Small local movie theater to institute captioning
Bainbridge Cinemas, a locally owned five-screen complex on Bainbridge Island, Washington, has agreed with the Washington State Communication Access Project (Wash-CAP) to begin showing closed-captioned films on a regular basis this fall.
Bainbridge Cinemas will equip one of its five auditoriums to show captioned films using the Rear Windows Captioning system.
Once Bainbridge Cinemas installs the necessary equipment, it will rotate its films through that auditorium, so that patrons will be able to see two captioned films per week. This rotation plan should mean that most if not all of the movies that Bainbridge Cinemas shows and for which captions are available will actually be shown in captioned form during the first two or three weeks of a film's release. All showings will be captioned.
The captions are contained on a computer disc furnished at no charge to the theaters. The captioning is actually done by the Media Access Group at WGBH public television in Boston, which developed and patented the Rear WIndows system. Roughly 80% of the first-run movies released by the major studios are captioned.
The Rear Windows system displays the written dialogue in mirror image on an LED board mounted on the rear wall of the theater. Patrons wishing to view the written dialogue pick up a reflector -- a transparent plastic panel attached to a flexible gooseneck on a heavy base that fits into the cupholder. The reflector may be adjusted so that the captions appear to the viewer either below or superimposed on the screen, like subtitles. Because the captions are not visible to other patrons who are watching the screen, they do not interfere with the viewing experience of others.
The theater will keep track of the number of people who request reflectors and their movie companions. We've devised a formula to estimate how much additional revenue the theater receives from installing the captioning equipment, and have agreed that until the theater has recovered the cost of the equipment and installation, we won't ask them to equip another screen for captioning.
The theater will indicate in all of its advertising and on its marquee which movies will be captioned, so that Bainbridge Island residents who want to see captioned movies can plan accordingly.
Personally, I'm delighted by this arrangement for a number of reasons. First and most obviously, I live on Bainbridge Island, and this means my wife and I can go to movies here rather than travel 30-40 minutes to a theater. On a broader scale, I think we've devised an accessibility formula that might prove workable for other small, independent theaters located in relatively isolated communities -- areas that the big theater chains don't serve. Lastly, I'm delighted and grateful that Bainbridge Cinemas is able to devote its limited resources to providing access rather than to a court battle.
Kany Lavine, Bainbridge Cinemas president, anticipates installing the equipment in time for the holiday movie releases that begin appearing around Thanksgiving. Prior to that time, we'll work with Bainbridge Cinemas to promote Bainbridge Cinemas generally and captioned movies specifically throughout our island community.
