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capri0mniA TED talk-affiliated lecture: TEDxIslay - Wayne Betts Jr. - Deaf Lens
An eighteen and a half minute talk (in ASL) about how the use of a visual language in his everyday life influences how he uses the visual language of film-making to tell a story (Closed Caption Default Track, English). Posted here because I have the impression that I have many film buffs in my circles who are generally interested in How Things are Made, and the ways to Tell Stories, even if you're not interested in American Sign Language in particular.
And then, there are the two films he's made that he cites in his talk:
Vital Signs (3 mins. 19 secs). This one has a captioning track that mentions music and sound effects, but it's actually silent. I suspect that's because the person who uploaded it is actually deaf and would have no way of knowing. But since this was made by a Deaf man for a Deaf audience, the fact that sound is missing doesn't change much.
and:
Gallaudet: The Film (8 mins. 48 secs). This never had any sound to begin with. But he's translated the sign language into English, and embedded it into the film itself, in a way that I think is really cool.
An eighteen and a half minute talk (in ASL) about how the use of a visual language in his everyday life influences how he uses the visual language of film-making to tell a story (Closed Caption Default Track, English). Posted here because I have the impression that I have many film buffs in my circles who are generally interested in How Things are Made, and the ways to Tell Stories, even if you're not interested in American Sign Language in particular.
And then, there are the two films he's made that he cites in his talk:
Vital Signs (3 mins. 19 secs). This one has a captioning track that mentions music and sound effects, but it's actually silent. I suspect that's because the person who uploaded it is actually deaf and would have no way of knowing. But since this was made by a Deaf man for a Deaf audience, the fact that sound is missing doesn't change much.
and:
Gallaudet: The Film (8 mins. 48 secs). This never had any sound to begin with. But he's translated the sign language into English, and embedded it into the film itself, in a way that I think is really cool.
no subject
Date: 2012-03-14 06:23 pm (UTC)I was first introduced to visual communication when I went to a sleep-away camp disabled kids for four summers between the ages of 10 and 13. We were all taught, and encouraged to use, SEE (Signed Exact English), so that we could communicate with the D/deaf students. We were told that this was real Sign Language... which, um... no.
I discovered the truth about ASL when I was 16, and with all the fury of a teenager who discovers she'd been lied to by adults, was determined to learn the TRUTH.
...But, without anyone to practice with, it started to drift out of my head.
Then, 20 years ago, when I was in grad school, I had the opportunity to take ASL 101 and 102 as an immersion language course from a native-signing Deaf professor. Learning the grammar and stuff was hard, but because the visual phonemes had been slipped into my brain just before the critical language window closed at puberty, I seemed to pick up the basics a little bit easier than those in my class who were encountering this mode for the first time ~20.
And then, without continuing to use it, it started to drift away again. A couple of years ago, though, I found SigningOnline.com -- it's not free (about $50 per "semester"), and it's not quite as complete as a college or private course. But it is a lot cheaper than either of those, and it actually does teach things like sentence structure and context and conversational use... and also gives practice homework and mini-tests after each class.
I ... Still don't have anyone to converse with, using ASL, but I've subscribed to a few vloggers on YouTube who are native signers, just so that those neural pathways don't close up completely, even if I need captioning to understand everything.