Watching: Auslan videos

For work recently I've been converting some videos made in Auslan (Australian Sign Language).

They are set up like a morning tv talk show, with host and guest doing an interview on a comfy couch in a pastel studio - just with no sound.

At uni, it was drummed into me endlessly by my film teacher (and I thank him for it to this day) that the pictures are only half of the film/video - the soundtrack is equally important but generally is not treated as such.

This is the obvious exception. (That said, I was still surprised at first that there was no sound at all and had to call and check if there was meant to be any - old habits die hard)

It is said that when (hearing) people communicate, they get something like 93% of the meaning of the conversation from non-verbal cues - body language, facial expressions and the like. (Not sure if tone of voice applies here - I guess not). This makes it interesting to watch someone signing, as it's all non-verbal. Does the 93% rule still apply or is there some other equation drawn into the mix?

This isn't one of the videos that I've been working on (not sure about the copyright issues) but it is a good example of the expressiveness that comes into Auslan.



There are the hand gestures but there are also a range of facial expressions.

This next one is kind of interesting as well in that the resolution is a fair bit lower, which raises the question, how detailed are these gestures and how large does the screen need to be to convey the conversation in a video. (A question I'm working on at the moment with our Auslan teacher)(Update: apparently the 320 x 240 is too small, she prefers the 720 x 576)



A few other random thoughts that come to mind:

Do people sign differently when they are drunk, angry/fighting, distracted, have sore hands?

Wouldn't it have been cool if there was a moment in the Buffy episode "Hush" - the one where monsters steal everyone's voices - if there were a couple of deaf people signing to each other going - "what are these people all freaking out about?"

How do you work around the use of voiceover in videos? (Subtitles?)

Am I invading people's privacy by posting these videos? (Well, they put them up on YouTube)

What about "singing" along to music? (Actually, this is one of those questions you ask when you already know the answer - here's a final video where someone is signing a song - it's Savage Garden so I'm guessing it can only be an improvement) (Damn it, it had to be the only Auslan video where they have the sound on it :)