What are creative captions
Intro Ben
Ben is a deaf artist, video designer, motion graphics and virtual reality creator. He’s achieved an MA in digital theatre and BSc in Creative Computing.
Ben’s work carefully combines his interdisciplinary skills, understanding of access and lived experience to produce creative and integrated forms of video design and creative captioning. Working at the forefront of technology and being experienced both on and off stage has allowed him to deliver innovative approaches to his work, particularly in creative captioning. He believes that the best form of access is one that is integrated and included in the creative process from the very beginning.
Highlights of Ben’s work include creative captions for Antony and Cleopatra (Shakespeare Globe), Lived Fiction (Stopgap), The Paradis Files (Graeae Theatre), The Promise (Deafinitely Theatre) and video designs for Best of Enemies (Noël Coward Theatre), Tubular Bells 50th Anniversary Concert Tour and Run Rebel (Pilot Theatre).
Ben was featured in this article by The Guardian (1 July 22) as one of three creatives ‘opening theatres up to disabled audiences’
The challenge
The process of creating captions in this way is labour intensive – with shows often needing several thousand captions designed either through animation, images or text cues. As such, it is an expensive endeavour for productions to build in an accessible tool such Creative Captioning. It also lacks flexibility, which is a barrier for directors and companies refining their show in the crunch of tech & previews.
There isn’t a unified workflow for designers with some utilising surtitling applications such as Glypheo, these solutions limit both creativity and access as they function with “slide-by-slide” captions that impact reading times, particularly with short lines, instead of the scrolling method used as an industry standard by Stagetext. None of these processes take into consideration the text editing process whereby a script is formatted into a captioned version, with appropriate line breaks, name labels, sound descriptions and more.
The solution would be a new software approach that makes the process more agile – using a cue based system and auto video generator to enable captioners and more video designers access to the tool.
Specific guidelines and requirements for the software will be informed by a unified set of guidelines and rules for creative captioning, driven by an association of captioners, designers and access coordinators. This will follow other industry practices such as subtitling guidelines produced by various organisations that will help one of the main challenges in creative captioning which is maintaining a strong level of access in the work whilst being aesthetically creative.
In addition to these, there is also missing research to support audience’s viewing habits in the theatre. A recent study by Ideal Insight showed that 85% of Netflix users in the UK had subtitles turned on, which shows evidence that subtitles are not only for those who are deaf and hard of hearing. An updated study should be conducted in the theatre to correctly analyse the usage of captions and creative captions for all audiences.
Research questions
- Test the effectiveness of creative captions with a live audience with immersive technologies (eye tracking, surveys, focus groups)
- Discover best working practices and technical workflows for streamlining creative caption design and programming.
- Develop industry guidelines on creative captions (best practices, rules and processes) with a contributing board.
The process
During a Fellowship with the RSC, Ben explored how designers and directors use creative captioning in their work and gained feedback on their process as well as the audience’s response.
Ben examined the following three areas:
Planning
Working with the creative team to decide on the aesthetic of the captions and where they fit into the set.
Design
Longest part of the process, making the content. 1,500 lines of caption can take weeks of work.
Control
How content is played back. Manually is currently the most popular method. There are existing tools for captions to be used automatically, but these are not currently creative.
He has also explored how the current tools which are used for designing creative captions will help him investigate what they are capable of and what limitations they have. He consulted with colleagues at the RSC to understand each production and requirements, and the Company’s current offer – for example how captions can only be seen from some seats and are not used for all performances.
Findings
Ben has developed a paper prototype for a creative captioning software solution informed by his own and other creative captioners working process. The next stages would involve:
- Software development of a functional version.
- Testing in an R&D phase.
- Continued development working alongside a full creative captioned production.
- Launch and release of the software with maintained development and support.
A software partner should be identified to support Ben in developing a working prototype that can be tested alongside his work and understand the essential tools needed such as; cloud collaboration, real-time text animation and templating workflows. The RSC will support Ben with an R&D to utilise the software prototype in a working environment with a writer, director and actors.
New research with audience use of captions will enable a better understanding of audiences needs and analyse the impact of captions. This will be conducted with both an open captioned performance and a creative captioned performance to help compare the two approaches and set a benchmark for identifying trends with audience engagement.
Ben has recently completed both a DYCP and Community Fund project with CRIPtic Arts, both of which explored two areas of creative captioning. His DYCP was focused on Creative Captioning and Access in which he was mentored by various captioners to understand their working practice from an access standpoint. He has integrated this understanding into his own creative practice and explored various methods for achieving these with unofficial methods, such as; adding scrolling text captions to Qlab, editing scripts for readability and word count, adding sound descriptions to captions. With CRIPtic Arts, he conducted research across various organisations, particularly in small-scale theatre, to explore the main barriers to providing captions including budgets, lack of awareness and technology. The key findings were that a lack of a study for the effectiveness of captions meant many organisations felt captions weren’t necessary and standard approaches with organisations such as Stagetext were too costly. The outcome of this research was to develop an online resource containing guidance and information on captioning with key information for organisations and captioners, led by a governance structure.