MIFF starts on July 10th; don’t let hearing loss deter you from attending this iconic film festival in our community, especially if you’re a cinema enthusiast. We’ve compiled this guide to help you attend this event and enjoy it fully.
Wear Your Hearing Aids
For many, hearing aids will be sufficient to hear the films well, and they’ll give you the ability to adjust the volume as you need in especially loud or quiet scenes, which can be incredibly beneficial for protecting your residual hearing or making sure you don’t miss a critical moment.
Better yet, because hearing aids are designed with sophisticated speech amplification, the acoustics in a theater are optimized, and actors are trained to enunciate, many hearing aid users feel that they understand speech in movies better in the theater than they do when watching movies at home. You may find that wearing your hearing aids to a film festival greatly enhances your movie-watching experience.
Accessibility
If your hearing loss is such that your hearing aids aren’t quite enough, there are accommodations available at the festival. According to MIFF’s website, both festival venues (Maine Film Center and the Waterville Opera House) offer assistive listening devices (ALDs). These systems are required by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) for all theaters with seating for 50 people.
There are multiple types of ALD. There are headsets that you loan for the duration of the film that receive sound information, usually through radio frequencies or light waves, and there are loop systems that transmit sound directly to your hearing aids.
Choose Your Spot Wisely
Theater acoustics are highly specialized, and movies undergo extensive audio editing during production. Because so much work is put into the audio, there’s no “bad” spot to sit in the theater; however, aim for a seat in the middle of the venue, as that will give you the best balance of sound from the speakers that are placed throughout the room.
Bring Backups
MIFF has a packed schedule, meaning that you might be out all day! It would be incredibly discouraging if your festival experience was interrupted by your hearing aid battery dying. We recommend bringing extra hearing aid batteries or charging equipment so you can be dialed in for a long day at the festival.
Visit Your Audiologist
Just like getting your car’s oil changed before a long road trip, it’s a good idea to visit your audiologist for a hearing tune-up before a long event that will require intense listening. We can even help you build a customized listening program for movie-watching in a theater. Call Gary D. Schwartzberg, Au.D., Doctor of Audiology today to make an appointment and get the most out of the Maine International Film Festival!