Let’s go to the Movies and Describing Workshops at Saint Joseph School for the Blind
Last September we held our “Let’s go to the Movies” and “Describing” workshops at Saint Joseph School for the Blind in Jersey City, NJ.
On the night of September 29th, we did two simultaneous sessions, one in English and one in Spanish, of “Let’s go to the Movies.” We treated 30 parents and teachers to a short movie clip and had them experience how much the video description enhances the movie viewing experience of a person with visual disabilities. There was such enthusiasm after our workshop that the following week parents and students had a movie nigh at the school, where they watched Hotel Transilvania 2 with video description.
Then, on September 30th, we had a fantastic lunch session with 45 attendees at our workshop “Describing.” We taught teachers, assistants and therapists the rules of professional video description and they experimented it themselves by describing short videos. This was our first ever "Describing" workshop for teachers. After years of working with video description, and delivering several types of video description workshops, we decided to create this one, that is specially designed for describing in the classroom.
We are grateful to our advisor Susan LaVenture, who helped us make these 2 workshops happen, and to Dr. Anthony Lentine, Saint Joseph’s principal, for including us among the new year’s welcoming events. It was a pleasure for us to be there!