Subtitles Gone Bad

I'm not very cultured or artsy, so most of the movies I watch don't involve subtitles. I don't mind reading subtitles as long as they are legible. The other day I watched The Hammer which is a true story about a deaf wrestler. Since many of the characters in the movie were deaf, there was a ton of signing and therefore, a big need for subtitles.

The problem with this was that the font was too small for me to read and half the time the white subtitles were transposed on a light colored background so it was impossible to read. At one point it got so bad that I thought I might be the subject of a practical joke show and started looking around my room for hidden cameras.

The last time I noticed such bad subtitle work was on the newest Pearl Harbor movie. Each time they showed what the Japanese were saying, the color of the subtitles just blended in with the background. How do movies pass their final editing and get released to the public with such poor subtitle work? I think this is a much bigger goof up than having the boom microphone show in the frame of a movie.

So my advice to those of you who may be making a movie involving subtitles- Do a better job of it!