Captioned Entertainment—Here's the Scoop!
Find Captioned Movies and Captioned Live Theatre Near You
© May 2007, revised January 2010 by Neil Bauman, Ph.D.
Question: When it comes to finding captioned movies and plays, many
hard of hearing people don’t know where to turn. One lady lamented, “I've often
heard that there are movie theatres with captioning but have never heard of one
near me. Is there some central place that lists which theatres have such help
available?” Another hard of hearing person questioned, “How do you learn of
captioned movies shown in your city? Are they listed as such in your local
newspaper movie line-up or where?”
Answer: The good news is that there are several organizations
dedicated to helping us by listing which movies and live theatre events are
captioned.
MoPix (Motion Picture Access) (http://www.mopix.org)
lists movies that are currently showing that are both closed captioned
(typically rear window captioned) and have descriptive audio, and those
that are just closed captioned. (See the “Access Technologies” box below for
descriptions of these various technologies.) To view a list of the movie
theatres in the USA and Canada that show closed captioned movies—and if they
have more than one auditorium, which auditorium(s) in these theatres are
equipped to show such movies—click on the “View theaters” link immediately above
the list of captioned movies on the MoPix website.
Access Technologies
Here is a brief overview of three current technologies to
help hard of hearing people and people with visual difficulties enjoy movies and
live theatre. (I’ve included Descriptive Video Service since a number of hard
of hearing people also have visual difficulties.)
Open Captioning (OC) is where the captions are
visible on the screen for all to read. You do not need any assistive technology
to view these captions.
Rear Window Captioning (RWC) is a type of closed
captioning (CC), because only the people with special transparent acrylic
panels can see the captions. (In case you are interested, RWC displays reversed
captions on a light-emitting diode (LED) text display which is mounted at the
rear of a theatre. You adjust your panel, which is attached to your seat, to
reflect the captions so that they appear superimposed on the movie screen. These
reflective panels are portable and adjustable, so you can sit almost anywhere
you want in the theatre.)
Descriptive Video Service (DVS) describes what is
happening, which you hear via an infrared or FM receiver. (This is sometimes
referred to as Descriptive Audio (DA), or Descriptive Video (DV),
but it is all the same thing.) DVS enables moviegoers with visual problems to
hear the descriptive narration on headsets without disturbing people nearby. DVS
describes key visual elements such as actions, settings, and scene changes to
help make movies more meaningful to people with vision loss.
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InSight Cinema (http://www.insightcinema.org)
lists the open captioned movie theatres in the USA. To find them, click
on the “InSight theatres” link on the left of their web page. If you are
interested in live captioned theatre and cultural events, scroll halfway down
the page and click on the large “Live Captioned Theatre & Cultural Events” link.
C2 (Caption Coalition) Inc (http://www.c2net.org/List.htm)
lists upcoming open captioned performances by date and location for
several months into the future. (Note: there are other theaters that also do
captioned performances, but not by C2 (Caption Coalition) Inc. As a result, this
list is not complete, but it is way better than nothing!)
Once you know which theaters are equipped to show captioned
movies, and which movies are captioned, ask Fomdi, a cute little guy that
lives at
http://www.fomdi.com to find any captioned movies (both open and closed
captioned) that are showing in movie theatres near you (or you can use the
convenient Fomdi link below).
Fomdi
I am Fomdi and I find captioned movies.
All you need to do is enter your state, city or zip, the
maximum distance from your location you want to travel (5 to 40 miles) and the
day you want to go, click “find”—and in a few seconds Fomdi will produce a list
of the captioned movies near you. Again, the results may not be perfect, but
they are far better than nothing.
Note: Fomdi can only show what the theatres give him. The
theatres give their schedule out usually no earlier than a week ahead of time,
so Fomdi might show a movie coming up in two or three days at the longest
stretch. Fomdi is better for finding what you want to see today or tomorrow,
but not great for finding out what's showing several days or weeks in the
future.
Captionfish: On May 18, 2009, DeafCode LLC released the beta version
of their brand new “Captionfish” captioned movie finder. This free website
automatically provides information about captioned movies in your area based
upon your computer’s “address”.
Their “blurb” reads: “It is the first website to integrate an Instant CC Film
Finder™, which provides immediate and effortless custom results within 30 miles
of a chosen location, refreshed on each visit to Captionfish.com.”
I found it better to put in my own address manually rather than accept where
Captionfish thinks I am. For example, when I first tried Captionfish, it
calculated its results as though I lived in York, PA, not in Stewartstown, PA
where I actually live—a difference of about 20 miles. When I put in my
Stewartstown address, it replaced the 1 movie in my “area” with 3 others that
were actually closer to me, but to the south.
By default, Captionfish shows you the captioned movies that are showing today
within 30 miles of your location. You can easily change this to the next 7 days
if you want to. You can also set the radius from 30 miles to 15, 45 or 60 miles
depending on how many movie theaters are near you, and how far you are willing
to drive.
Another cool feature of Captionfish is that it indicates whether the theater
uses Rear Window Captioning (closed captions), or whether the movie is open
captioned, whether it is subtitled for foreign films, or whether a theatre uses
descriptive narration.
In my opinion, open captioning is much nicer than Rear Window Captioning as
there is nothing you need to have (a small, smoked glass screen available at the
theater, but you need to ask for it), or do (set up the screen and aim it at the
back wall where the captions are actually displayed), and you can sit anywhere
(and not only where you get a clear shot at the back wall).
With Rear Window Captioning, you read the captions off the small, smoked
glass screen in front of you while you watch the action on the big screen at the
front of the theater. Thus, you are trying to focus on, and watch, two different
places at once, not always an easy task.
When you click on the “Movie Details” link, Captionfish shows you a printed
description of the movie, and also shows you a short preview of the movie. Note,
this preview is also captioned! Nice!
Another cool feature for those hard of hearing people on the move is that
Captionfish provides a mobile website optimized for mobile phones so you can
start driving and find the film you want as you go.
For those of you that use custom RSS feeds, Captionfish enables an RSS feed
so you can check for the latest captioned film results using your preferred RSS
reader.
To find captioned movies in your area (Captionfish just covers the USA),
simply click on
Captionfish. It’s that simple!
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The procedure one person uses is to check out MoPix for
closed captioned upcoming movies and InSight Cinema for open
captioned upcoming movies (which are usually known weeks ahead of time), then a
day or two before they are supposed to show, checks out Fomdi to confirm and
find the actual times.
In addition to the above organizations’ websites, some of
the theatre chains maintain their own web pages listing their forthcoming
captioned movies. For example, AMC Theatres shows their upcoming captioned
movies on their captioned movies page at
http://www.moviewatcher.com/jsp/amg.jsp while Regal Entertainment lists
their upcoming captioned movies at
http://www.regalcinemas.com/movies/open_cap.html.
Now that you know how to find captioned movies, go and
enjoy one near you.
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