Film language

gebo

gebo

Hi everyone,
I'm from Portugal and obviously my native language is portuguese, so it makes sense that my movie is spoken in my native language. At least that was my initial thought, but.... english is widely understood all over the world. I've been thinking, should I...

1 - make my movie in portuguese - only portuguese speakers will understand
2 - make movie in portuguese with english subtitles - I heard that english speakers aren't used to subtitles and their eyes will start blinking and their hears twisting...
3 - make the movie in english - the actors will have an accent since they're not native english, will this be ok or will it be strange?
4 - go to bed and forget about filmmaking

Seriously mates, what do you think? Specially you my little native english chaps!! :D
 
As someone who has no experience or talent or knowledge in film-making and thus is merely imparting my immense innate wisdom upon thee, I say make it in your native tongue and add English subtitles as a separate file. SRT and YouTube allow for subtitle inclusions as a choice of the viewer. I wouldn't put in hard-coded subs.

I'd also add Spanish and Mandarin subs if you can. That would give you the broadest audience with the least amount of effort.

Any viewer who is too lazy to read subtitles is probably a waste of effort appealing to anyway, especially for an indie production. Plus with non-native English speakers, things will sound off to English-speaking audiences. My father has spent the last forty years speaking English and yet I still can't understand half the stuff he says as his native tongue is German.

At least, that's my grain of salt.
 
There is certainly a market for foreign film, the difference is the market is not all that large. I recently went and saw Rust and Bone - a French film with English subtitles. I thought it was a great film, but you'd struggle to find it playing in all but independent cinemas, or the non-popular times at regional chains.

At the very least, film festivals are more than welcoming of foreign film as long as there's English subtitles attached. Don't sweat it, I don't think subtitles are an issue.
 
I've watched a few films in languages I didn't understand with subtitles but when I did it was because they had something unique that no other film had. I'm thinking of Battle Royal: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Royale_(film) for example. (FYI I watched this after seeing The Hunger Games because THG was, in my humble opinion, shit. I have read all the books since and enjoyed those much more that the film).

I'm one of those people who hates subtitles in general, I can't NOT read them and I feel like I'm missing too much of the film. Having said that, I think that bad accents/badly written dialogue are worse that subtitles.
 
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In my opinion it also depends what kind of public you are aiming for.
For example I make my films in English so they are more people can understand it, and my native language is Dutch.
I don't really have a problem with subtitles.
(They say that a good movie should be able to be watched without sound)
 
The Dutch speak English very well compared to most though. I have yet to meet a Portuguese person who didn't have an accent. No offence intended of course, I speak Spanish like a drooling 4 year old, I'm simply pointing out that Northern Europeans and Germans have a knack for English. That means you could get away with it more than most other foreign film makers.
 
I'd rather hear native dialog with better emotional delivery than heavily accented English just for the sake of having english... Subtitles are just fine so long as they're well translated.
 
Do it in your native language for a number reasons. For one your actors can then concentrate on acting, not trying to speak English. Once done you can release both one with no subtitles and one with subtitles. I like to watch non-English movies in their original language. I will watch with or without subtitles but really don't like dubbing myself.

Looking forward to viewing your project
 
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gebo said:
What about dubbing the film? I don't like the idea but what do you think about it?
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I personally despise dubbing and refuse to watch any film that is dubbed solely on that basis alone.

I can generally read subtitles fast enough that they're not too distracting. But hearing a dubbed voice and watching the lips go out of sync not only destroys any semblance of suspension of disbelief in me, but it also makes me want to tear my eyes out and replace them with lasers that can shoot through time and space and into the director's head.

But that's just me.
 
This thread brings up some interesting questions. Ultimately, it comes down to what you intend for distribution? If it's for film festivals, I would say Portuguese with English subtitles. If you are looking at commercial distribution, the question is a bit more complex. Unless your film wins an Oscar, there's little chance of it getting distribution or turning a profit if it's done in Portuguese. Having said this though, Brazil has a large population and one of the fastest growing economies, so maybe there is some mileage to be had for the budding entrepreneur.

On the dubbing side, i've done quite a bit of re-versioning. Doing it well is difficult and "well" is a relative term as the absolute best you can hope for is the equivalent of mediocre ADR. While aesthetically many prefer the original language with subtitles, the simple fact is that the majority of the film going public just can't be bothered with subtitles and of course for some films, those whose target audience is families or specifically younger children, dubbing is the only option.

You will have to make up your own mind depending on what you intend to do with your film and taking into account factors such as how comfortable you cast would be performing in English. Having foreign accents is not necessarily a problem, a number of very successful mainstream Hollywood actors have strong foreign accents and of course for some strange reason Skynet decided to program it's early terminator series with Austrian accents?! If you are going to have your entirely Portuguese cast perform in English I would think it wise to have some justification in the story for them doing so.

G
 
I'm thinking about my feature debut and I wondered the same question.

What I hate in movies is when everybody speaks a langage they are not supposed to speak.

Arab terrorist speaking english with his Arab colleague in an Arabe country (happens every single time, like in lost).

Asian guy speaking english to his Asian wife. For some reason, it happens much less, as if to alienate Asians but it still happens...

And I can go on and on about this.

So I'll do it Inglourious Basterds style. Everybody speaks the langage of the situation (mostly French and Tunisian in this case, with some Moroccan and English). I plan to have voice-over and it's the only thing that poses problem. I think I'll have it in French and allow the dubbing of the voice-over only.
 
AudioPostExpert said:
Having said this though, Brazil has a large population and one of the fastest growing economies, so maybe there is some mileage to be had for the budding entrepreneur.
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According to wikipedia portuguese is the 6th language in the world with more native speakers. Brazil is the largest portuguese speaking country but unfortunately I know they would have trouble understanding "european" portuguese. The accent is different and they're not used to it. While we in Portugal understand brazilians easily the opposite isn't true. In the end the film would have be spoken and subtitled in portuguese. Weird isn't it?

AudioPostExpert said:
If you are going to have your entirely Portuguese cast perform in English I would think it wise to have some justification in the story for them doing so.
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I had already thought of that. For instance the 3 main characters are from different nationalities with different languages and when they meet decide to chose english as their communication language because nowadays everyone knows a bit of english.
 
Shoot the actors speaking their native tongue and subtitle it.
If the story's good people will want to know what's going on and read the subtitles.
If the viewer doesn't care about the story then the subtitles become a subordinate issue.

Dubbing's going to look terrible. A distraction.
 
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