Dr Ryan Bramley spoke to William Mager - a producer, director, and scriptwriter with 20 years of experience in film and television production, including writing and directing productions featuring British Sign Language - for a new University of Sheffield film, 'How can we improve subtitles.' William wrote ‘Reunion’, the critically acclaimed BBC TV series which featured a majority-Deaf and/or BSL-user cast and crew.
In this interview, William calls for a standardised code for subtitling - something that Sophie Muller, Head of Voicebox, also advocated for in our last blog post. He ends by responding to the ‘Six Recommendations for Change’ that emerged from Ryan’s research project, ‘How do Deaf British Sign Language users experience suspense in film?’ - co-led by iHuman’s Dr Kirsty Liddiard, and Beth Evans (from SUBTXT Creative).
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When you see Deaf representation on the TV or in film, it’s usually a token deaf character surrounded by hearing people. The character’s usually there to be a figure of isolation, someone who’s a victim, who’s excluded - or they become magical - able to speak, lipread and pass as all but hearing. I wanted to create a Deaf character who was active, driven, making the same mistakes that a hearing person would do - and unapologetically, completely, deaf.
I grew up watching a lot of movies about men getting a gun, and looking for revenge - Get Carter, Point Blank, etc. With Reunion I wanted to put a twist on the genre - starting off as a journey of revenge which becomes something deeper: trying to reconnect emotionally with his hearing daughter. That became the real journey.
Warp Films optioned the script, and it was green lit by BBC Drama. They worked hard to make sure there was representation of Deaf people behind the camera as well as in front of it. I’m really proud, I’m very proud of how it turned out.
Subtitling Preferences: Everyone’s Different
I think subtitles are very personal. Everyone has their own preference and level of detail. Whether they’re big or small, multicoloured or italicised. For me, I want to know everything: I want to know the song lyrics, the sound cues, the music cues - I want full access to the entire audio story throughout as I’m pretty deaf and was born that way.
There are options that exist currently - for example, when you watch Netflix you can select SDH subtitles, which are for Deaf and hard of hearing; or you can pick ‘CC’ [Closed Captions], which is dialogue-only. But we need more choices, where we can pick specific things that we want. We should be able to create our own preferences - whether you want full description in the subtitles, or you want just the dialogue, or you want dialogue and full song lyrics!
I’m also visually impaired. That means I struggle with the contrast and colours of the subtitles. Sometimes I’m watching a film, I’m enjoying it, and then they have a scene where it’s set in the snow, there’s lots of white, and the subtitles are in white - I can no longer see them, they’ve all but disappeared. I think it’s really important for all broadcasters to think about their subtitling access for visually impaired people who are Deaf as well.
For me, Netflix is great, because you can customise. You can change the colour, the font, the sizing - there’s a lot of options. Other streaming platforms that aren’t quite there - it depends on the subtitle provider, the streaming platform, and the content creators.
I’ve also noticed recently that my hearing relatives have started using subtitles. Before, when they came to visit, they’d turn off the subtitles on my TV, and I’d turn them back on after they’d left. But now they’ve stopped doing that! I think more and more people are using subtitles because in current film and television drama, the sound mix can now drown out audible speech to the point where the dialogue can be hard to hear. More hearing audiences now rely on subtitles to understand what’s been said.
Six Recommendations for Change
When I read the Six Recommendations that Ryan, Beth and Kirsty have made, I was nodding my head to each and every one of them! They all make sense, they all feel achievable, they all result in improving the visible experience of Deaf people seeing subtitles, and I see no reason why they can’t be done.
What normally happens is someone makes a film, it’s finished, and then it’s given to somebody to sort out subtitles. They don’t really care - they don’t bother because it’s not for them.
It would be brilliant to have screen testing for films and TV series, to see where audiences are behind and miss key information. That can only be done via test screenings. I think it’s useful to get feedback from Deaf audiences to help their enjoyment of the film. I think it would be nice for a director and a producer to think about subtitling at the beginning of the filming process; to think about how it looks, where it’s placed, the colours, and what the subtitles need to say.
As for cinemas, they seem to think that Deaf people don’t have jobs, that we don’t work, that we only watch films in the daytime during the week. That seems to be the only time where they find availability for us to watch subtitled screenings.
A film comes out, and there’s only one showing of it. And if I miss that, that’s it. My opportunity to watch in a cinema - that experience has gone. So I have to wait for it to come out on streaming, or on Blu Ray, or on terrestrial TV. So there needs to be more choice.
I feel like I’m missing out on part of the cinema experience, which is to enjoy films with people - being in a full crowded cinema. That’s never happened. With me and my children, we’re usually the only family in an empty cinema. We need more places to watch subtitled films, times that are more convenient to us, and also, more showings.
I also wonder if there’s a way to create a standardised code for subtitling that everybody has to adhere to, which means the rules of what you provided - whether it’s colour co-ordinated; whether you need to include certain things - I think that would be so useful, because then, Deaf audiences would feel like they’re getting the same level of service, whatever channel, whatever streaming, whatever broadcaster. I feel that there’s so much variation. Sometimes it can almost feel like a lucky dip.
I think having a standardised code of subtitling would be brilliant.
