Next up on the list of subjects to ponder: SDH subtitles.

I’m pretty certain I want to expand these considerably, but there are lots of questions about exactly how I should do it. Initially – like in the 1.0 days – the only English subtitles were SDH subtitles, and I forked them a few revisions later. But the SDH subtitles are still pretty minimal – subtitling only the things that help the movie make sense, not necessarily adding much in the way of atmosphere. Remember how lame the medal ceremony would seem without the iconic musical score? Yeah, I don’t want that to be how the whole movie goes.

So we need to subtitle music. At the very least, we do an adjective, like “tense music”, “triumphant music”, “militaristic music”, etc. Maybe modifiers for loud, quiet, brass, vocals. The cantina music could definitely be called swing music since it’s basically Space Benny Goodman. Any other ideas? Putting music into text is hard. Should we do little music note symbols?

Should I stick with all caps? I like to differentiate non-verbal subtitles as much as possible, but maybe brackets are enough. Should I put spaces between the brackets and the text?

For other things, I guess it’s a matter of finding the best words to describe various Star Wars sounds. I’m still inclined to not subtitle things that are obvious. Such as when an explosion happens onscreen, I don’t really think we need to see [EXPLOSION]. But when Darth Vader breathes, I think it’s worth subtitling that because you really may not know it otherwise. For that I was thinking [MECHANICAL BREATHING] on his first appearance, and then [VADER BREATHES] for subsequent subtitles. And then [VADER WHEEZES] and so on for variations.