Juhi Mehta: Midterm Portfolio – #1 Captions – Accessibility As Creative Practice: Spring 24

Project Description:

For my creative captions assignment, I decided to choose the graduation speech scene from the TV show, Gilmore Girls. Gilmore girls is my favorite show and this is one of my favorite scenes of all time. I love how emotional and heartwarming this scene is. This scene comes after a long buildup of Rory (the valedictorian) changing from a public school to one of the country’s finest private Catholic schools and working hard during her high school career to accomplish her dream of getting accepted to an ivy league university. At first, she has a hard time adjusting to her new school and even ends up getting a D on her English paper. However, over time, due to her incredible work ethic, she ends up improving and becoming valedictorian. It is an incredibly proud moment for her, her single mother Lorelai who had her at 16 and never got to finish high school, and her grandparents, Emily and Richard, who helped pay for her high school.

Documentation:

My Process

This scene pulls at my heart strings every single time I watch it. I believe the audio is integral to absorbing the scene fully, and because of that, I wanted to make the captions as heartwarming as the audio as much as I possibly could. I wanted to replicate the feeling that the audio gives me through captions for people with hearing disabilities.

Gilmore Girls includes humorous and witty characters who speak quickly. This scene shows an example of that. Because of this, I wanted to color code the captions and match them to each character depending on what they are wearing.

sookie caption

lorelai caption

jackson caption

luke caption

rory caption

In these screenshots, you can see each character’s captions are correlated with the color they are wearing. Additionally, you can also see that I included some character actions that I believe are important details when a person is reading the captions. For example, the woman in the purple shirt, Sookie, has the phrase “*Holding back tears*” in her dialogue, which helps you visualize how she would sound while reading her words.

This scene, as well as the rest of the show, includes humor and drama. It shows the perfect balance of comedy and seriousness. Because of this, I wanted to incorporate animation to some of my captions to show the emotion behind the words.

Sookie’s caption has an animation mimics a fast heartbeat. Lorelai’s animation makes her caption shake, which matches perfectly with her shaky emotional voice.

Towards the end of Rory’s speech, she speaks fondly of her mother, Lorelai, who she claims is the person she looked up to the most. When she said this line, the word “her” really stood out to me from how emotional Rory sounded when she was saying it, so it only made sense to emphasize the word in the captions as much as I could. To make the word “her” appear as special as Lorelai, I made it rounded, like a rainbow arch and fully capitalized and enlarged to show how deep the emphasis is on that word.

Transcript:

SOOKIE: Not crying, right?

LORELAI: Not crying. Keeping our cool so we don’t miss anything.

SOOKIE: Tears get in your eyes.

LORELAI: Then you miss things.

SOOKIE: So we’re not crying.

LORELAI: Not crying.

SOOKIE: Not crying.

JACKSON: Not crying. Not crying.

LUKE: What? LORELAI: No crying.

LUKE: I’m not crying.

RORY: Headmaster Charleston, faculty members, fellow students, family and friends, welcome. We never thought this day would come. We prayed for its quick delivery, crossed days off our calendars, counted hours, minutes, and seconds, and now that it’s here, I’m sorry it is because it means leaving friends who inspire me and teachers who have been my mentors – so many people who have shaped my life and my fellow students’ lives impermeably and forever. I live in two worlds. One is a world of books. I’ve been a resident of Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, hunted the white whale aboard the Pequod, fought alongside Napoleon, sailed a raft with Huck and Jim, committed absurdities with Ignatius J. Reilly, rode a sad train with Anna Karenina, and strolled down Swann’s Way. It’s a rewarding world, but my second one is by far superior. My second one is populated with characters slightly less eccentric but supremely real, made of flesh and bone, full of love, who are my ultimate inspiration for everything. Richard and Emily Gilmore are kind, decent, unfailingly generous people. They are my twin pillars without whom I could not stand. I am proud to be their grandchild. But my ultimate inspiration comes from my best friend, the dazzling woman from whom I received my name and my life’s blood, Lorelai Gilmore.

SOOKIE: Uh oh.

LORELAI: Hang in there.

RORY: My mother never gave me any idea that I couldn’t do whatever I wanted to do or be whomever I wanted to be. She filled our house with love and fun and books and music, unflagging in her efforts to give me role models from Jane Austen to Eudora Welty to Patti Smith. As she guided me through these incredible eighteen years, I don’t know if she ever realized that the person I most wanted to be was her.

SOOKIE: Not crying.

LORELAI: Crying a little.

SOOKIE: Crying a little, but not blubbering. That’s what we meant when we said no crying, no blubbering.

RORY: Thank you, Mom. You are my guidepost for everything.

SOOKIE: On the verge of blubbering here.

JACKSON: Not doing too well myself.

LORELAI: Not you, too.

LUKE: I’m blubbering, you’re freaks.

RORY: As we prepare ourselves today to leave. . .

Reflection questions:

What is the theme of the work? What is it you aim to express?

The theme is graduation, growing up, and the relationship between mothers and daughters. I aim to express nostalgia while keeping the comedic tone.

How is that theme particularly expressed through the modality of the week?

That theme is expressed through the modality of this week through captions. I tried to mimic the tone and emotion of the characters’ voices with the captions. By adding text animations and color coding the captions to keep up with the fast talking, I was able to express this theme.

Which elements of the work are beautifully/wonderfully/perfectly expressed through the modality?

The crying voice is expressed through wobbly text animations. It makes the captions have emotion.

Which elements are lost or inexpressible through the modality of the week?

Sometimes, the moods change too fast for the caption animations to keep up with.

Who does this project exclude? Who would not be able to interact with this work ? Who is this modality not accessible for?

Even though I included captions, I believe they are hard to read for people who may not read as fast, since the characters also talk very fast.

Now that you’ve identified who is excluded, what is one way you could remix this piece to include another population? (You don’t have to make this part, but think about it and write about it)

To include this population, I would include pauses in some scenes to slow down the pace and give the viewer time to process the words.

Where do the text and image rub up against each other in your assignment? Where do you find tension or curiosity?

The last scene I just mentioned is when the text and image rub up against each other slightly. I see it this way because the word “Her” needs more time with Rory’s image to truly capture its emphasis, but the image quickly changes to Sookie making a lighthearted joke. If there was more time in those 2 images, the word “Her” would make such a more meaningful emphasis.

Additionally, I am curious about the heartbeat animation and the shaky animation on the captions. I wonder if it becomes too distracting for the viewer and, in turn, makes the captions a frustrating part of the viewing experience. I wonder if it causes tension between image and text due to its attention grabbing caption animation.