Choosing Priorities
Week 8 turned out to be a point where we slowly started to see the end for project Signal getting closer. A point that made us proud when looking back at what we hade acchieved so far, but also a point that made us realize that there is not much time left until we will deliver the final pitch video.
Both of us had been in situations like these before and both of us know the feeling of seeing a dateline coming closer and closer, but it is always a chellange to manage to transform those feelings into a push that will make you work even more efficient, while being under pressure. And with that comes a row of decisions you might have to take and duties that you have to rank in low or high priorites.
One thing, that we decided to put focus on was being in touch with the ASL comunity. The week before we had reached out to a number of people who can sign ASL to get help on the translation of our dialogue list and to get feedback from them on the project. We have received a couple of messages and got very interesting thoughts on the project. We found out that most people we reached out to liked it and found it very important that we chose to work with the topic of deafness, however we also got some feedback that highlighted the importance of respect that we have to work with.
Initially we had a hard time finding someone who had time to help us with the translations, but luckily our Mentor Kara offered us to get in touch with her parents since her father grew up as a CODA as well and was able to sign ASL. That was not only really releaving but it was also super nice to meet them through a video call and hear their excitement for the project. They reached out to Kara's aunt, who professionaly signs ASL and only a couple of hours later we already received a video with the translations.
Kara's aunt Lorie translating into ASL
Another thing we concentrated on last week was the music for Signal. We received a first draft for the music from the composer we are working with and gave him some feedback to work with. We will be in touch with him over the next few days and hopefully receive another draft soon.
We also kept working on the pitch video. We started to create an animatic with placeholder footage so we can already get a sense of timing and pacing that we want for the final video and we began to write a script for the interview / voice over the video will have. Furthermore, we got in touch with the school where both of us graduated last summer, because we would like to use one of their photography studios to record the interviews of us for the pitch video.
Scene of the Animatic
We are motivated to push through! Let's keep going!