[Syna Khanna]: Midterm Portfolio – #3 Creative Captions

The Project

Project Description 

In this project, I added text captions for the entire video (describing dialogue, sound effects, and actions). The purpose of this is to be able to explain the video to someone who may be hard of hearing. By reading the captions, it will be easier for them to understand the video.

Documentation 

Step-by-step documentation consists of the following: Step 1: I opened "Cindy Goes to a Party 1955" in Adobe Premiere Pro, then generated transcription. Step 2: Once the transcription for the video was generated, I generated captions. Step 3: I edited the typography and adjusted colors/style to make the captions visually easier to read. Step 4: I cropped the clip down to 5 min, then edited the captions to make them accurate and added additional text explanations. Step 5: Lastly, I exported the video.

Reflection Questions

1. What is the theme of the work?

The theme of this work is to add accessibility to videos in order to allow those individuals with hearing disabilities to still be able to understand what is happening in the the videos. Furthermore, we should focus on making the captions creative to add more meaning to the video and enhance the overall experience of viewers.

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

Through the modality of the week, the theme of making videos accessible for those who are audibly impaired is expressed through the creation of captions for an existing clip and making it available for people with hearing disabilities.​

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

I think the meaning of the work is perfectly expressed through this modality as I put accurate translations but added some extra touches to enhance the scene. 

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

Different audience perceptions/perspectives of the video clips may be lost through the captioning process because the captions would point towards a specific feel/emotions.

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

Those who have some visual impairments might feel overstimulated by viewing captions on top of the video. It could be hard for them to read and also view the scene.

6. Now that you’ve identified who is excluded, what is one way you could remix this piece to include another population?

To accommodate for the visually impaired people who might feel excluded, I could add captions below the video or to the side of the video on plain background instead of directly on top of the video where it could be hard for viewers to read the captions and observe the scene.