Saturday, November 15 2008
Access is all about connection and some great connections were made at the FOXTEL Backstage Access Day on 15 November.
Held in FTC’s Studio A, a group of deaf students from RIDBC had hands-on experience operating a TV camera, having fun with the green-screen and reading their own stories off autocue to camera. Total access was the order of the day as the passionate people from FOXTEL, RIDBC and Media Access Australia joined with Ai-Media to make it happen.
John Icaca, Closed Captioning Manager for FTC, was Master of Ceremonies and break-dancer extraordinaire while Alex Jones, our own Director of Community & Subscriber Relations and erstwhile All Saints star, played talk show host and interviewer. Auslan interpreters and LIVE stenography ensured no-one missed a thing and Ai-Media demonstrated LIVE steno, LIVE speech and offline captioning, before turning our machines over to the kids! The kids from RIDBC had a great time creating their own captions and learning a little more about how captions get to air. There were demos of FOXTEL’S IQ, Gaming Portal and the Electronic Programming Guide and some fantastic impromptu performances from hidden stars.
The smiles said it all – students, teachers and the FTC & Ai teams. We can’t wait to get together with some more kids and FOXTEL for another Backstage Access day early next year.
