Thanks for doing this and giving us the opportunity to respond on the new cut. I sent in my survey this afternoon.
However, I did note that although we were asked to concentrate on the audio AND captions, the survey did not really ask anything about the captioning. With my hearing loss, I essentially concentrated on that factor and thought I’d throw out a couple of observations.
First off, I know several people have offered a variety of suggestions for captioning, such as alternating options for what types of captions to use, as well as ways to differentiate between who is talking. After seeing various attempts like this in other media (including the rare captioned versions of the old show that popped up thanks to a group on YouTube that included colored captions to show who was talking), I think the best format is the one used here. It’s straight-to-the-point, you do list character names for the riffs, and isn’t overly complicated (nor most probably time-consuming to create, I suspect).
It’s certainly an improvement on some I’ve seen from Amazon that regulated Crow and Servo to “Robot 1” or “First Figure” when naming characters in the theater who are talking.
Captions appeared to be right on the money throughout the film from what I could tell with what hearing I do have. I did notice a couple of spots where riffs were missed (a mention of Judy Jetson when the time machine was being activated, and the whole “Mein Leibe/My Love” bit lost a bit of the joke when the German part was listed as “foreign language” instead of stating what the character was mumbling), but this was much more accurate still than even in the case of Netflix.
Interesting that the villain (well, the other villain besides Dracula) was named “Hooded Fez.” I’m reminded of a few cases in the past where captioning done on programs went the extra mile for those reading them by giving us additional gags that wouldn’t be seen otherwise unless you watched the captions. If you decide to do that in future captions, that would be a nice treat. Nothing crazy, like the entire captioning being wrong, but an additional gag like “Hooded Fez” may draw people to check out the captions more often.
Oh, and once I did see the caption stating that a word wasn’t understood that was said by either Tom or Crow. I used to see that type of captioning on Amazon or Netflix when viewing an older episode, but I would think a new episode where a script or a call to the actor mumbling a line while playing a robot in the theater could avoid having to “guesstimate” such a caption, but that’s just a thought.
More than anything else, I appreciate the work put into this for those of us who use them and love the work so far. Good luck in the future there!
will only increase its power.