Artist Christine Sun Kim Rewrites Closed Captions | Pop-Up Magazine
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- Опубліковано 12 жов 2020
- Berlin-based artist Christine Sun Kim thinks about closed captions a lot. And she let us in on a not-so-well-kept secret: they suck. Christine shows us what closed captions could be, in a new story featuring original footage she captured and captioned herself.
Video description and transcript: pastebin.pl/view/471fc4d3
STORY NOTE: there is no voiceover in Christine’s signed introduction. There is a light orchestral score with violin, piano, and vibraphone tones throughout the video.
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CHRISTINE SUN KIM explores the conceptual aspect of sound by connecting it to acts of drawing, painting, and performance. Her projects include using the audience’s voice as her own, conducting a group of people to “sing” with facial movements, and composing visual scores with sign language and musical symbols. Check out her piece in The New York Times about performing at the Super Bowl.
CREDITS
[Closer Captions]
By Christine Sun Kim
Original Music by Minna Choi
FOR POP-UP MAGAZINE
Story Producer
Anna Martin
Director
Anna Martin
Cinematographer
Christine Sun Kim
Video Editor
Megan Lotter
Art Director
Megan Lotter
Music Director
Minna Choi
Performance Consultant
Maureen Towey
Audio Mixer
Andy Spillman
Additional Production
Anita Badejo
Elise Craig
FEATURING MAGIK*MAGIK ORCHESTRA
Liana Berube, Violin
Minna Choi, Keys and Programming
Daniel Roumain, Cello
Laura Scarlata, Flute - Розваги
I'm a hearing person and just saw this re-posted on Reddit. This was my comment - "That was a truly amazing experience! I want to say I "learned" so much. But, I think what actually happened was...shock...at suddenly being made aware of an astounding array of perceptions of the world I thought I already knew. Her captions for those silent scenes were so descriptive and insightful. I can't imagine that watching them again with sound would be anything but disappointing and two dimensional." - Thank you! I can't really describe exactly what I feel this has opened up for me...what I apparently miss because I assume too much about my own perception. But, it's definitely a blessing.
Agree!!
As a deaf person, I appreciate Christine's creativity. I think this would be perfect for a caption poetry slam. [Mournful violin music] is perfect as it is because that's exactly what the music feels like. I believe it's important to caption music like writing alternative text (ALT text): be descriptive yet concise.
Many years ago, i visited London and the captions were color coded to the person speaking. This helped immensely when a person was off camera and spoke. The addition of sound narration or captioning definitely adds to what the director/producer intends. A Deaf friend of mine was watching a horror movie and didn't feel the impending build up of a scene because the scary music wasn't overtly stated in the captioning...just little musical notes.
i'm a professional captioner. in my younger days, i used to book bands, was a roadie, a touring DJ, and an audio engineer. in all my years thinking about sound, i've never come across a more beautiful, thoughtful meditation on sound itself, on what it means, and that made me aware of the possibility that it could conceal as much as it reveals. While i've never created the kind of captions that are derided here, i still never realized how LITERAL i was being when i thought about sound. thank you so, so so much for this gorgeous work.
Can I ask what company you work for?
I have been a stenographer for 26 years, and over a decade of that has been providing live, human-generated, stenographic captions. We are known to get very creative with our parentheticals to describe environmental sounds. This is a beautiful piece of work, and I get it. But what about interpretation? The mournful violin, for example, my interpretation was that it was peaceful, like having a cup of coffee in a garden, a brief moment of peace in a chaotic world. What if our interpretation, as the captioner, is completely different? How are we to know? It could be a mournful piece, yet here I am taking the consumer on a journey of uplifting peace and serenity. :) *face palm*
She brilliantly captures sound, smell, taste, touch, sight, and emotion!
This is what we sorely needed to have captioner to write what sounds and what type of music sad, happy or sorrowful. I like the way you think of this idea for sound description in the captions. You create art in sounds like no other have done!!
[The sound of a sharp knife cutting an onion with precision] [Tears drop ever so suddenly on the cutting board] [Voilà ! Emotion]
This was beautiful! It made me question my own hearing. (I am hearing) Made me realize all the things that I think of as silent that do, in fact make noise. And the things that are noisy that blend into silence.
If Mom is with me watching a program with music on PBS I often as her what it sound like, because it is just music, and no description, but if I watch the band, or the orchestra to see what the music is like. Can be happy music, can be sad music, creepy sounds for music too. There is sound in everything.
This was not only informative and helped me fine tune my perspective, it was a wonderfully meditative exercise to start my morning. Bookmarking to watch again, when I need my mind to stop racing and catch a mental break. Much thanks!
That was AMAZING!! I'm a hearing person and I also rely on CC a lot (child with Autism... very loud). I often get frustrated with CC because of points made by Christine, but also because of many errors. She should definitely train CC personel!
I love Christine's personality and her way of explaining things.
This video has really opened our eyes on captions and how to caption with emotion! Between this and Deaf U on Netflix, we've really learned a lot. Thank you for posting!
This was an amazing experience. I’m so glad she had created this video. I never thought about how plain and boring the captions could be for a deaf person when it comes to sound and how much they are relied on.
Wow! That was insightful. I’ve watched some of your other UA-cam videos, but this one is my favorite. I’m an ASL student at my local community college. The way you describe everyday life is more beautiful than I could describe it as a hearing person. I grew up with a learning disability. I wore it as an identity marker for a long time, it didn’t bother me until I got to college and read in a text book that it was a “disability.” It took a while to except. But the more I viewed it with a different light, the more I saw it as part of me, like a finger, than a identifying label. I’m different, but that’s okay. I see things differently and because I do I can share a new perspective with others, like you do. So thanks for sharing with us.❤️
Wonderful feelings, beautiful video
Excellent explanation!
Absolutely magnificent.
this is beautiful
Beautiful
This is beautiful ⚘
I appreciate Christine's artistry with words. As a deaf person myself, however, I don't want to see laborious descriptions of sound. The descriptions I see here are poetry. Why not just write poetry? Closed captions are meant to be economical and easily scannable. Everything happens SO quickly on TV and film. Also, how on EARTH does mournful violin music (which is ALREADY descriptive on its own) equate to drinking a martini in a bar, wearing a tiny hat? Don't be cute with closed captions. Christine obviously has a flair with words so let her write poetry. Better yet, sign a story with the words she used in this video.
LOVE LOVE your response!!! Thank you!!
She may have been exaggerating.
I totally understand why you want close captions to be quick and easy to read. Would the descriptions not just happen in the gaps in the dialogue? Is it easier to just watch the screen during periods where there would be sound rather than read words describing the sounds people are hearing? I might watch something with no sound and subtitles to see how the experience changes to understand a bit better.
I find it interesting how many sounds Christine notices that I think I block out during the day because my mind is elsewhere, such as the noise of feet in the shower. I also think that when she has a noise for orange sunshine it makes me think about how, if you can't hear maybe you feel sound and orange sunshine has a feeling. It's fascinating trying to understand soneone else's experience of the world.
That was the right description for the violin music, which we may expect low-cost LLMs to reproduce. On the other hand there's no reason not to transcribe music and speech into musical notation here and there. Whether the sound of the warmth of orange sunshine comes through in [the noise of the city fades] is more debatable?
It was meant to over exaggerate to make a point. 😊
I watched this video only once, with the sound off. The 'sound narrative' didn't help or make sense. Some of the basic captions made sense. The other, more elaborate captions did not.
I would suggest a 'before and after' approach to demonstrating this idea. Show the same short film with
unimproved captions and then with the improved captions to show improvement. And again with totally
different captions indicating totally different audio.But in all cases there should be no audio at all.
Or play the audio after the viewer sees the film without audio and just the captions.
In my opinion, the mistake here is in trying to provide a more elaborate & colorful description of the audio itself.
Instead, the caption ought to provide an improved description of the emotions triggered by the audio.
Also, the smells the viewer ought to imagine should be in the caption.
This would be something more akin to:
[the sound of water drops, suggesting you feel a bit scared that something bad will happen next]
[the sound of water drops, suggesting you feel safe but bored]
[the sound of water drops, suggesting you smell stale, stagnant, moist air]
For dialog, captions should describe the emotion of the character:
Joe angrily, "Get out'
Joe playfully, "Get out"
So the emotion triggered by the sounds is akin to the emotion of the characters because viewers empathize
with the emotion of the characters.
Long captions in a fast paced video doesn't work. I find myself having to pause and go back to read them
because they flash by so fast.
In my opinion, the main purpose of audio in film is to guide the emotions of the viewer.
So the description of audio ought to guide the emotions of the viewer.
[sound of large, hairy, black spider scampering across shower floor]
[guttural inhuman noise that begs description]
Oh 💩!
Well said!! Factually correct!👍
I am losing my hearing. I am now about 25% loss. It IS VERY frustrating when instructive videos are not captioned.
These captions are poetry!
and not practical.
Poetic!
I like this girl, I am a hearing person and I am an advocate of inclusive education. Keep doing this so that people may know that you are special in the eyes of our Creator.
When I watched doctor strange and multiverse of madness. When I saw the caption (X-men 1997 music). It was one of x men music from 1997 x men cartoon music. It improves
What’s the sound of skin waking up?
Hmm, the interpretations of these sounds are too subjective. One person's [mournful violin music] is another person's [boring violin music] or perhaps [irritating violin music]. Same goes for [the sound of sun entering the bedroom] - it depends what sort of day one expects it to be! Yay or arrgh!
that being said, usually in this type of media, music is invoked to evoke certain feelings
there *is* the risk of being too on-the-nose or getting under people's skin with descriptions that don't ring true, but a general direction still serves a function
As a closed captioner, this video is SO off target! If you want poetry in your captions, then why not actually take the time to understand how captions are created. We write at 225+ words per minute. Sometimes having to identify multiple speakers and deal with complex terminology that we have to figure out on the fly how to write, AND YOU WANT POETRY in your captions! I am sorry but if this is the kind of captioning you want, then use AI. See how that works out for you before you post something in a public forum BASHING the very service that provides you access to the content you are watching. With the time and effort you put into this video you could have learned how captions are created and wouldn't have been so off target with this video.
It is in bad taste to publicly bash the wishes of a potential consumer of your services. Certainly, I can understand pointing out the fact that it is challenging, but you can always acknowledge that this particular style of captioning might very well suit her needs and wishes. In the professional code of ethics for captioners, (NCRA) you are to " Be aware of the diversity of Consumers requesting captioning services, and be prepared to meet their various requests in a respectful manner." As a consumer, she has every right to express her preferences in a public forum, but as a professional, your reply was insulting and entitled. You have a job because she HAS A RIGHT to access, and she should not be admonished with a statement that infers that she should be grateful for what she gets like "...the very service that provides you access to the content you are watching."
You’re wrong. We’re not talking about live captions. We’re talking about prerecorded captions, which you, ironically, clearly know nothing about. Captioners can be wrong too. Most of them are nowadays.