‘The Tuba Thieves’ Director and Cast Emphasize Experience of Sound, Call for Better Captioning (Video)

“Any hearing person can become deaf at any time or place. The time is now,” Warren Snipe told TheWrap

“The Tuba Thieves” director Alison O’Daniel took inspiration for her feature film from a series of tuba thefts from local LA high schools that she heard about on the radio. But instead of investigating the questions of who the thieves were and where the tubas ended up, she decided to make a film about the impacted band students and directors. Motivated by curiosity of peoples’ experiences with sound, she focused on creating a listening project.

Manuel Castañeda, who plays himself in the film, was one of the first people she contacted about the project. Geovanny Marroquin, one of the main characters, and Aija Jones play themselves as Castañeda’s band students. She also enlisted Nyke (Nyeisha Prince) as a main character, with whom she had worked on a previous film, after remembering Nyke’s experience with drumming. 11 years later, the film premiered at Sundance 2023.

Warren “Wawa” Snipe, who plays fictional character Arcey in the film, enjoyed this acting role because he got to be most like himself and contribute to making the film accessible for deaf people like himself, but also for worldwide audiences. Snipe’s character and “Nature Boy” (played by deaf actor Russell Harvard), flesh out Nyke’s narrative. Both actors, in addition to director O’Daniel, emphasized the need for improvement around captions.

“I’ve always needed captions and I’ve had so many experiences where I’m just sitting there experiencing a lot of anger, which is not what’s happening in whatever I’m watching, and what makes me the most angry is censorship in captions, like if there’s a curse word, and it’s been said, but then in the captions, it’s not there for the deaf audience,” O’Daniel told Adam Chitwood during a conversation at TheWrap’s Portrait and Video Studio at The Music Lodge. “Something like the use of a music symbol. I feel like that’s basically saying there’s something happening, but you don’t get to know what it is, but I’m telling you I want you to know that it’s happening. There’s this confusing thing that can happen in accessibility where the intention of accessibility is good, but you you can feel the lack of depth in it. It was just so obvious that captioning was going to be like almost one of the characters in the film.”

Harvard piggybacked off O’Daniel’s music point.

“When you see like lyrics on screen, there’s no subtitles detailing what’s going on. People love music, they can hear the music and so we’re sitting there wondering what’s going on in the actual film and oftentimes, I have to rely on apps like Shazam to even tell me what’s happening in the music,” he said. “So I know that it was nuanced. It was very descriptive of what the sounds like was very detailed, and I just can’t explain enough how vital that is for deaf people, hard of hearing people, individuals that experience hearing loss and it’s not just them. I mean, even Geovanny sitting here behind me enjoyed watching the captions during the film because it helped him kind of progress through the story.”

Marroquin stated earlier in the interview that the film helped him appreciate the little things he can hear.

“Watching the film, I was looking at the captions and they really caught what sound effects were using letters and that was really cool, actually,” he said.

Snipes added that open captions and their framework of accessibility needs improvement.

“If we want something to be accessible, honestly, it’s a need, we have to provide that. And then you have open captions, which is also an important aspect as well. To exemplify what limitations we face, oftentimes, open caption films are limited to one showing per week or per month. So that’s all we have access [to]. Deaf people have full lives, they might not be available at that specific timeframe to go see the movie,” he signed. “If open captions are made available at any showing for any film that would help not just the deaf and hard of hearing moviegoers but also those who are learning the language of English. So it’s not just narrow, it’s not just focused or pinpointed to the deaf community. It actually has much broader, broader context. When we think about a population of 70 million deaf people in this country, think about the the loss or the gap there that’s happening. Any hearing person can become deaf at any time or place. The time is now. It’s lacking,” he said.

Director O’Daniel credited “The Tuba Thieves” director of ASL Jonas McMillan with the comparison of directors of ASL to intimacy coordinators in terms of how realizing the need for something can lead to the establishment of employed experts who become part of the status quo.

“An intimacy coordinator was not a thing that was on sets for many years until recently, and now intimacy coordinators are included in the union, but directors of ASL are still absolutely outside,” she summarized. “Similar to captions, there are changes that happen that can become normalized just because they’re needed and it becomes clear.”

Hearing actors Jones, Marroquin and Castañeda hail from Compton. Castañeda added that while the film dismantled systems exclusive to deafness, it also shed a different light on their hometown.

“Compton, it’s so infamously known for our high crime and just negative stereotype[s] have been perpetuated for several years,” he said. “So I just wanted to bring about change and bring our city our community in a more positive light.”

TheWrap’s Portrait and Video Studio at The Music Lodge during the 2023 Sundance Film Festival is sponsored by NFP along with support from Sylvania and HigherDOSE

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