A Helping Hand for Production Studios
Hand in Hand Productions is a video production company offering pre-production planning, scripting, voice over talent, visual effects, and final delivery of live-streamed events, as well as recorded videos and advertisements. Always putting their client needs first, Hand in Hand uses VITAC captions to make sure their clients’ videos can reach the largest possible audience.
Live-streaming events is nothing new for the experienced production company, but with more and more town hall style events being streamed online in recent years, the company found themselves with new customers who had different needs.
“Our client already had ASL (American Sign Language) but wanted both ASL and captioning,” says Matt Hand of the produced live web streams they now offer regularly with captions for their client. VITAC was able to provide captions via our
Zoom integration, which Hand streams to YouTube with captions.
“Having an accessibility partner who cares has made all the difference. The support from you folks has been stellar. There’s this active interest from everyone to solve any problems as quickly as possible.”
VITAC’s technical knowhow, customer integrations and commitment to customer service, powered by a large staff of support team members and human captioners, enable Hand in Hand Productions to offer greater accessibility in online events for their clients.
●A custom Zoom integration ensuring captions on Zoom and Youtube live events.
●A dedicated and highly responsive support team, available 24/7.
●Professional human captioners who understand the nuances of language, and who bring human sensitivities and contextual awareness to the captioning table.
●Expanded accessibility option for their customers.
Hand points out that while he believes captioning is acting in good conscience, he’s also grateful it’s another service he can now confidently offer to clients. “Knowing that I have (VITAC) supporting me, I can I feel very comfortable saying if it’s Zoom, or whatever it is, we can provide that captioning service.”
While automated captioning solutions have worked for some, Hand was dissatisfied with the quality of other vendors, particularly when noting that
automated captions routinely mis-captioned a regular client name! “To know that when someone says it, it comes out right on the screen, that’s critical,” Hand says.
Finding a provider who used human captioners and offered quality customer service was the other important factor in choosing VITAC. “I had tried somebody else before you guys and it was disastrous,” says Hand. “It was absolutely the worst experience I’ve ever had to just do work with them, and I was just getting no response. From the whole onboarding process to our first event with you folks it has been pretty seamless.”
Hand views the captions as the right thing to do, and the way forward for video content. He is taking an active role in encouraging clients and other groups to provide accessible content wherever possible. To further spur this effort, he is working to collaborate with local organizations to write a grant to purchase a captioning encoder. The encoder would then be utilized by multiple groups
in their Central Oregon area to make it easier to provide accessible videos and live streams. “I know there’s a lot of organizations that do this and it’d be great to try to figure out out a way to make everything better for them.”
“I really want to take an active role in trying to encourage a lot of other clients to provide this service, provide streams that have captioning. I just think that’s the right thing to do.”
Founded in 2004 by Matt Hand, Hand in Hand Productions has been specializing in media production projects and events for 18 years. Their services include video production as well as collaborative story and message crafting, content distribution, audio visual equipment rental and support, and live streaming for high quality web meetings, town hall style events, concerts, and events like the annual TEDxBend in Bend, Oregon, which serves to build community and share “Ideas Worth Spreading” in the Central Oregon area.
