Tag Archives: Deaf Cinema

Deaf Cinema

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Posted by maxporter on October 29, 2010 – 7:16 PM
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I recently discovered this lecture from TEDxIslay. It is in ASL and is captioned.

Source on Youtube. Click over there for a transcript.

I really liked how Betts looks at Hearing film theory and constantly questions it – he is experimenting to find alternatives to these rules that just do not work. In my opinion, this is exactly what the future of filmmaking looks like – minorities looking at the established rules and saying, “Hey, this isn’t how I see the world; I should do this instead to represent my world better.”

For example, his idea to use ASL scripts just blew my mind. Also, one of my favorite parts of this lecture is the clip from the film that he created using a steadicam with dynamic captions at ~15:35. That is definitely the type of film I would want to watch.

My personal experience diverges from Betts’s a little bit – for example, un-captioned movies just bore me to tears, even if they are pretty. It’s not just that I need a story to watch a film – I love experimental films that don’t have stories. No, for me, it’s frustrating to watch a bunch of Hearing people talk without understanding them, because that is exactly what I do in everyday life.

But, on the other hand, when I think about the type of movies I like, a good deal of them are pretty fluid, just like how Betts describes – instead of cutting back and forth between shot / reaction shot, they just flow. A good example of this is Elephant by Gus Van Sant – I think they use a steadicam to film pretty much everything. I’m not sure if this is because I’m deaf or if this is just some weird aesthetic quirk of mine. Betts ties it to Deafness, which I find interesting.

Anyway, I’m excited for the future of Deaf cinema and I can’t wait to see what people come up with.

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High Contrast

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Posted by maxporter on December 13, 2009 – 5:49 PM
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So in my last post I talked a little bit about Deaf cinema.

Today I was watching a video on Youtube, and I stumbled across a video named “Audism.”

Here it is:

Overall it’s a good piece, and I liked it.

But I had a major problem with it: Poor contrast.
If you fast-forward to 3:46, there is a white woman with dark hair and a black long sleeved shirt.
I found it almost impossible to understand what she was saying because I couldn’t see her torso or her arms. A lot of people think that ASL is completely in the hands, but that’s not true at all. The body and the face are such vital ingredients to understanding ASL. For me, it was like trying to read an English sentence without articles (a/the) or punctuation.

A lot of the time, when people sign publicly, such as in a film or when interpreting, they wear clothing with high contrast so that it’s easier to see the hands. It depends on your skin tone – if you watch this video, there is a black woman who wears a white shirt because that is what contrasts with her skin most.

So these actors were just following convention by wearing black clothing because that is what contrasts with their white skin most.
And, normally, that would be totally appropriate. And it probably looked perfectly fine when they were filming – the background could have been dark red or something that would contrast with the black if there was color.

But when it got translated into black and white, all of that was totally lost.

It is an important reminder to be mindful of every aspect of filming when presenting a visual language.

If I had to go back and re-film, I would have made the background gray. Therefore it would contrast with the white skin, the black skin, the white shirt, the black shirt.

I also would have lit up the background. I learned this in my intro to film class this semester… When you are filming against a background, you usually shine a light on the background to make it look more separate and 3D from you. Otherwise it is flat: the person almost blends in with the background.

I don’t mean to say so much negative about this film. Overall it was pretty interesting. And I really really appreciate seeing a Deaf centric perspective. But a lot of the message was lost in the poor filmmaking.

I’m going to end this post with an example of Deaf-centric Deaf filmmaking that I liked: You Neutral? It turns out to be a campaign film, but it’s a really good example of what Deaf people face in terms of audism. And the signing is clear in almost every frame!

(A subtitled version can be found here.)

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Deaf Cinema

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Posted by maxporter on December 9, 2009 – 8:43 PM
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Now for a little bit of a break from audism and accessibility.

There are some deaf theorists who talk about cinema theory and how to create films with a uniquely Deaf vision.

An example that I found on a Light Kitchen, Deaf filmmaker’s website, was a video named Le Rose Cut, which discusses HMH (hold-motion-hold). Hold-motion-hold is a linguistics theory and to be honest I don’t understand the theory well. But it’s interesting; check it out if you’re interested.

One thing that I was wondering about was: What would a voiceover look like in Deaf cinema?

I have to admit that I enjoy voiceovers sometimes. I like seeing something onscreen and contrasting it with what the offscreen speaker is saying. For example, let’s say you have an unreliable narrator talking about how good he is to his wife and children, and saying that he is the most perfect and doting man. But the image on the screen is a shot of his wife non-consensually bound and gagged. The viewer can contrast what is being said with what is being shown.

I thought about how I access the content. I watch the subtitles.
I can’t hear human speech. I have a hearing loss well over 120 decibels – most human speech is an average of 60 decibels.

So then, would a silent film with subtitles on the bottom of the screen be an acceptable way to present a voiceover scene?

I think it’d be an interesting experiment. I personally think it’d work well. It’s how I watch a voiceover scene. If a hearing person thinks that subtitles ruin the aesthetics of the image, well, that is their problem.

I recently made my first film, which was 4 minutes long. I haven’t completely mastered subtitle technology so I used intertitles. In my opinion, it interrupted the action a little bit.

But what if you want to create a film completely in ASL that is not tied to the English language?

See, the problem with many films that use ASL is that a lot of them were made by Hearing people. So they do not always include the signing in the frame but instead rely on subtitles[1] or even a hearing speaker to translate the signing[2]. So I can definitely see why somebody would want to create a film in ASL with NO English unless it’s in the form of optional subtitles.

How would you do a voiceover?

Is this just something that wouldn’t come up from a native ASL speaker because it’s not relevant to strong Deaf culture?

Overall I think that Deaf cinema is very important to encourage and I want to see more of it.

[1]Universal Signs
[2]Children of a Lesser God, The L Word, etc.

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