Greetings friends

The amazing Max Fomitchev, an extremely talented and highly trained deaf mime who defected from Russia and settled in Canada has after years of auditioning snared a six-month contract with Cirque du Soleil. No easy feat, I assure you. Max auditioned, my source tells me, approximately six years ago but was passed over. Now he will join Cirque du Soleil for a six month tour which may lead to a multi-year gig in the Las Vegas show.

Max has performed all over in schools and communities. This past weekend he performed in Ashland, Oregon at the Green Show (Ashland Shakespeare Theatre Festival) and was greeted with accolades.  See Max's fan page on FaceBook.  As actor and director Howie Seago explained to me, "Max Fromitchev's performances are superbly structured and conveys an exquisite balance of comedy and bittersweet drama. He makes me so proud of his excellence and is a great representative of the creative power and talent of the Deaf world." 

Follow Max on Twitter.

Stay tuned,

Jane

Greeting Friends,

Marlee Matlin, Oscar winning star of Children of a Lesser God is again breaking new ground (not the second or third time) with her new reality TV show “My Deaf Family."  In shopping around the show, network and cable executives are impressed but stop short of agreeing to carry the series.  Marlee being Marlee refuses to take "no" for an answer and wisely searches for alternative ways to support the series. Check out  http://insidetv.aol.com/2010/03/31/marlee-matlin-launches-my-deaf-family-on-youtube/ and I guarantee you'll agree this woman walks the talk.

Way to go Marlee.

Stay tuned,

Jane

Greetings,

The Producers Guild of America Diversity recently took a position on supporting disabled actors.   Kudos to them for standing up to the "system." Check out this link.

Unconfirmed word on the street is that Glee producers approached a school for deaf children and are or have already selected few students to be included in a choir scene in episode ten of Glee.

Stay tuned,

Jane

Greeting Colleagues,

The controversy continues. Fresh on the heels of The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter comes another production, Miracle Worker with Abigail Breslin (hearing) in the role of the deaf blind character, Helen Keller.

In iVillage, Entertainment, more on the casting of a hearing person in the role of Helen Keller. The Kidglue story adds that Blind people are also angry. 

Thirty Mile Woman talks about the controversial casting and offers an interesting perspective. 

Across the pond, British reality TV (Channel Four) launched a new show with disabled people, Cast Offs.

A British blogger, Femalefirst talks about the new reality show.

Simon Startin writes about Cast Offs in November 10, 2009 issue of U.K.'s Guardian and asks whether the program will show a new side to the disabled population.

Lynn Elbe's AP story on Glee, a Fox TV program (U.S.) with a non-disabled actor in the role of a wheelchair character is picked up for publication in November 11, 2009 issues of USA Today and The Huffington Post. (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/11/10/glee-wheelchair-episode-u_n_352778.html)

There are many in our society who do not understand or are comfortable  with "the disability world." To learn more, check out Society for Disability Studies.

Media and Disability offers a realistic, refreshing perspective. Disability Studies Quarterly affirms our realistic existence.

Truth be told, my friends, we're as old as time. We've been around since day one. All the segregation terminology and so called "justifiable" discrimination in the name of art will not change the reality of who we are and our rightful place in society. We're part of your national identity.

Hollywood, Broadway, Madison Avenue and Wall Street set stereotype standards. When these standards are practiced and enforced, my colleagues and I are denied our rightful place in society.

"So what," you say?

Stay tuned,

Jane

Dear Colleagues,

On November 6, 2009, at Gallaudet University, Marlee Matlin testified at FCC. To see the full video program, click on this Federal Communications Commission link.

Marlee Matilin as the official spokesperson for the National Association of the Deaf represented NAD at the November 6th FCC hearing.

Kudos to Nancy Bloch, Executive Director of the National Association of the Deaf for "hearing" and opening NAD's arms to Marlee.

Without doubt, this is the kind of action Frederick C. Schreiber, the first Executive Secretary of NAD would say, is the way to go.

Not many people understands that Marlee does care.

Good job, Nancy.

Stay tuned,

Jane

Greetings:

Over a period of time I've developed respect for Bill Creswell's effort toward captioning one video at a time on the Internet. Having worked for the National Captioning Institute I've watched the captioning process and have a healthy appreciation for the amount of work that goes on behind the scenes. It's not an easy job. It's tedious and time consuming. I just had to find out a bit about Bill…

Jane: I think it would be interesting for people to read about you and understand the work you are doing…would you let me interview you?

Bill: If you would like to interview me that would be fine. I don't consider myself that interesting, but…

Jane: Well, we can take it one step at a time…How did you start captioning?

Bill: I worked for a theatre that installed MoPix in 2005, mostly on the initiative of Disability Advocates. We had open caption equipment, but the work wasn't well received, hearing people complained, and apparently nothing was heard from the deaf community in support. So I heard,  this happened before I started working there.

Anyway, I first started learning about the deaf in my recent history, because of a complaint by a deaf person on The Deaf Edge.

I started reading the blog and started thinking it was kind of crazy, that for all the MoPix movies, there were very few trailers (mostly by ITFC - I found them on a UK site and particularly not of the movies we were showing.

Other bloggers, like ProudGeek and Banjo talked about some captioning stuff on their blogs, so I tried it out.

Until this point, my blog was receiving 3 to 4 visits a week. I wasn't really doing much with it. After I published a few, Jared Evans of DeafRead offered to post my Caption stuff on DeafRead.

I got such a positive reaction, that I started to caption other movie trailers that we weren't playing, and then I started to try to caption the trailers for all subtitled movies.

I got the most visits, when I started captioning some of the stuff that Marlee Matlin did on Dancing with the Stars.

Anyway, now I have captioned about 250-300 videos, including captioning the 80th birthday of a woman's mother, that she had never understood what was said. (That took a very long time.)

Jane: Where are you located?

Bill: Grand Rapids, Michigan

Jane: Are you deaf? A signer?

Bill: Nope, I'm hearing. In fact. I wasn't aware that I knew of any deaf people before 2007. Grand Rapids used to be pretty well known for its oral deaf education, so I may have. I never realized this friendly guy at the gym was deaf, because his lip-reading of me seemed to work better than most people who hear me. I just assumed some hearing loss.

Jane: A signer?

Bill: I wish I had taken three sign classes at Deaf and Hard of Hearing Services and one at the Y. I'm really only proficient at saying "stupid" or "my sign is horrible." I try to sign the words I know when I sing in the choir; because it seems to enhance my experience-some people raise their hands- seem more logical to express language with my hands to extend my praise.

I'd like to be conversant in sign, but I think I need a different way to learn, definitely some videos to replay. I am also a little "conversationally challenged," in that with deaf or hearing, conversation does not flow easily for me.

Jane: How long does it normally take you to caption a teaser or clip?

Bill: A three minute trailer takes 45 minutes to an hour, depending on word density. The Marlee Matlin clip took two hours.

Jane: Do you also caption full length videos from the Internet?

Bill: I haven't.

Jane: What's the longest length of video you've captioned?

Bill: The longest so far was the private birthday party. The party itself was over an hour, but most of it was unintelligible conversation. The main interview to be captioned was about 20 minutes.

Jane: Do you add sound effects, e.g., dog barking, clicking of key unlocking a door, car honking?

Bill: Yes, that's the difference between "Captioning" and "subtitling," according to the sites that I had researched (openandclosed.org.wgbh.) Captions are also sometimes called subtitling for the deaf and hard of hearing usually in DVD production.

If there are a lot of captions in the surrounding, or they are too distracting and abundantly evident, sometimes I will leave them off.

Jane: Do you contact companies to ask for permission to caption their clips?

Bill: So far the only time I have done that is in the case of Sweet Nothing in My Ear. When the film was announced, there was no trailer, so I requested a "Screener" and made a fan made trailer, and when the official clip came out. I needed to download it and publish the trailer myself, so I contacted them, since I had the information already, they seemed grateful.

So far, I believe because I normally don't host the videos, it's not a legal thing. I have to avoid using YouTube for movie trailers, because they are a little too aggressive at pulling down possible copyright violations on movie trailers and other videos.

I've also seen other YouTube videos that have been up for years, pulled down after I put the captions on over stream, probably due to the really good search engine placement. (Search "Captioned Trailer" with any movie, and my stuff comes up.)

Jane: Are you a good speller? Is it easy for you to caption?

Yeah, spelling is good, although my typing isn't as fast as I'd like. Sometimes I have to listen to sections of audio over and over to hear them, because I don't have a transcript. I don't think hearing people even realize how many words they miss out on when there are no subtitles. (I watch TV with CC on when I can.)

My church is going to get captioning soon too. I'm happy about that.

Jane: Thanks Bill, for all that you do. I'm so glad to meet you and to know a bit about you and your work. Many people have thanked you and I'm delighted to add to the chorus.

Take care and thanks again,

Jane

Greetings,

Marlee Matlin receives her Walk of Fame Hollywood star. Marathon Pundit Blog captures the moment with a video shot by none other than our Deaf Read's Tayler Mayer. Great job Tayler. Many thanks for taking time to shoot and post the clip.

Does anyone else have a video of Marlee with the Star? Did she leave her hand and footprints? I'm sure many of us would like to see that also.

Stay tuned,

Jane

Dear Friends,

A quick note: if you love libraries and history, you'll enjoy this BLOG especially now since it's Deaf History month.

There is much to share and many of us love libraries even if its just to sit and people watch. I've fond memories of browsing in libraries and bookstores. It's difficult not to walk out without a book or two.  Have you read EDGAR SAWTELLE? It's a moving story of a boy who communicates through sign language. When you have the chance, check it out.

Stay tuned,

Jane

Greetings colleagues,

It's been a while since I've posted. It's not that I've forgotten or lost interest. I've been caught up in an exciting project and have been working non-stop with a great team in  coordinating the WORLDEAF Cinema Festival.  Meanwhile I thought you'd enjoy this wonderful jewel of a website: The Bioscope. The site is devoted to early and silent cinema and is just chock full of fascinating information. Check it out and enjoy!

Stay tuned,

Jane