If all the cows in a field lie down, it’s going to ran. What does it mean if all the David Tennants in a blog entry sit down?
Sitting Tennant
Month: June 2012
International TV
On the typography of subtitles
Subtitles are a necessary evil if you
- Plan to watch TV programmes from overseas
- Don’t plan on becoming entirely fluent with every language in the world
Nevertheless, there are problems with them. You lose a lot in the translation when phrases and words don’t have matching concepts in your own language. Then there are prissy subtitlers who don’t like swearwords or perhaps aren’t as fluent as they should be in your native language, resulting in errors. Subtitles also have to fit on-screen and progress at the same speed as the dialogue, so generally abbrievate the dialogue anyway.
A little considered aspect of them is their typography and positioning. Consider Sebastian Bergman‘s subtitles:
Nothing inherently wrong with the subtitle typeface, and you’ll notice there’s both a keyline and a dropshadow on the text so that it’ll show up well against the mixed black-white background. I tried to watch Kurosawa’s Ran which had purely white text against a bright background so was unreadable.
But have a look at the credits in the mid-left of the screen. They’re in a sort of bold Futura, all in upper case, designed to look sophisticated, discreet and intelligent – as is the show. Except the much bigger, italic Helvetica-esque text at the bottom of the screen now swamps that effect completely. The subtitles convey a rather more ordinary tone to the show, something more generic. Imagine what the screen would look like without them, to see what I mean.
As a result, the viewer can subsconsciously be led into thinking the show is something different from what the creators intended. There’s not a lot that can be done about it, although a lot of Blu-Ray releases now have custom typefaces for subtitles designed to match the feel of the show as much as possible, but it’s something to bear in mind when watching a foregin show.
Ain’t typography fun?
Friday’s “Dallas starts well, John Cho joins Go On and Judy Greer joins Carrie” news
The Daily News will return on Monday 25th June
Film
- Judy Greer joins Carrie remake
Trailers
- Trailer for Resident Evil: Retribution
International TV
- Transporter resumes production
- Sweden’s TV4 orders comedy about fictional royal family
UK TV
- Wednesday ratings
- Comic Strip returning… on UK TV Gold
US TV
- Michelle Trachtenberg returning to Gossip Girl
- Jeremy Jordan joins Smash
- Robert Patrick to guest on True Blood [spoilers]
- NBC announces fall schedule
- Meghan Ory to be a regular on Once Upon A Time
- Dallas debuts well
New US TV shows
- John Cho joins Go On
Classic TV
Nostalgia corner: Benson (1979-1986)
One of my childhood memories is of laughing a lot at Benson, a spin-off from soap-opera parody Soap that starred Soap‘s real star, Robert Guillaume, as a former butler who becomes the head of household affairs to a politician, Governor Eugene Gatling, and slowly makes his way up the political ladder, eventually running against him in an election. Here he is in Soap.
The show initially revolved around Benson’s housekeeping dilemmas, his fights with the German cook Gretchen Wilhemina Kraus (Inga Swenson, also from Soap), and his interactions with chief of staff John Taylor (David Hedison in the pilot episode, then Lewis J Stadlen). After the first season, Taylor was replaced by Clayton Endicott III (Rene Auberjonois) and Benson and Endicott’s sniping made up most of the show’s humour after that.
During the series, Benson worked his way up from head of household affairs to state budget director, and eventually became lieutenant governor. During the final episodes of the seventh season, Benson ran for governor and at the end of the series’ final episode, with the race still too close to call, Benson and the governor made their peace with one another and sat down together to watch election returns on TV. As the broadcaster began to announce that a winner in the close election (with a third candidate also a potential winner) was at last being projected, the episode ended on a freeze frame of Benson and Gatling, leaving the series with an unresolved cliffhanger.
What would have happened if the show had been renewed? Well, in 2007, showrunner Bob Fraser said that the season ended on a cliffhanger at the request of the network and that the show was canceled after the cliffhanger had aired. Had the show continued, Gatling would have won the election and Benson would have become a senator.
Benson has several distinctions. As well as running for an awful long time and having a black character as the story, it was the first TV show to mention the Internet – or Arpanet as it was called then. It also fired Jerry Seinfeld after just three episodes. He played a messenger. He probably wasn’t a good actor then, either. Great show, just not a great actor.
Unfortunately, despite my childhood memories, I tried rewatching it recently and didn’t find it funny any more. Sigh. But here’s the title sequence and the first episode – maybe they’ll bring back memories for you and you’ll end up buying it from Amazon.
Australian and New Zealand TV
A nifty Almighty Johnsons poster
Okay, it’s for the second season so a bit old now and Battlestar Galactica got there first, but it’s still pretty nifty (click on it to make it bigger). The first season is being repeated on the UK’s SyFy channel from next Tuesday, so give it a try if you haven’t seen it already – Norse gods reincarnated in New Zealand so what’s not to like? – but you’ll need to wait about four or five episodes before it gets really good. No word on a third season yet, I’m afraid.