Blog #13 Trailer & Deaf Awareness Week.
- Oliver Aspinall
- May 10, 2020
- 5 min read
In February 2020, I created a 1-minute teaser. Following this, I met with my lecturer and we discussed the problems with it. It had the wrong music and needed more development. He also felt the actions of the signers needed to be more animated. During our conversation, I was explaining the challenges and self-identity of being a deaf student at university to give him a greater understanding about me. He realised that meeting in a busy, loud and noisy cafe was inappropriate. From this, he suggested that I explore the different concepts of Deaf Culture/Hidden World. To him, it was a new area.
This week is a significant week as it’s Deaf Awareness Week, so prior to starting the trailer I explored the concept of deaf culture. I looked at the number of deaf people in the UK. 1 in 6 people are deaf or have a hearing loss, so 11 million out of the population of 66 million are affected (https://www.actiononhearingloss.org.uk/about-us/our-research-and-evidence/facts-and-figures/). There are 87000 deaf people who use BSL (British Sign Language) but overall in the UK 150,000 are users of BSL, not including interpreters unless they use it at home (https://bda.org.uk/help-resources/#BSL). I found a TEDx video demonstrating deaf culture but it was from America (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=io7z5PftOU4). Even so, it reflected British culture quite nicely and this is backed up by a number of articles across google. Unfortunately, there are very few articles about British deaf culture and its differences to British hearing culture, which is why my film is going to be quite unique.
The first thought I had was I wanted to make sure that there were no copyright claims for the music I am to use, so I did some research on stock music websites and narrowed it down to two main websites, ‘Artlist.io’ and ‘epidemic sound’. I decided that ‘epidemic sound’ has a monthly payment and therefore for me, a more affordable approach. It had a vast library of music and the music was available to be dissected into separate instruments or parts/voices and so on.
The next step I took was to look at different trailers and identify a few things, the first being the timing. The average length was 1 minute 45 to 3 minutes. Next was the use of alternate footage and voice-overs. Finally was the title card, the title itself and differences in the font.
I tried to start the trailer with the music but that didn’t get me anywhere. I decided instead to make the foundation of the video and things started to improve. There wasn’t enough alternate footage and the flow didn’t feel right. Then I explored the possibility of doing faceless portraits, similar to those by Coco Davez (Picture Above), that strongly correlate to significant moments in the history of deaf culture. I experimented with a portrait of Princess Dianna (who was a patron of the British Deaf Association (Picture Below)) talking in sign language, and of the BSL Recognition March in 2003 but did not think they worked as well as I wanted them to, so I continued to research alternatives. I explored the possibility of using archival footage. That was difficult. I found a website based mainly on footage of the deaf community in the UK, but the videos were not downloadable. I then went back to the original source which is the BDA (British Deaf Association). I found that some of the videos from the BDA archive were on Vimeo so I was able to download them. However, due to the current situation, I am still awaiting a response from the research and communications manager (BDA) for permission to use them. I emailed and my mother phoned on my behalf, but he is unavailable until after the 25th of May. The footage worked for what I wanted so I decided to continue with the piece, borrowing the clips and hopefully waiting for permission later.
The next stage of the process was to explore text to use. For the sake of continuity, I decided to use the same font as the Parallel Vision logo. In other trailers I have researched they had fonts moving towards you increase in size very slowly. I decided to use that method because it felt right and looked aesthetically pleasing in this context. I decided to use movement in the background, behind the font to make it more engaging and found what I wanted from a free stock footage website known as Pexels (lhttp://pexels.com/). I decided to use that footage because it represented diversity, culture and colour. It was subtle in the appearance.
The hardest part of the whole process was subtitling the film correctly. Trying to translate from BSL (British Sign Language) to English subtitles is very difficult for a number of reasons. Firstly I didn’t know all the signs because, although I am bilingual, I do not get the opportunity to use sign language as much as I would like. Secondly, the translation had to be simplified because the grammatical structure and syntax is different. To get an accurate interpretation, I approached my friend who is on the trailer, he asked an interpreter to translate. I also asked my friend who was my teacher assistant during my 10 years of education. She gave me a more simplified interpretation, she even asked some of her deaf friends to translate certain signs.
“Top one:
Well, many of us have grown up having to tolerate the majority culture, and we have become accustomed to it. Yet, conversely, many of you are somewhat horrified at our culture.
Bottom:
There are cross-cultural issues at play. Sometimes people think that the way we behave is not part of our culture, and is therefore not acceptable when for us, it really is just our way of life. There may be times when we think, for example, that the way that you tend to be indirect in interaction is just constant meandering and very unnecessary, and that it is much more effective to be very direct, like us.” - This is a translation from the interpreter.
From both, I simplified it, to make it work with the subtitle because it had to be short and simple, easy to read and understand. If you are not a fast reader, you may still have to watch it more than once, which is obviously a problem. I haven’t used WinCaps (professional subtitling software) on this occasion because I didn’t feel it needed it, but I planned on using it in the final piece to ensure correcting timings and word count. I may find a professional interpreter to translate the sign language and will research companies to advise me because it could become three different films. One would only have subtitles, the second would have to include voice-over, and the third one would include audio description, so I can make sure it is accessible for everyone. However, I currently feel quite strongly that I will just use subtitle only for the main film with no voice over to expose the hearing world properly to deaf culture.
Link to the Surdus Mundi Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nEUJ4QeucKs
God Bless
Oliver
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