A Room For Romeo Brass
I frequent Shane Meadows forums and I found that a film called A Room For Romeo Brass was being shown on BBC2 Friday 8th June. ( or sat morning 12:45 am which ever way you look at it)
I was delighted it was shown on a BBC channel as you all know no advert breaks spoiling the film and 9 out of 10 the programs on the BBC will be subtitled.
Was not too happy about the time 12:45 but luckily it’s shown on a Friday night so I can have a lie in and to be honest if it’s in the week I still would watch it.
So here I am watching TV (very excited I may add) the film starts subtitles going and was hooked into the film.
Half way through the film the subtitles stopped for no reason..
“NNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO”
For foooks sake why is this happening to me!!!!!
::dog running into his basket family waking up::: ok you get the picture 
I texted my friend to which I raved about Shane Meadows film Dead Mans Shoes in the past and knowing that he is up watching it he had a look and found that subtitles is not working .
He is hearing and after the film he texted to say how brilliant the film is and going to buy some DVD’s, Grrr
I just sat there admiring how beautifully directed film and brilliant acting then 15 minutes later the subtitles came back.
Extremely frustrating and if I can’t watch the film like everybody else then I can’t join the forum and take part. Well I can and talk about dead mans shoes and bits of Romeo Brass but not other films made.
There are 9 million Deaf and hard of hearing people in this country according to the RNID website they are potential customers so meanwhile let’s stick to Hollywood films eh?
Please note that I have emailed the DVD distributor about adding subtitles to the film but they have yet to respond.
I believe that This is England is out on DVD can anyone check for me that it carries subtitles I get a lot of email enquiries regarding this.
Have you checked on http://dvd-subtitles.com/
Thanks funnyoldlife I have always looked at DVD-subtitles.com
This film that I had missed half of it is under
DVD Subtitle Hall Of Shame http://dvd-subtitles.com/dvds/2/A-Room-for-Romeo-Brass.php
Gawd, I do feel for ya. Very annoying when that does happened. Another campaign is in order
Fintan…
Not just that…a much higher % of people that use subtitles are not deaf or hard of hearing at all. In fact according to Wikipedia:
“In the United Kingdom, of 7.5 million people using TV subtitles (closed captioning), 6 million have no hearing disability.”
I assume that information came from Ofcom.
Wikipedia is a waste of time for referential purposes, it’s a politically motivated web site for minorities, think of an issue, then pile it up………. it works on the basis if you offer bulls**t long enough you can make money flogging it as manure….
MM, the point of Fin’s post is all bout subtitles, not the veracity of Wikipedia!
MM ,
just out of interest which statistics do you go by?
I feel off my seat laughing cos the irony is that MM always goes “poo poo” to just about everything we say.
It will a day too soon when MM reveal his sources to back his his soothayer tendencies (with no disrespect to his personal experiences).
Just wanted to say I’m a massive Shane Meadows fan - Twenty-Four Seven is my favourite, and Dead Man’s Shoes is just brutal. A lot of people say Romeo Brass is the best.
I think one reason the subtitles aren’t on the DVD is Shane Meadows has never had big releases commerically, that’s no excuse though. But his DVDs tend to get released by smaller companies.
This is England is fantastic, I’m hard of hearing so i just about got all of it in the cinema, also i am from Nottingham so the accents are familiar. i really hope the DVD has subtitles though as I’ll enjoy it even more filling in a few gaps!
Hi Charlie,
Thanks for your comments, but like you said that’s no excuse.
Cost to put subtitles on DVD is a ‘per programme minute’ cost, somewhere in the region of £10.00 per programme minute per language.
So a 50 minute film cost £500 .. peanuts really!!!
I totally agree that there is no excuse -
However you’re very much underestimating the cost of subtitling -
It depends on the company used but the cost usually runs into thousands of pounds, it can take a long time to subtitle even one minute of film. One estimate I heard recently was £3000, for a whole film, and some companies charge double.
Also, Room for Romeo Brass lasts around 1hour 30mins, not 50 mins…
Just thought I’d point that out!
Charlie,
For argument sake lets say £3000 still peanuts for a film industry.
Correct me if I am wrong I was told it cost £1000 per half hour EastEnders shown.. so if the BBC can do it then why cant they?
Why BBC and lets say Film4 subtitle his films?
BBC gets paid via licence fee and film four gets paid by advertising DVD distributor gets paid by us buying the Disc
I am assuming your the Charlie Swinbourne that works at the BBC can you give me any pointers to where I can take this up? How do I convince them its worth their while to subtitle the film.
Subtitling’s always been a minefield - but it’s the DVD company you’d want to contact, not the BBC. The BBC subtitles something like over 99% of it’s programming. But then the BBC is publically funded.
The DVD distributor will be thinking about revenue, if it’s a small release they may not expect to sell many copies, so that might affect their point of view.
It’s well worth writing to the company and asking them to change their policy - cheers
Fintan,
As others have already said the BBC already subtitles a large amount of its output and the good news is that by April 2008 there should be 100% subtitling on BBC1, BBC2, BBC3, BBC4, BBC News 24, CBeebies and CBBC. For politicos there will also be an increase in subtitling on BBC Parliament. However, what really matters is that these policies are properly implemented each and every day - the removal of subtitles during part of a programme is simply intolerable. The use of live subtitling for recorded programmes (a trend that seems to be occuring on a number of channels in addition to the BBC channels) is also disturbing, leading to subtitles of a lower standard than is necessary.
I know it might sound boring, but it is surprising how few people directly complain to broadcasters about the lack of subtitles or indeed the provision of poor quality subtitles.
RNID has a factsheet called ‘How to get subtitles’. It can be accessed via our website or paper copies will be sent over from our information line. Complaints about subtitles for the BBC should be sent to BBC Access Services, Room 430a, Design Building, Television Centre, Wood Lane, London, W12 7RJ or Textphone 0208 743 9419 or subtitling@bbc.co.uk
Complaints to broadcasters must include the details of the channel, the time of the broadcast and the name of the programme. General complaints about subtitling over a whole channel are of little benefit and certainly don’t get taken seriously by broadcasters.
I hope this information is useful.
Mark Morris
RNID
P.S. can I encourage people to support our campaign to ensure there are more subtitles on ITV? At present there are very low levels of subtiting on ITV2 and especially ITV3 and ITV4. Supporting the campaign involves just sending an email to Michael Grade via http://www.rnid.org.uk/emailmichael
Mark Morris,
Thank you for your comments
I am in middle of writing about Ceefax and Subtitles to post on my blog, and just to think the BBC took over 30 years to get all programmes subtitled.
We don’t complain about Live subtitling when programmes are live such as the news as it happens.. but the likes of pre recorded programmes such as Top Gear is not on!
I have since stopped watching it so I don’t know if they put it back to original format.
And us not complaining well I can understand that and believe me I have complained but you just get an auto response.
And the rest of us you can understand that we are disillusioned as you may have seen campaigns in the past and nothing ever gets done.
And for ITV4 ITV4+1
grrr don’t get me started on that one they (harp on that its expensive or any poor of an excuse) go through the time and expense and not carry the subtitles over on onto other channels of their own which they are merely repeats so try and work that one out?
Last year ( I think ) Daz advertised and sponsored Coronation Street remember those adverts talking dogs?
Once I emailed Daz to tell them that deaf people watch Coronation Street and I cant understand why the didn’t subtitle their advert as ITV told me the advertisers are responsible for subtitling their own adverts and not ITV.
I also told them that don’t deaf people wash clothes? Do you not want us to buy your products? Shall we stick with BOLD as they subtitle their adverts.
I got a lovely letter from them with £20 worth of vouchers and they promised to advertise their advert and I am happy to say they have since then.
(blimey writing this should be a blog in itself)
So advertisers take notice but do ITV ?.. we will wait and see.
Also to note that we have to pay for the TV license in order to use a TV regardless if we like ITV or not.
I have a choice not to pay for sky even though how many subscribers do they have and they are making inroads in regard of subtitling and BSL interpreters’ and sky have less of an audience than ITV.. so what’s their excuse?
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