Dispatches from the World of Deaf--Beyond Silence Part 3

This post will concentrate primarily on all my technical challenges during the shoot.
According to my earlier post, all my interviews barring a few had all the ‘talking’ done through Signs. I did not use any external audio equipment throughout the shoot. My interviews with the deaf subjects were all shot in their own mother tongue, the Indian Sign language.

This is the way we operated: I conveyed the question to my interpreter in English/Hindi, she explained it to the deaf subjects through signs. After my interviewee had understood the question he/she would answer it again in sign, and then I would have the interpreter summarize it for me on camera. This was to facilitate my understanding about the content of their signs.

During my first interview I had resorted to on the spot interpreting, but my interpreter is not a professional yet, at times she took time to understand their signs that would lead to slightly delayed interpreting ( India has 21 official spoken languages, though the country today has a single Indian Sign Language, the ‘dialectic’ version of sign languages are very much prevalent in the day to day communication of the deaf people, this aspect very often poses a tough challenge for the interpreters). Also I intended to have the natural sounds in the background during their interviews to establish the location, situation and general look and feel of the city.This was perhaps the most important reason. Using the mode of on the spot interpreting would have spoilt the entire feel of capturing the natural sound. This documentary will have the use of captions and subtitling all through out. I am still not sure if I am going to use my interpreter's voice as a voice-over for the text on the screen. Personally I feel subtitles, can actually lead to lot of reading while watching the images, I have always found it a bit agonizing after few minutes. For that very purpose, I got all my interviews shot in sign language interpreted again by my interpreter, just for the audio purpose. I have audio files recorded seperately which can give me an option of using or not using it. Lets see!

However, I do have interviews shot in spoken words as well. The interviews with the hearing parents, the interview with Michael Morgan , the Director of Ishara foundation, the one and only one institute in India that works to empower the Deaf in the country through education using bilingual communication.

With regards to the technical aspects, some of the other challenges were; adequate lack of space and lighting conditions. Our interviews were shot mostly in people’s houses and in the Ishara foundation. Much to my surprise and paranoia I found on the very first day that the walls of the Ishara foundation were painted with blue color paint! Most of my B-roll was shot in that one room painted in blue. This place was very small and always filled with students, instructors and the staff. The houses that we visited to shoot with the interviewees also did not have the best lighting conditions. I had no extra budget planned to hire expensive lights for both indoor as well as outdoor shooting. We resorted to shooting maximum in the day light. But more than a couple of times we had to shoot very late in the night, at that time we used a very basic tungsten-halogen light. During the day time shooting, amidst those blue walls and not well lit homes, often the cameraman had to keep the iris full open to get the right amount of brightness in the viewfinder.

Most of the shooting for the documentary has happened by using hand held camera technique. Reasons; lack of space and occurence of too many events at the same time. But all along what has been very intriguing and a revelation for me is the bursting of the myth that the interpretation of the sign language is the exact translation of the content. Much later in my production, I realised that not knowing their language has left me to understand only the 'interpretation' of the Deaf's thoughts. Until I learn the language myself I will perhaps never know what did they actually say or rather meant. For the time being I would be concentrating on my views and conclusions about all the communication I had with them only through interpreting.

To be continued................