Because I had a documentary film, it made sense to broadcast
it over the air for free on TV (I should say free for anyone to view, not free for me to play it. Buying air time was actually pretty expensive.) This
might not make sense for most projects, but I’ll tell you why I did it.
First and foremost, I wanted to make sure that everyone in the area had an opportunity to see the documentary without having to purchase a copy. I think it's important information for people to have no matter where they live, but most especially in Western North Carolina where the documentary was shot. Having it broadcast also made it eligible for awards like the Emmys and I wanted to have a chance to enter it. I should hear if it's nominated in May. Keep your fingers crossed.
In order to have it broadcast, it had to be closed captioned. There are multiple ways to close caption a film both in how you create the captioning and how you deliver the film with captioning. I used Adobe Premiere to caption and I ended up needed 2 types of files for delivery. For broadcast I had to embed the closed captioning in a quicktime file. Later for selling on Amazon I had to create a separate file called a scenarist closed caption or .scc file.
After having done the work myself, I now know that I'll probably hire someone next time. It's not that expensive to have a company do it for you and it's so worth the money. Captioning was long and extremely tedious, but I'm glad for the experience and for gaining a better understanding of how it all works.
I had some difficulty finding a local station that would air my movie because it's a point of view documentary. Here's a link to a previous post with more on that.
Warning the follow is boring technical information. Only Read this if you want more info on captioning in Adobe Premiere CC:
1. You can import a file into premiere or do it from scratch. I made mine from scratch. Right click in your project window and choose "new item - closed caption" (bottom right of the project window.) The default is CEA-608 and CC1.
2. You won't be able to see any captions until you go to the upper right corner menu in your program and source monitors and click on "closed caption display - enable." But that alone isn't enough. You must make sure you are enabling CEA-608 (the default on the monitor was CEA-607 for me. You won't see the captions unless the type you are making matches what you've set to display!)
3. To edit your captions go to the "window" menu and click on "captions" to see the window you'll need to edit in. Click on the add a new item in the bottom of the project window and choose "captions." (make sure you have selected the caption file in your timeline to see it in the captions window.)
4. Hit the plus button to add a caption and start typing. You can see the in and out in the timeline, but to change the in and out you have to adjust the time code in the project window. Text doesn't wrap, so you have to do a hard return at the end of each line.
Those are the basics. If you have an specific questions leave a comment. Hope that saves you a little frustration in your captioning endeavors.
First and foremost, I wanted to make sure that everyone in the area had an opportunity to see the documentary without having to purchase a copy. I think it's important information for people to have no matter where they live, but most especially in Western North Carolina where the documentary was shot. Having it broadcast also made it eligible for awards like the Emmys and I wanted to have a chance to enter it. I should hear if it's nominated in May. Keep your fingers crossed.
In order to have it broadcast, it had to be closed captioned. There are multiple ways to close caption a film both in how you create the captioning and how you deliver the film with captioning. I used Adobe Premiere to caption and I ended up needed 2 types of files for delivery. For broadcast I had to embed the closed captioning in a quicktime file. Later for selling on Amazon I had to create a separate file called a scenarist closed caption or .scc file.
After having done the work myself, I now know that I'll probably hire someone next time. It's not that expensive to have a company do it for you and it's so worth the money. Captioning was long and extremely tedious, but I'm glad for the experience and for gaining a better understanding of how it all works.
I had some difficulty finding a local station that would air my movie because it's a point of view documentary. Here's a link to a previous post with more on that.
Warning the follow is boring technical information. Only Read this if you want more info on captioning in Adobe Premiere CC:
1. You can import a file into premiere or do it from scratch. I made mine from scratch. Right click in your project window and choose "new item - closed caption" (bottom right of the project window.) The default is CEA-608 and CC1.
2. You won't be able to see any captions until you go to the upper right corner menu in your program and source monitors and click on "closed caption display - enable." But that alone isn't enough. You must make sure you are enabling CEA-608 (the default on the monitor was CEA-607 for me. You won't see the captions unless the type you are making matches what you've set to display!)
3. To edit your captions go to the "window" menu and click on "captions" to see the window you'll need to edit in. Click on the add a new item in the bottom of the project window and choose "captions." (make sure you have selected the caption file in your timeline to see it in the captions window.)
4. Hit the plus button to add a caption and start typing. You can see the in and out in the timeline, but to change the in and out you have to adjust the time code in the project window. Text doesn't wrap, so you have to do a hard return at the end of each line.
Those are the basics. If you have an specific questions leave a comment. Hope that saves you a little frustration in your captioning endeavors.
