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By Deanna Baker Here is an age-old question: How do you get experience when only experienced people are hired? A soon-to-be captioner can do many things to prepare for captioning local news. One obvious answer is to attend one of the many captioning training seminars to get hands-on guidance from experienced captioners and to learn more about writing styles, format, hardware, and software. Even o…
Categories: Captioning
By Deanna Baker I keep hearing about having "backup equipment" in my captioning home office. What exactly does that mean? Excellent question! This could have various meanings depending on the captioning company standards, but here is a list of basics. I would categorize these items as the backups you would need to successfully go on air should any of your usual equipment fail. For instance, if you…
list of captioning articles
Categories: CART, Captioning
By Deanna Baker Over the years I've come across many tidbits of good advice for captioners. Some of these tips are things I've learned on my own, but some are from friends and colleagues in my network of captioners. Here's what we've learned, in no particular order. Make sure you know which outlets on your UPS, or uninterrupted power source, provide surge protection and which provide both sur…
By Deanna Baker I have been approached with a few situations that independent captioners have been facing. Unknown End Times One scenario is when a government meeting runs shorter or longer than expected. One person asked me, “I was contracted to cover a government meeting from 3-4 p.m. but the meeting only went ten minutes. How do I charge for that?” Government-type meetings, councils, board of s…
By Deanna Baker Here are some questions posed to me by a new captioner. Is local news captioning the bottom-of-the-barrel type of work for news captioning? It's just so hard because of all the local names, places, etc. The answer is ... it depends. Yes, local news is tough, but once you're well prepared for it and if you work for the same station on a regular basis, it makes the show much…
By Deanna Baker The answer is twofold depending on the work that you're captioning. What would apply to all scenarios would be what is called designated phone lines, meaning no call-waiting beeps or other interruptions. First scenario: If you are captioning a program that you can see on television or satellite, one phone line will be necessary to send your data (captions) through your computer/c…
By Deanna Baker I asked a few captioning friends of mine, "What was the strangest thing you did during a commercial break while captioning?" In order to preserve my friendships, I am granting everyone anonymity. One December I was captioning a program in the evening. Everybody else was out, and I was alone in the house. My office is right at the front of the house and can be seen from the street o…
By Deanna Baker I've mentioned a few terms, and I wanted to take the time to explain a few of them. Realtime captions: Realtime captions are used during live programming or programming that hasn't had time to have post-production captions put on. Live captioning is performed by captioners watching or listening to the program and sending their captions, or data, through telephone lines to the loca…
By Deanna Baker An online student asked me what the best theory is if you want to caption. For help with this issue, I turned to caption theory experts Kathy DiLorenzo, FAPR, RDR, CRR, CRC, and Amy Bowlen, FAPR, RDR, CRR, CRC. Kathy responded, "The best theory for captioners? I'd say a realtime theory, no?" All kidding aside, that has to be the answer: A realtime theory. It doesn't matter which …
Categories: Captioning, Employment Opportunities