Subtitles for "Most Likely To Succeed"

[mchua]

Emailed back and forth with Joe Hunter and Michelle Davis in MarComm; film does not have subtitles? Sebastian's SCOPE team worked on the film, and he recommended asking Ted (producer) and Tony (book author) directly. Email sent this morning, text below:

Hi, Ted and Tony. Sebastian Dziallas (Olin '14) recommended I contact you.

Are there plans to subtitle "Most Likely To Succeed"? I'm an Olin alumna ('07) who is now back as a postdoc. I've heard great things about the film, and would love to watch it myself. I'm also deaf, and haven't been able to figure out how to make a screening accessible.

I'm at Olin to study the impact Olin is having on engineering education, so the movie seems like an important thing to watch. :) (My PhD is in engineering education, and my research focuses on engineering faculty and educational transformation.) Can you help? If the film is not yet subtitled, I'm happy to point you towards people who do that kind of work.

Thanks,

--Mel Chua

[mchua]

Ted and TJ from ACS are now in contact. Hopefully stuff will happen.

I also had a ridiculous idea, which is -- there's a screening on Monday for free at Newton North high school, about 15 minutes from Olin.

I could do the version of "go with friends who can summarize dialogue and narration immediately after the movie." I have done this almost every time I've watched a film with no subtitles; I'll just remember the entire movie shot for shot in short term memory, which I can do for a short period if I'm thinking really hard and do this immediately after the movie and before I have to think about or analyze anything else. I play back the whole film in fast forward in my memory, describe the visuals of the scenes that seemed to have important talking bits until other people can recognize them, and a friend who has good auditory recall tells me what was said. This is entirely normal behavior for us, but I've been told recently that this is actually a weird set of capabilities for friends to have. Whatever. (Also, it's funny. I make up descriptive character and place names because I don't know the actual ones, so the angels in "Noah" were "ugly Ents," and people get names like "motorcycle dude" or "Avatar husband man" or "cute drum boy." Sometimes my names are better, imo.)

I could also try to get interpreting, but I'm still trying to picture how that'd work (yes, I understand holding and chunking, but... really? Eyeballs! Moving! All the time! Missing pretty, pretty things on screen! Less brain to remember all the things with! I guess it's a choice of how you want to overclock your brain...)

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/most-likely-to-succeed-film-screening-discussion-with-dr-pasi-sahlberg-tickets-18863015788?ref=ebtnebregn

As a side note, I was enthusiastic about foreign films as a kid, because subtitles. Also, they usually have gorgeous stories if they made it all the way over here.

[mchua]

Actually, no. Monday is a terrible idea. I fly to Texas on Wednesday. I might do this at some screening, but next Monday is not going to be that night. (Mel attempting to be more sustainably paced)

[mchua]

Still hasn't happened; MLTS just released an email about how well the movie is doing, spreading across the country, trying to screen in all 50 states, taking it to the White House, etc. etc. so I thought "well, here's a nice opportunity to follow up..." and sent an email.

---

Hi, Ted -- just read the email update on MLTS and how it's spreading across the country. Congratulations!

Just wanted to check in on whether you and TJ had connected about subtitling the film -- I'd love to watch it as well, so let me know if I can be of any help.

Thanks,

--Mel

[mchua]

No progress yet; TJ reports they ended up not being able to do it b/c they can't do Netflix subs yet. Poked Ted again with encouragement. I'm just going to be cheerfully persistent here.

[mchua]

Pinged Olin alumni network about Netflix subtitling, and they're amazing as usual. What we know now -- relayed in different formats to Olin Marketing (Joe Hunter, Michelle Davis) and the film producer (as another poke to "how can we make this happen"):

Netflix: Kevin Tostado got "Under the Boardwalk" transcript timing files prepared by CPC and sent to Netflix by his distributor, Cinedigm. Ari Chae may have a Netflix designer contact, and Adela Wee's sister works at Netflix. All are happy to be contacted further if we want something on Netflix and captioned.

WGBH: Their media access group captions a huge number of videos, and Sara Hendren may have a contact there if we want to ask about their workflow. More relevant to TV-type stuff.

Yahoo: Sara Hendren has accessibility contacts at Yahoo, as do some of Ilana Walder-Biesanz's friends. Same thought as above -- captioning web content is presumably their specialty.