with natural dynamics in the dialogue. So why consider trying taking the realistic approach?īelievable, absolutely! Realistic, definitely not! The problem is that going for the realistic approach means that the dialogue, is not likely to make it all the way through the system so that the end users can still understand what is being said.Īfter all, there is nothing realistic about TV productions, whether documentaries or drama, studio based or on location. However, if this involves 'realism' - delivering dialogue in a 'realistic' way rather than in a way that can be heard at the back of a theatre, as we have seen from the UK and US research, this isn’t ending well and directors need to understand this. Actors, can and should, explore different techniques to portray their characters. There continues to be a growing trend towards more realism. However take a look at the diagram below, there isn’t really a correlation between the amount of energy in the constants in the 2 to 4 kHz band and the importance to intelligibility.

The consonants (k, p, s, t, etc.) are predominantly found in the frequency range above 500 Hz and more specifically, in the 2 kHz-4 kHz frequency range. In non-tonal (Western) languages the consonants are really important. “the quality or condition of being intelligible - capable of being understood comprehensible clear enough to be understood.” The dictionary definition of intelligibility is… As with so many things, it is a combination of factors which together ultimately result in normal hearing people have to resort to turning on the subtitles to follow the narrative and we will explore those later in this article.īefore we do that let’s take a closer look at intelligibility. The first point I want to make is that there is no one single reason as to why intelligibility has deteriorated in broadcast and OTT content. But what this survey makes very clear is that there are major problems with dialogue intelligibility and its getting worse, not better. That could be because as people get older their hearing naturally deteriorates but I suspect that is not the main reason. Preply’s results show that overall 53% of Americans are using subtitles more often than they used to, which implies that things have got worse over time. Two-thirds (67%) of the population do not describe themselves as deaf, deafened or hard of hearing. In November 2021, to coincide with Caption Awareness Week, UK based Stagetext, a deaf-led charity making the arts a more welcoming and accessible place, commissioned Sapio who interviewed 2,003 people in October 2021 with the results weighted to be representative of Great Britain’s general population. Even the people who said they didn’t really like them at the cinema said they’d tolerate them if it meant deaf people could attend more screenings.”īut it hasn’t stopped there. I was really pleased though, because there was overwhelming global support from people of all ages for subtitles. “I was out for lunch with my mum and my phone started going crazy. The 30-year-old blogger and campaigner from the UK, who prefers to be known by her Twitter name told The Guardian newspaper… To misquote a well known song, this latest storm about intelligibility started with this tweet, which at the time of writing has over 74,000 likes and has been retweeted over 70,000 times.

Subtitles tv shows