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Basic levels
Watching a video gives additional visual information, which enriches the context and general understanding of what you listen to. It gets closer to normal verbal interaction, although it lacks the aspect of responding through spoken language – see here for how to work on this.
An originally English video, which has been dubbed with French, seems to be the easiest to understand. English speech is significantly slower than French (Pellegrino et al, 2011), and the dubbing usually follows the original (English) structure and content. This means we are able to use our existing knowledge of grammar and context to make sense of it all. Due to this, it is probably possible to manage most English films dubbed with French if you have about a B2 level of language understanding ( see the Common European Framework [CEF]). The Harry Potter films are good examples of this.
When the video is originally French, then as long as people in it mostly use a standard (Parisien) accent, without too many colloquialisms, it is likely that people with a C1 language level will be able to understand it. However, if the language is informal, colloquial, and has some dialects, then it will probably be at a C2 level.
Subtitles
Although this means that the majority of videos are going to be beyond the level of most early learners, the difficulty can be significantly reduced by the use of subtitles. Reading speed is about twice as fast as normal speech rates, which means you usually have enough time to check the text to resolve any difficulties.
Various research studies such as Gernsbacher (2015), and Mitterer and McQueen (2009) confirm that using subtitles with foreign language films will help you make better progress with the perception and use of speech, comprehension, and vocabulary development. Interestingly, there is evidence that either French or English subtiltes can work well.
If the video is original French language, then using French subtitles effectively matches the difficulty level to that of reading the text. However, the additional information from visual cues, as well as picking up at least some of the spoken language will reduce the level of difficulty of videos - probably by about one CEF level.
With C2 however, this is likely to be about two CEF levels, as having the actual text to read from removes most of the problems of dialect, rapid speech, or altered pronunciations.
As the table below shows, using standard sources, it is therefore possible to get appropriately matched videos with or without French subtitles to cover from B2 upwards. For A1, A2, and B1, you will need to use easy French videos, dubbed English videos, and/or English subtitles.
Some videos will of course fall outside of these guidelines. For instance, some English videos may be dubbed with quite authentic French, making them nearer to C1 (e.g. the series 'Friends'). On the other hand, some French language videos can have simple and clear speech (particularly if aimed at children), and may be nearer to B2 (e.g the film 'Bécassine').
The accuracy of subtitles can also vary quite a bit. The best ones are typically for original French language films, which often have subtitles for 'sourds et malentendants' (deaf and hard of hearing). These can be really accurate and faithful to the spoken language. For example the series 'Les Revenants', and Dix Pour Cent (Call My Agent) are pretty good in this respect.
BEWARE videos which are original English, dubbed with French, and with French subtitles. The subtitles are usually quite different from what is spoken, and interfere with any attempts to follow things.
The reasons for this are that the two processes – the dubbing of the language, and the generation of the subtitles appear to be done separately. For instance, the character may originally say (in English) ‘hello’. However, the dubbing studio may translate this as ‘bonjour’, and the subtitles studio may translate it as ‘ça va?’.
If you are dealing with an original English video, dubbed with French, then I would personally recommend using English subtitles.
A lot of videos give you the choice of different dubbing languages and subtitle languages. Netflix is pretty good for this specific combination, which seems to work well. What appears to happen is that when you see the subtitles text, it is rapidly and automatically processed to its meaning. This is often referred to as the ‘deep structure’, and the actual English words and grammar (the 'surface structure’) are rapidly lost and don't interefere.
Listening to the spoken French is then carried out in the context of this underlying comprehension, and will develop your listening abilities.
Of course, if the spoken French is significantly above your comprehension, you will simply end up ignoring it and fall back on the subtitles, or even learn wrong associations. This is probably the reason why Mitterer and McQueen (2009) found negative effects for native-language subtitles.
Once again, Netflix is a real treasure trove of non-French series and films which you can select with French dubbing, and English subtitles. It also has some original French language videos with good French subtitles.
References
Pellegrino, F., Coupé, C. and Egidio Marsico, E. (2011) A cross-language perspective on speech information rate. Link
Gernsbacher, M. 2015. Video Captions Benefit Everyone. Link
Mitterer,H. and McQueen, J. (2009) Foreign Subtitles Help but Native-Language Subtitles Harm Foreign Speech Perception. Link