Watch Medical Scenes like a BOSS!
You’ve heard the terms below used time and again in medical dramas. They trip off actors' tongues like they know what they’re talking about...
You’ve heard the terms below used time and again in medical dramas. They trip off actors' tongues like they know what they’re talking about...
A big part of the job of captioning and transcribing is watching television shows, movies, and other digital media very closely. Sometimes over and over again. This attention to content pays off in unexpected ways. 1. We can recognize a bargain. I learned that to make...
If you caption enough cooking shows, you’ll pick up commonly used terms and become aware early on of the emerging buzzwords. Below are a few of our favourites. beurre noisette Browned butter used for cooking. anti-griddle A kitchen appliance that instantly freezes (or semi-freezes) food. beurre blanc A hot butter sauce...
Technology has changed everything. Time was, to work in the captioning industry, you needed an awkward double-monitor + CPU + VHS player set-up in order to get the job done. It was cumbersome, heavy, and expensive. Furthermore, it tied captioners and scripters to their office desks,...
Last month, we looked at what it’s like to be an employee working remotely. This month, we’re going to look at having remote staff from the employers’ perspective. Not surprisingly, things look different from the other side of the fence! The happy news is that, regardless...
When Carolyn Vetter Hicks and Kelly Maxwell founded Line 21 back in 1994, they were thrilled to have the opportunity to shape the company the way they wanted. They committed to providing exceptional quality captioning and transcribing, to always approaching work playfully, to trying to...
Line 21 has been in business for 20 years now. And, while we’ve had a great deal of fun along the way, we’ve also learned a thing or two about surviving as small business owners. Below are three very practical lessons we’ve learned (sometimes the hard...
[caption id="attachment_1274" align="alignnone" width="415"] Ever hear music lyrics differently from what they actually are?There's a name for that.[/caption] We’re all familiar with the phenomenon of misheard lyrics. There’s the one about Santa’s other reindeer. You know: Olive. As in “Olive, the other reindeer,” misheard from “all...
A huge growth market for Line 21 is transcribing raw footage and interviews for reality TV shows. As you may know, reality TV shows shoot huge quantities of digital footage, most of which is boring or mundane (even to the point of monitoring empty rooms...
We’re thrilled to have Steffani Cameron, caption timer here at Line 21, take over our newsletter and blog this month and then again in July. Welcome Steffani! If you don’t need captioning, you probably don’t “see it” in the same way as someone who relies on...
Steffani Cameron – Caption Editor
Steffani Cameron is a Twitter luminary in her own right, Steff has been working with us as a caption timer since 1998. With her wicked sense of humour and joie de vivre, she lights up every project she works on. Little known fact: she has the skills of a general contractor, as well as being an excellent writer and chef. Additional fact: Steffani was also Line 21’s VideoTape Saviour back in the day of VHS if any machine ate the tape. The horror, the horror!
Will Richter – Script Editor
Will has been our go-to script editor since 2005, working with Leslie Foster to produce post production scripts of all descriptions and complexities, from the simple to the beyond micro-detailed. He is a hugely valued team player and accomplished writer and editor in lots of genres. If you’ve had any dealings with our script department in the last eight years, Will has likely worked on your show!
Siri Arnet – Caption Editor
Siri is an artist, musician, and TV junkie born and bred in Vancouver, BC. While completing her Fine Arts degree at SFU, Siri worked as a production artist at the award-winning animation company International Rocketship, and so began a love affair with Vancouver’s film industry and the joys of visual storytelling. When not working and voraciously watching television, Siri fills her time with ever-expanding creative projects. We are incredibly lucky to have the brilliant and talented Siri Arnet on staff. Not only is she a fine artist and musician with several special projects always on the go, she’s also one of our senior caption timers and has been with us since 2002. Siri is clever and fun and a joy to work with, and we hope you get to meet her sometime!
Dawn Simpson – Senior Caption Editor
Having been with our company since 1998, Dawn, Senior Caption Editor, has worn many hats at Line 21; she has done everything from captioning, scripting, and subtitling to employee hiring and training, marketing, scheduling, and project coordinating. So she knows our company– and the industry– inside out. She has a degree in Communication Studies and Women’s Studies, and brings her proofreading and customer relations experience to Line 21.
Leslie Foster – Script Department Supervisor
Meet our Script Department Supervisor, Leslie! Leslie has been with Line 21 for 14 years, starting out as a caption editor in 1998. Today, Leslie manages the entire script department and works hard to deliver the best quality scripts to clients. Leslie started in the film and television industry in 1997 after studying photography at Ryerson University. From raw footage transcription to CCSLs, Leslie’s crew can do it all, on time, and with the best quality in the business. When not at work and whenever possible, a daring sense of adventure often finds Leslie far from home, camera in hand, and more than once wondering why that chicken she just ordered was served with paws.
Patricia Dziekan – Project & Digital Content Creator
Patricia Dziekan is Line 21’s customer care specialist and back-office admin. She is also Line 21’s social media guru, helping us to connect with Facebook and Twitter. She’d love to post a blurb about your project; if you have anything to promote, please let her know. She went to film school, worked at the airport, and ran my own cell phone and computer business. That was when Rogers was called Cantel and the “hot phone” was the Motorola 550 Flip Phone. It was an analog phone and we couldn’t keep it in stock, because it went out the door so fast. I see you can buy it on e-Bay now for about $45. Favourite part of her work is getting to see all kinds of projects that I would normally never have the chance to see as well as meeting clients face to face. We do most of our communication through email, so I don’t know what most of them even look like. Yesterday, I finally met someone that I’ve been working with for 9 years!
Carolyn Vetter Hicks – Director, Co-founder
Carolyn Vetter Hicks is the co-owner, and incorporated the company with Kelly Maxwell in 1994 and hasn’t looked back since. The two have been friends since Grade 8, when they were living in Richmond, playing softball and skating with the Connaught Figure Skating Club.Working with language and communication was a natural fit. A master of languages, Carolyn is fluent in English, French, and German, and dangerous in Italian and Spanish… as well as Arabic, Flemish, Dutch… Try her. Carolyn is the immensely skilled organizer behind the mammoth task of scheduling at Line 21, and is able both to schedule weeks at a time and turn a schedule on a dime. Carolyn is known for her wicked sense of humour, her uncanny impersonations, her razor-sharp scheduling mind, and her enthusiasm. She loves languages, travelling, Florence (among other wonderful places), and la dolce vita!
Kelly Duncan Maxwell – Director, Co-founder
Kelly is the director and co-founder (in 1994) of Line 21 along with Carolyn. She holds a BA in Cultural Anthropology and a Master’s degree in French Cultural history, and is proud to be able to spell Bakbakwalanooksiwae on demand. She is an unrelenting trouble-shooter, for which she would like to thank Mr. Vanags and the grade nine comp sci class that taught her flowcharting. She was a caption editor at Western Captioning in Gastown. Before that, I was an Anthropology graduate, History grad student, prep cook, office manager, sports association manager, Dbase 3+ hacker, tax preparer, and mental health worker. I flipped burgers in the Pit Pub at UBC for two years in the late ’80s—I recognize a lot of people around town from those years. In the early ’80s, I worked at Ticketmaster (with Carolyn Hicks) and also at Le Chateau.