[Sophia Manalol]: Midterm Portfolio – #3 Creative Captions

The Project

LINK TO CAPTIONED VIDEO: https://youtu.be/sqfKWeMt6FI

Project Description 

For this project, I decided to focus my creative captioning on highlighting the lack of readability in text graphics. While learning about captions, readability was emphasized so much, that I thought it was almost ironic now text graphics don’t seem to get nearly as much attention. Thus, I decided to comment on ‘The Relaxed Wife’s lack of readable text graphics. 

Documentation 

I first started out by watching the video a few times, sometimes with audio and then without. I tried to take note of the differences that occurred for the different listening experiences. For the one without sound, I found it hard to follow what was going on especially because the scenes are a bit gimmickey? In a sense??? Like the scene where they are talking about the husband’s frustrations and its a scene that is outside of the house, it can be hard to follow. For the one with sound, it made me notice how poorly the graphics were for the title and credits of the movie, even though the narrative was easy to follow.

From here I decided to edit my video in a way that highlights the lack of readability of the graphic text that is already in the film. I wanted my captioned video to bring this to attention, and I decided to do this by making the narrative, another crucial part of the film, to have poorly designed captions. I did this by trying to copy the text styles of the graphics of the title and credits. I had a hard time trying to apply text styles to the captions I wanted to have specific styles, but eventually I figured it out. Something else I thought about while captioning this video, was if it was okay to call a character a name that was not for certain their name. For example, they refer to the wife as ‘spouse’ so I kind of just assumed that was the name I was supposed to use for the caption. I also had a hard time trying to export the captions because for some reason they wouldn’t export burned in. I also had to go in and fix the timing of the captions after exporting it which you can see in the photo below.

 

Reflection Questions

• What is the theme of the work?
  • The theme of this work is to express that anything written in a video or film should be easy to read. I wanted to extend my work beyond just captions, and into the graphics themselves. I noticed that while this video did not have captions yet, I wanted to translate the poorly created graphics into the captions. This was inspired by the fact that such important information, like the producers and the title were hard for me to read.
• How is that theme particularly expressed through the modality of the week?
  • This theme was expressed through the modality of the week, captions by making the captions have the same text styles as the graphics. This means that the captions were slightly transparent, red and had a white outline. This was applied to ONLY the captions that were used in captioning anything a character said something.
• Which elements of the work are beautifully/wonderfully/perfectly expressed through the modality?
  • I think that the elements of the work that were expressed perfectly expressed through captioning is the idea that captions must be easy on the eyes. Not only do they have to be correct transcriptions, and be aligned properly with what people would generally hear, but the styles must also be easy to read. Although my captions were intentionally meant to be hard to read, this is an idea that I wanted to express along with the fact that text graphics should also be easy on the eyes.
• Which elements are lost or inexpressible through the modality of the week?
  • I think that elements of captioning that were lost is the fact that they are supposed to be easy to read. The first minute of the video has the proper formatting of cations, whereas any of the things that people say have the very poorly designed text styles for their captions. This means that the idea of captioning, at its most basic functionality, is lost throughout the entirety of the piece.
• Who does this project exclude? Who would not be able to interact with this work?
  • I think that this project excludes those who can’t hear well. This is because for most of the video, the captions are very hard to read. It also excludes people who are low vision, because a lot of the captions are hard to see, even as someone with vision that is not impaired. Additionally, the video uses red for their text graphics, which could exclude people who are red/green colorblind, and make it even harder to read due to the contrast of the text color to the background color.
• Who is this modality not accessible for?
  • This modality is not accessible for those who cannot see, since they cannot read the captions. I think that even with the ability to hear things, it is still nice to read captions, as it allows for a better understanding of who is talking and what they are saying it. It gives a clearer understanding of the scene that someone is watching and can sometimes even give more context (like with sound effects or music).
• 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).
  • Those who are low vision could be included in the beginning, when there is just text on the screen and no auditory signal of what is going on. Someone could be reading the graphics on the screen or the captions that I have written for the beginning portion, which would give so much more context to what is on the screen.

Additional Modality (if applicable) 

What modality did you apply? 

How did you decide on this modality?

What does the beholder gain from this additional modality? Why? 

Does the beholder lose anything from this modality? What? 

Show documentation of this modality, and describe it if it’s not accessible on a screen (ie, if it’s tactile if it’s a scent)