大象传媒

大象传媒 subtitling spreads

• By Paul Crichton
• 26 Nov 07, 10:36 AM

More news on the subtitles front, you lucky lucky people. In addition to the programmes available via the iPlayer, which is the 大象传媒鈥檚 seven-day catch-up service, subtitled content is also being made available on some of the various 大象传媒 platforms.

大象传媒 Wales is running a campaign called,Capture Wales. This is a 鈥渄igital storytelling鈥� project, and members of the public can submit short videos about matters important to them. There are a wide variety of interesting stories, from anecdotes about a father鈥檚 fifteen minutes of fame, to Lyndon Wray鈥檚 recollections of the natural beauty of North Wales.

All of these short films carry subtitles, and many also have transcripts. Whether you are Welsh or not, so long as you are interested in people, then a lot of these short clips are worth dipping into.

It is a similar story on the Film Network website, where up and coming filmmakers showcase their short films. These include animation, comedy, drama and more experimental films, and there is plenty to interest everyone. Well worth checking out is God & Dave, a short film about relationships, traffic jams, and whales. No, really.

Both of these websites also provide plenty of help in setting up your media player to show subtitles, and you can also provide feedback on them if you want to help the service even better.

Signs of Life is well worth checking out as well. This is an interactive online occult thriller with games threaded throughout the story.

It has everything that the sullen, moody, emo listening teenager could want. There鈥檚 romance, creepy twins, skulls, tarot, astrology and, er, a rather sinister stalker. Games range from simple exercises like uncovering energy lines in the ground, to psychometric-like tests to reveal your personality.

And to think, when I was a kid, interactive meant making stuff along with Blue Peter. Kids today don鈥檛 know they鈥檙e born, etc etc.

It is subtitled as well, which is pretty cool. We鈥檝e looked at a few interactive online experiences before, like HBO鈥檚 Voyeur (why are they all so dark?) and bemoaned the lack of inclusivity. So it is good to see something like Signs of Life that is making the effort.

If I have one criticism of the subtitles, it would be that in the first episode, sometimes a different colour is used to show different speakers, and sometimes that wasn鈥檛 the case. By the second episode, though, that issue appears to have been resolved.

I would also like to see a way to skip the games. Now I know that sounds counter-intuitive when it comes to inter-activity, but Signs of Life is interesting enough for people to want to watch it without them. And if, for example, you can鈥檛 see the dots to join them up in order to progress to the second half of the first episode, well then, you鈥檙e a bit stuffed.

But lets not get too critical here. Signs of Life is the 大象传媒鈥檚 first major interactive experiment of this nature, and as grand as it is, they are bound to learn from it for similar future projects. And I鈥檒l look forward to seeing what they come up with next.

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