Words on Screen
Am enjoying a monet of open hot-spot joy. I noticed there werw bars showing on my Airport and clicked and prayed! Oh yeah, internet at home for a second!
So, the first episode of Ugly Betty was genius. I swear to god, burst into tears at the end. “He’s gone”. Loved it, loved it, loved it but you all know that – you all saw it, right? Ahhh, ne’ermind.
The joyous thing about it all was after Ugly Betty there was a ‘Comedy Showcase’ thing – part of Channel 4’s ‘Oh God, we’ve been going for 25 years and 99% of the good stuff we show is American but we’d better put on an effort’. Martin Freeman. He’s funny. Shame the script wasn’t. Well, there was one line, “I can’t go to prison. I only lasted three weeks in the cubs.”. Well, there was another line, well… okay some of it was funny. But it was smile wryly at the effort made – like the look you give kids when they mix mud and water and tell you it’s coffee.
It was a night of things starting – Numb3rs on ITV (yes, that’s right there was a show on ITV that I wanted to watch – this is the fourth sign of the Apocalypse). Judd Hirsch, David Krumholtz (you’ll always be Mr Universe to me) and Peter MacNicol – just joy joy number-y joy. I mention it to loosely drift into a small rant about subtitles,
I may have mentioned my Subtitler’s need a kicking thing before but today while enjoying Numb3rs I had the subtitle’s on and they were talking about Pi. Now this is a show with the title numbers, they were talking about formulaic equations (and other intelligent things I could never really understand) but the subtitler took it upon him/herself to continuously write the word PIE. For God’s sake! Over and over again PIE PIE PIE PIE. In my head it got to the point where I was bashing the eeeeeeeevil subtitler about the head with a large metal vowel screaming NO E! NO E! NO E!
I understand that you can’t add every ooo and ahh to subtitles but every scripted word is a start right? I mean, screen writers have spent days, weeks, months wracking their brains for the right words or even the right sentiment! My favourite of the last few weeks was on (mumble, mumble) – a character was leaving and was asked “Can I call you?” and she answered with a smile “You can”. On the subtitle was, as clear as day, “You can’t.” Now this is okay for those of us who can hear but for those who subtitles are intended the shift in the character and the story would have been quite surprising.
Live subtitling is always funny to read. It’s a ridiculously hard job and one I could never do myself but pre-recorded shows where they have time to check it? Jeez…
Okay, am over that at the moment (except for a reminder that I want to meet the person or persons who subtitled The West WIng and beat them upside the head with a script).
As you might be able to tell I wrote that Friday night and was a little nit annoyed, but am fine and calm now.
Honest!
[tags] subtitles, Ugly Betty, TV is great again, [/tags]
A friend I went to school with is apparently working as a live subtitler for football matches.
I’m not sure why you’d bother personally, but still.
At least it’s a ‘cool’-ish job. Cool here being anything attached in anyway to TV – Receptionist at Channel 5 counts too.
But more to the point. 9.29 – Sunday morning? You’d better still be wearing pj’s! I mean, I’m still awake so it’s allowed… what the hell?!
That storyline with Betty’s sister was really depressing.
I thought Numb3rs was on Five US, at least that’s the one I’ve been watching.
The show about the Mathematician who works as a consultant for the FBI.
It was kinda obvious though.
Yep, same show – they’ve just started showing them from the beginning on ITV.
Woo you’re back!
Martin Freeman is brilliant. I had a night watching The Office on friday and it reminded me how much good british comedy talent is out there.
I just read this out loud to Bret, and we howled with laughter. I think our new catchphrase is going to be “No E! No E!!!”
Lia says she hasn’t heard from you, so she asked me to give you her Yahoo email address. Her work might have blocked the other. So check your Flickr mail again, please!
Jo – I do love Martin Freeman although can’t stand Ricky Gervais so watching The Office becomes impossible! Will be watching the rest of the Comedy Showcases to restore faith and all that…
SJ – I think I am going to have to find a metal alphabet for waving at people. I’ve start with chav’s and the letter T and then work my way up to American English and the letter U. Oh God, I’ll become Grover! Today will be brought to you by a shiny letter P and the number of times I’ll whack you up side the head with it – 13.
Quite a few people have trouble with ‘camel email being blocked. Will resend email!
On the subject of TV jobs, did you happen to see last week’s “Charlie Brooker’s Screen Wipe”?
Charlie Brooker’s what? Huh? That would be a no… why?
It’s a funny show about TV on BBC4. They had this piece about a possible telly career. It’s very caustic.
Oh, still no – would bang over to the Beeb’s website and see if it was OnDemand but they still don’t support Mac’s!