The video shoot with Christian was the quietest our team has ever experienced. And one of the most exciting: Christian is deaf and speaks Sign language.
The colleagues are worried: "Are you all right?" - "Yes, why?" - "You can't hear anything. That's strange."
You have to hand it to them: Television is not usually a quiet business. People like to talk quickly and louder than usual, they throw one last thought through a closing studio door and someone is constantly running in the corridor because they have to get somewhere quickly with the things they are carrying, somewhere they should have been long ago.
The quietest shoot we've ever had
None of this happens today. At the end of the day in the TV studio, the cameraman says: "That was the quietest shoot I've ever had." The same applies to me. "It's our protagonist's fault, who doesn't say a single word in eight hours of work together, smiles a lot and forces us to be quiet.
If he needs to be powdered, you have to wave beforehand, otherwise he won't know that he has to lift his chin. So that we don't need his interpreter Matthias for every little thing ("to the right, to the left, up, down, one step to the side please ..."), we pretend as much as possible, make faces and talk awkwardly with our hands and feet.
Christian is having a great time with our clumsiness. He was born deaf and is supposed to tell us his story today - in Sign language.
I realised after the first cigarette break: You don't just do it with your hands and feet, but with your whole body. The upper extremities are joined by the face, the mouth, the hips. Everything is also used to emphasise, accentuate, add points and exclamation marks.
A gesture for Bavaria
Signers are one third mime artists, one third circus performers, one third dialect coaches. Because sign language has everything that spoken language has: regional differences, its own grammar, misunderstandings, rhetorical slips. The Hamburg gesture for Bavaria is much more polite than the one in Berlin and whether someone has just signed "Leipzig" or "Cologne" is not necessarily clear either.
What is clear is that everyone is having fun and enjoying the new experience. My cameraman is occasionally so busy describing the progress of things on Facebook on his mobile phone. So much so that he can't keep up with his actual work. "Did you know that there are dialects in sign language? Have an exciting day. Results in a few weeks on iwwit.de," he lets the outside world know.
Speed even without sound
Christian, on the other hand, is surprised by the speed at which work is done here. What we shoot here in a day and a half would normally take him weeks to translate texts, set up the studio beforehand, think about the exact gestures and discuss with friends whether everything is right and correct.
It is, sign language interpreter Matthias lets us know. And it will look great, we promise.
After another two days of adding graphics, editing and subtitling, that's it. Even if there is always the same reaction: People who work a lot on computers are initially irritated when watching the videos and fiddle with their volume controls, only to smile and say: "Oh yes, there's no sound."
No, you can do without it. Everything is still clear. See above.
(Paul Schulz)
Information about IWWIT and tips on safer sex in sign language
