08 Feb Staff Profile: Steffani Cameron
This month we’re featuring Steffani Cameron! 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!
What You Did Before Line 21: I have had a very fun work life, really. I’ve done a lot of retail managing and things to do with words. I was a librarian in college, managed a photo lab in the Yukon, sold books, managed a Thomas the Tank toy store.
Favourite Part of the Job: From the company standpoint, I like getting it right. I like that I’m not rushed to do “fast” work but instead asked to do the best I can. From the captioning perspective, I really love working on smart comedic projects, like the fun youth series Mr. Young, because they take a real art to get the captioning timed in the perfect way that we don’t blow the punchline or miscommunicate the important details, and I think I do it really well and I love the challenge of living up to the joke.
Favourite Projects You’ve Worked On: We’ve done a bazillion! How do we choose? So tough. Series I’ve loved that have died young, like Dead Like Me and J-Pod were the kind of days where it didn’t feel like I was working at all. I really like quirky independent movies, like Becoming Redwood, short-lived series like J-Pod as well as SyFy’s groovy adaptation mini-series Tin Man and Alice. Dramas like Da Vinci’s Inquest were killer hard to do but so satisfying to be a part of. And I have a guilty love of the Hallmark films I’ve been lucky to do a lot of, with my two favourites being Duke and Christmas In Canaan. But, gosh, there are so many.
Best Memory About Working at Line 21: Pick any Christmas party! I don’t think I really have many stories of work at Line 21 because how exciting can it get when you’re watching videos all day, right? But now that I don’t work with the team anymore (they let me flee to Victoria and work from home), I miss all the weird grammar geek conversations and the way we’d always banter back and forth about the shows we work on. It’s just a great place to be.
Favourite Vancouver Restaurant and Why: I’d say the Afghan Horseman was a long favourite but I haven’t been back in a while. We did our Christmas party there too, once. It’s just wonderful food, authentic, lovely service, and if you get to sit on the floor in the Afghan room, I’m sure you’ll find it one of the most relaxing meals out ever! For something more accessible, and less horizontal, I love Burgoo for its messy, cheesy, mind-blowing French Onion Soup.
Favourite Place to Travel: Roadtrips are great. Favourite BC places are Tofino and Nelson. Remote and awesome.
Best Travel Memory: A lot of my travel memories are great for personal reasons, but one fond memory from a California roadtrip when I was college-aged was when I stayed at a hostel in Sacramento and made friends with a couple folks from different countries. The three of us just wandered the empty downtown core talking until dawn, but at about 3am we passed under a second-floor club where it turned out the band Cake was indoors practicing with all the windows open, since there were no residences there and they weren’t amped too loud. We sat under the windows talking and listening to the rehearsal for an hour or two. The night stands out for me.
