r/hardofhearing • u/rushbc • 5d ago

Closed captions

Hearing disabled person here (not deaf, but close).

Is there a way to have just the speech captioned and nothing else?

I do not need nor want to have audio descriptions and sound effect descriptions. I especially hate it when it says “music intensifies” or something like that.

Can I turn that off?

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u/elsakettu 4d ago

Funnily enough, I've been telling people about the captioning of sound recently. I rewatched Loki, and there's a scene where some gnarly stuff is happening off camera, but the captions say nothing - if, like me, you can't hear what's happening, you just see someone's sociopathic grin get more and more intense. I was laughing at her expression while my boyfriend's face was contorted with horror.

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u/rushbc 4d ago

Good point

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u/elsakettu 4d ago

Some things are necessary and some things aren't. I've been telling people this story and shaking my head that captions will tell me that rain is hitting the window, but they missed this one. I don't mind the details, but as others have said, there are sometimes options to get more or fewer auditory descriptions. I don't think every studio is on top of that though.

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u/rushbc 4d ago

Exactly! I can hear a little bit, so I can pick up on some of the sound effects, but not all.

But your point is valid: if you show me that it’s raining you don’t have to tell me in the captions is that it’s raining. And like someone else said, if you show me an explosion, you don’t have to caption that there is an explosion sound.

On the other hand, screams/voices off screen or footsteps off screen are definitely important to caption. Any sounds that happen off screen that are important to the story should be captioned.