Captions revisited

[jtweigandt]

After experimentation.. rear wall reverse projection and reflective devices worked.. but was too futzy for general use in our facility. I got a few comments about the light changing on the back wall from folks in the back row.
Our projection site possibilities are limited.

So Chapter two.. did a couple of shows with projection directly on to our proscenium top.. It worked, was not terribly distracting but was far enough out of "line of sight" that shifting back and forth between caption and the action on stage was less than optimal.

I did get a musicians page turner foot pedal.. and it makes all the difference in making operating during the show tolerable.

Startiing Chapter three. Hand held devices.. specifically users own phone. I worked out a way to let the user connect to a "no password" wifi connection and then scan a qr code to go to a local "broadcast" of the powerpoint presentation.


The nuts and bolts are.. Router with open wifi no passworded. Totally off grid, no connection to internet or other equipment. A computer connected hosting an install of "Apache Guacamole" What Guac does is serves up a remote desktop or vnc session as an active web page. I set the vnc session to be view only.. and once on the wifi, the qr code directs to the totally local guacamole web server. The client sees the powerpoint screen of the PC that is running the presentation. The beauty is that this doesn't preclude projecting at the same time, so users can have their preference.

So kind of excited to try this third generation out for real.. had to pull from various previous projects and connect it all in my head first... but ... it works.

Our default script to powerpoint conversion is pretty streamlined at present.... Dictate in 2 to 3 line chunks on my phone into a google doc. Save locally to a text file and add a show name header as the first line.. Import into a spreadsheet in google docs, and use an automated add on tool called autocrat in google docs that dumps the spreadsheet into our google slides template.. export to powerpoint for use for the show.

It takes me about 4 hours to read a typical musical in.. and clean up.. and only about 10 minutes to do the conversion to powerpoint.

We're going to divide out the script this season to volunteers to dictate, someone else to proof ... and then I put it through the grinder for the final presentation.

Scanned libretto or even the publishing house was nice enough to give a doc or pdf version for this purpose still had too many divider lines, formatting differences and stage direction. Much faster to dictate than to clean all that up.

Anyway that's a day inside my tortured theatrical mind.

 

[Ben Stiegler]

After experimentation.. rear wall reverse projection and reflective devices worked.. but was too futzy for general use in our facility. I got a few comments about the light changing on the back wall from folks in the back row.
Our projection site possibilities are limited.

So Chapter two.. did a couple of shows with projection directly on to our proscenium top.. It worked, was not terribly distracting but was far enough out of "line of sight" that shifting back and forth between caption and the action on stage was less than optimal.

I did get a musicians page turner foot pedal.. and it makes all the difference in making operating during the show tolerable.

Startiing Chapter three. Hand held devices.. specifically users own phone. I worked out a way to let the user connect to a "no password" wifi connection and then scan a qr code to go to a local "broadcast" of the powerpoint presentation.


The nuts and bolts are.. Router with open wifi no passworded. Totally off grid, no connection to internet or other equipment. A computer connected hosting an install of "Apache Guacamole" What Guac does is serves up a remote desktop or vnc session as an active web page. I set the vnc session to be view only.. and once on the wifi, the qr code directs to the totally local guacamole web server. The client sees the powerpoint screen of the PC that is running the presentation. The beauty is that this doesn't preclude projecting at the same time, so users can have their preference.

So kind of excited to try this third generation out for real.. had to pull from various previous projects and connect it all in my head first... but ... it works.

Our default script to powerpoint conversion is pretty streamlined at present.... Dictate in 2 to 3 line chunks on my phone into a google doc. Save locally to a text file and add a show name header as the first line.. Import into a spreadsheet in google docs, and use an automated add on tool called autocrat in google docs that dumps the spreadsheet into our google slides template.. export to powerpoint for use for the show.

It takes me about 4 hours to read a typical musical in.. and clean up.. and only about 10 minutes to do the conversion to powerpoint.

We're going to divide out the script this season to volunteers to dictate, someone else to proof ... and then I put it through the grinder for the final presentation.

Scanned libretto or even the publishing house was nice enough to give a doc or pdf version for this purpose still had too many divider lines, formatting differences and stage direction. Much faster to dictate than to clean all that up.

Anyway that's a day inside my tortured theatrical mind.

That's some serious duct-taping there -- I like it!

 

[almorton]

Interesting solution - don't you find that the screens will be distracting to those who aren't following along, though? I know if someone gets their phone out in our theatre and you're sitting within about 10 seats of them it's immediately distracting.

 

[jtweigandt]

Interesting solution - don't you find that the screens will be distracting to those who aren't following along, though? I know if someone gets their phone out in our theatre and you're sitting within about 10 seats of them it's immediately distracting.

Those were my concerns as well, Which is why I went with reflected first,but it required issuing the chair mounted reflector and brief explanation of use, and our usher corps is volunteer and consists of many different people for the run. Direct projection would be my preferred method at this point, but a nice "foot level" piece of real estate isn't available.

1. Opera and other venues are using dedicated handheld devices. 2. Other people currently on the board of directors, were looking into handheld solutions that would require internet connection, more complicated "log in" and possibly more latency and cost 3. Will try to mitigate by putting red lettering on black background.

We likely will offer this just one or two performances during the run.. which when it becomes standard, folks really bothered can avoid captioning nights.

We had a grant last year and had actual ASL interpreters for one performance each run. Wonderful talented presenters, but a whole level more distracting for some. We got comments both ways. I attended Boop in Chicago, and their ASL interpreter was more at floor level to SL, with what looked like dedicated seating for patrons using the service. Ours, there was much resistance to stigmatizing and having dedicated seating (also a problem for box office volunteers) so they were stage level on a SR thrust, and drew the eye much more, even with very controlled lighting.

Our audiences so far have been pretty good about cell phones, and our ushers to police that pretty well.. So yep it's all a big compromise, but it's also the direction our board/outreach people want to persue. Captioning seems to have the least impact both distraction and cost over the long term.

 

[almorton]

I guess if you advertise ahead that captioning to cell phones will be in use then, as you say, those who wish to can avoid.

 

[TimMc]

3. Will try to mitigate by putting red lettering on black background.

I suggest you consider how many users may have some type or degree of color blindness. Red may be plainly "loud" to a person with normal color perception and nearly invisible to the intended user. This opens another can of worms (aren't cans sooo last century?) in devising accommodation.

My thoughts would be to approach the local deaf/hard of hearing community organization(s) and ask if they have any prepared suggestions, recommendations or other resources to help guide dialog with end users and help the producer/venue come up with policy and technology that represents best-faith effort in addressing the needs of this patronage while maintaining artistic integrity. My hint for the latter: design with a wider patronage in mind.

 

[jtweigandt]

I

I suggest you consider how many users may have some type or degree of color blindness. Red may be plainly "loud" to a person with normal color perception and nearly invisible to the intended user. This opens another can of worms (aren't cans sooo last century?) in devising accommodation.

My thoughts would be to approach the local deaf/hard of hearing community organization(s) and ask if they have any prepared suggestions, recommendations or other resources to help guide dialog with end users and help the producer/venue come up with policy and technology that represents best-faith effort in addressing the needs of this patronage while maintaining artistic integrity. My hint for the latter: design with a wider patronage in mind.

I was thinking red, because that's usually the color of the LED displays for the reflected captioning in the movie theaters. But I can go with white on a black background. We do have amplification radio pack equipment, which is lightly used. We also through the same equipment second channel do Audio description for the blind one night of each run. I started the captioning program at the request of a professional colleague who is nearly profoundly deaf, but does not sign, when she saw we had the ASL nights. She provided a small amount of seed money, as she was wishing for captioning.. So both as an individual, and on the ASL side, we've had lots of input. Captioning seems to server a wider audience than the ASL, and we may be able to still have our ASL nights depending on grants and funding (it's extremely expensive) Also have had some old codgers like me say that captioning might be a nice option, even though we're not integrated with the deaf community per se.

 

[jtweigandt]

Well I have a demo running in my basement now... Going to take it to the theater this weekend and post instructions and QR code for cast and crew to
test and more importantly load test. Currently running a 3 slide powerpoint loop. (actually .pps file run on libre) All with free software, and cast off computer and router from my business (and my wife wonders why I don't throw away cyberjunk)

 

[Jay Ashworth]

FWIW, I used to work in a Deaf community service company, and one of our employees was a volunteer terp at the local PAC, and they did what someone here notes: terps SR to the edge, people who needed to watch them seated HL in the first 3 rows or so; only 2 performances in the run.

WADR to the audiences involved, I think that "stigmatizing" is the *lowest* priority concern to deal with here. Though I'm not Deaf. I didn't hear (from my channels) that anyone had complained about that possibility on these shows.

Defo worth talking to the local Services people about the possibilities and how effective each one is likely to be, though. For all you know, they have have a line on some grant money to subsidize tech for it.