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http://www.courant.com/features/lif...tnov07,0,1406623.story?coll=hc-headlines-life
Showcase Cinemas Buckland Hills in Manchester has started offering closed captions all day, everyday in one of its theaters. "Chicken Little" is playing there now, and multiplex owner National Amusements plans to use that auditorium almost exclusively for new releases.
Previously, the Crown Palace in Hartford was the only theater in the area offering captioned screenings, and they were much more limited, generally two shows per day on Sundays and Mondays, with the films changing weekly.
Although Buckland Hills has offered captions for months, it never has been publicized. The only clue that captions were available was the recent addition of the notation "RWC" to the titles of captioned films on National Amusements' ticketing website, MovieTickets.com.
RWC stands for Rear Window captioning, a system developed by the Media Access Group at WGBH-TV in Boston that allows captions to be shown only to people who want them. The captions at Crown Palace are burned into the film, which discourages some hearing people from attending those screenings.
With RWC, the captions appear in reverse on a display in the back of the auditorium, and the viewer reads them on a reflector that is attached by a flexible arm to the seat's cup-holder. WGBH, where television closed-captioning was born, introduced the theatrical system in 1997, but only within the last couple of years has it really started to catch on.
(The Courant tried out the system Friday afternoon and found it worked pretty well. The only problem was that the reflector tended to slip out of position; WGBH is the process of introducing a new design that won't do that.)
National Amusements long ago installed RWC in several theaters near Boston but had been slow to offer captioning of any kind in the Hartford area, even after buying captioning equipment for Buckland Hills in spring 2004.
Brian Callaghan, spokesman for National Amusements, said captions were first offered during the run of "The Polar Express" last fall, the first offering in Buckland Hills' new IMAX auditorium. About two or three months ago, he said, the equipment was moved so it could be used for a wide range of films, not just IMAX releases.
Callaghan said he only recently became the company spokesman and did not know why those moves were not announced anywhere.
So how did anyone in the Hartford area's deaf community find out? WGBH lists theaters on a website, www.mopix.org, and sends a weekly e-mail to subscribers. WGBH also sends notices to Mary Silvestri of Danbury, who circulates them to others in the state.
Silvestri, who sits on the advisory board to the state Commission on the Deaf and Hearing Impaired, said she also circulates information on open-captioned films. And information is posted on the website of the Connecticut Council of Organizations Serving the Deaf (www.ccosd.org).
The Rear Window system provides a descriptive audio program for the blind for most, though not all, captioned films. The notation for that program on MovieTickets.Com is "DVS," which stands for Descriptive Video Service, another creation of WGBH, originally for television.
Callaghan said National Amusements is now taking steps to publicize both captions and descriptive audio. He said the company hopes to get the information added to showtimes listings in newspapers.
Meanwhile, the Crown Palace 17 will continue to screen open-captioned films rather than switch to Rear Window, said Crown Theatres spokesman Zvi Cole. He said Crown has three theaters equipped with Rear Window captioning and that some people like it and some don't.
Showtimes for the captioned screenings at Crown Palace are available at www.fandango.com.
Showcase Cinemas Buckland Hills in Manchester has started offering closed captions all day, everyday in one of its theaters. "Chicken Little" is playing there now, and multiplex owner National Amusements plans to use that auditorium almost exclusively for new releases.
Previously, the Crown Palace in Hartford was the only theater in the area offering captioned screenings, and they were much more limited, generally two shows per day on Sundays and Mondays, with the films changing weekly.
Although Buckland Hills has offered captions for months, it never has been publicized. The only clue that captions were available was the recent addition of the notation "RWC" to the titles of captioned films on National Amusements' ticketing website, MovieTickets.com.
RWC stands for Rear Window captioning, a system developed by the Media Access Group at WGBH-TV in Boston that allows captions to be shown only to people who want them. The captions at Crown Palace are burned into the film, which discourages some hearing people from attending those screenings.
With RWC, the captions appear in reverse on a display in the back of the auditorium, and the viewer reads them on a reflector that is attached by a flexible arm to the seat's cup-holder. WGBH, where television closed-captioning was born, introduced the theatrical system in 1997, but only within the last couple of years has it really started to catch on.
(The Courant tried out the system Friday afternoon and found it worked pretty well. The only problem was that the reflector tended to slip out of position; WGBH is the process of introducing a new design that won't do that.)
National Amusements long ago installed RWC in several theaters near Boston but had been slow to offer captioning of any kind in the Hartford area, even after buying captioning equipment for Buckland Hills in spring 2004.
Brian Callaghan, spokesman for National Amusements, said captions were first offered during the run of "The Polar Express" last fall, the first offering in Buckland Hills' new IMAX auditorium. About two or three months ago, he said, the equipment was moved so it could be used for a wide range of films, not just IMAX releases.
Callaghan said he only recently became the company spokesman and did not know why those moves were not announced anywhere.
So how did anyone in the Hartford area's deaf community find out? WGBH lists theaters on a website, www.mopix.org, and sends a weekly e-mail to subscribers. WGBH also sends notices to Mary Silvestri of Danbury, who circulates them to others in the state.
Silvestri, who sits on the advisory board to the state Commission on the Deaf and Hearing Impaired, said she also circulates information on open-captioned films. And information is posted on the website of the Connecticut Council of Organizations Serving the Deaf (www.ccosd.org).
The Rear Window system provides a descriptive audio program for the blind for most, though not all, captioned films. The notation for that program on MovieTickets.Com is "DVS," which stands for Descriptive Video Service, another creation of WGBH, originally for television.
Callaghan said National Amusements is now taking steps to publicize both captions and descriptive audio. He said the company hopes to get the information added to showtimes listings in newspapers.
Meanwhile, the Crown Palace 17 will continue to screen open-captioned films rather than switch to Rear Window, said Crown Theatres spokesman Zvi Cole. He said Crown has three theaters equipped with Rear Window captioning and that some people like it and some don't.
Showtimes for the captioned screenings at Crown Palace are available at www.fandango.com.