Festival queues are the best market research in the world. Nobody is being polite. They have paid for a ticket and are deciding, out loud, whether the film was worth it.
The films people describe to each other afterwards are rarely the most accomplished. They are the ones with an image that cannot be explained away.
We now treat subtitles as a creative department, not a delivery requirement. A good track preserves rhythm, not just meaning.
“If a subtitle explains the joke, the joke is now in the subtitle. Write the line so it does not need one.”
Written by Meera Iyer