We had a team of four wonderful captioners (and one remote, captioning the Spanish track!) killin’ it at PyConUS 2023 last week. Here are a few highlights!
Can YOU keep up?!
Pictured: a white female with blue eyes and long, dark-brown hair with blonde highlights. She is wearing a black shirt with white lettering that says “White Coat Captioning. She is sitting in front of three computer monitors.
00:09: She picks up her steno machine and holds it in front of the camera.
00:15: She picks up her mechanical keyboard and holds it in front of the camera.
00:20-00:37: She is using her steno machine to caption the audio at 240WPM. Her captions are displayed, in realtime, on a large monitor with a black background and white text.
00:42: She is holding her mechanical keyboard in front of the camera.
This is our Amazing Amanda, keeping up with that speedy talker, and providing lovely captions. I remember this event, and I remember that due to circumstances beyond our control, we assigned Amanda to this final keynote at the last minute. She had to rush from one room where she had captioned all day long, to another, set up all her equipment again, and caption this with no prep. 🔥
Video: a large room full of people. There are two, large screens at the front of the room. There is a speaker presenting on the right side of the room, in front of a large, white screen. There is a brief pop-up graphic with text that says “Captioner,” with an arrow pointing to the captioner, who is sitting in the back of the room, providing live captions.
The large monitor, on the left, is displaying a slide deck with live captioning scrolling across the top. There is an overlay video that shows a close-up of the live captions.
The captioner has medium-long, dark-brown, wavy hair and is sitting/captioning with her back to the camera.
Preparation for Tech Captioning
How’s this for Maggie’s alt text:Pictured: a white female with dark-brown, shoulder-length hair. She is wearing black eye glasses and has braces on her teeth. She is wearing a black shirt and is smiling while she is holding her steno machine.Captions: Meet Maggie! She’s been a captioner for 10 years! She chose captioning because she wanted a career that would allow her to make a difference! Her favorite thing about captioning is that it continuously challenges her to improve. #CRCW2023
Pictured: a white female with dark-brown, shoulder-length hair. She is wearing black eye glasses and has braces on her teeth. She is wearing a black shirt and is smiling while she is holding her steno machine.
Captions: Meet Maggie! She’s been a captioner for 10 years! She chose captioning because she wanted a career that would allow her to make a difference! Her favorite thing about captioning is that it continuously challenges her to improve. #CRCW2023
Clients often ask us to show videos of how their captions will look, or what are some various ways they *can* look at their event.
We can't always show you due to NDAs, and also -- when we are working, we don't always have the opportunity to take videos or photos -- it might be too dark or the room is too full -- AND -- we are just too busy doing the actual work rather than getting video footage!
Like with many things, it depends on your setup, your budget, your artistic vision, your AV and production support, but here is one example.
Please note the captions are at the top of the screen here, rather than the bottom. This allows people to be able to read them over other people's heads, with a lectern in the way, people walking by or congregating, etc. We love this setup.
ALT TEXT: Video of Vanessa, our Social Media Coordinator, who says: "Sometimes when we caption live events, they display our captions on the same screen as the PowerPoint presentation. It looks so beautiful! I can't wait to show you." Next shot: A video screen at a tech conference, displaying an informational slide. The realtime captions produced by our human captioner are displayed at the top of the screen.
