Friday, July 2, 2010

Overcoming obstacles in video storytelling



As part of Living's 'Senses' project, Kate Penn produced a video about a deaf couple raising a hearing child. Brad passed along this note, which talks about challenges Kate faced and how she dealt with them:

"The video that goes with this week's Sense/Ability story had some cool challenges involved.

The Drawbaughs answered Kate's questions with sign language, and Kate had to match up their responses with the interpretor's translations. (The interpretor doesn't speak as they are signing, she gathers their statement and then repeats it afterward.) So once Kate assembled the video, she reconnected with the interpretor, who came here and helped her place the responses at the right moments during editing. 

Another challenge was showing "B roll" while still keeping the Drawbaughs on screen so their signing could be seen.

Some interesting obstacles, but she put it all together well."

1 comment:

  1. Making this video accessible to the deaf population seemed absolutely necessary to me. I tried a few different ideas - creating a kind of closed captioning, running the interview straight with breaks of b-roll, and having a small box with the signer constantly in the corner. In the end the split screen approach seemed the best way to tell the story and allow the person signing to be seen.

    The interpretor from Easter Seals was incredibly helpful, and I think we both learned a lot from the experience and how to best approach this kind of situation in the future.

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