One of the main characters in my story is an American Sign Language professor a university.

How feasible would it be for a TV show to show people signing with built in captions for those sections? Not for the whole show - the audio is an important part of a tv program - but for a scene or so every couple of episodes?

That sounds reasonable to me. Although another option is to have him talking along with the signing, which is pretty common in my experience.

I've seen one of two things done: speaking as you are signing which is what Grissom of CSI(Las Vegas) does; or, no speaking or subtitles as Gibbs and Abby of NCIS tend to do. it all depends if the information is vital to progess the story for the viewer.

hoped that help in your decision =D

It's a bit like in heroes - if you've seen that. The characters come from all over the world, so naturally some don't speak English. There's some Japanese people that speak in Japanese (obviously) quite a lot, with just subtitles underneath. It works. Your situation isn't exactly the same, but it's similar :) It's good, makes it more interesting and more realistic, because the fact is not everyone can speak English, or whatever =]

A very popular way around this is to have the scenes that involve sign language feature three characters - two who can sign and one who can’t that way you have an excuse/reason to either provide a running commentary of what’s being signed audibly or recap what was said after the scene has finished. That also applies to foreign languages where the translator relays everything that’s been said etc.

There's a character in The West Wing who signs, but they add audio. You could check it out to see how they do it.

Thanks for the advice, everyone. :)

I don't have any problems with her speaking and signing while she's casually talking to people, but the most effective way that I have found to teach ASL is through total immersion - which is what most university professors use to teach. The classroom is a no-speaking zone.

I don't think that it's necessary for the audience to know that she's finishing up an explanation of signing color names in ASL, nessicarily, but I also don't want the audience to be bored or to sit back and say 'hey, what the hell is going on here?' because I leave them for too long without spoken words.

@ anne_sol: Yeah, Joey Lucas! I love the West Wing. :) Joey is a favorite character of mine on there. I believe she is one that speaks while signing - though sometimes it's hard to understand what she is saying. She also walks around with an interpreter who often parrots what she says, just for fun, I suppose.

Again, thanks for the input - anyone with more advice is more than welcome to chime in!

With Joey Lucas, she's usually signing and her interpreter Kenny is speaking for her, although she does sometimes speak herself, you're right. It's great that you're going for verisimilitude with your class! and if it's realistic to have them be silent, then by all means, go ahead and use subtitles. The only issue is that either you need to make it go very quickly, or you (or the director) needs to find a way to insinuate some audio so the audience doesn't get bored.

My suggestion is, if what is being signed in class is not vital to the story, insert something else interesting to be happening for the audience at the same time. You could be setting up a subplot by showing two students passing notes or signing to each other below eye level (or under their desks). You could have a couple visiting characters, who don't "speak" sign-language but are waiting for class to end or for a chance to speak to the professor, they could be talking to each other on the side, and inter-cut it with shots of the professor signing away to the class [as background].

Or if the professor is able to multi-task, they could sign things to the class as they hold a speaking conversation with someone else. And in that case, you could easily explain it, for example: "well can you really talk right now, i mean aren't you teaching a class?" "oh yeah, it's no problem, I'm only teaching them to sign colors. You don't have to concentrate on stuff like that. When i start teaching them ______, then you'll have to wait until after class."

And if what is being signed in a scene is actually vital to the story: then you can have the person verbalize while they sign it, or utilize having to explain it to another character who doesn't understand enough sign, or simply use subtitles. It's your preference, and it really might work well to change-up which you use based on the type of scene or not.

Also, it's not always important if the audience understands what is signed. It can make things interesting and add dimension or emphasis his/her job, just so long as it's not confusing to the audience. A confused audience is a lost audience.

The tv show "Sue Thomas: F. B. Eye" was based upon the true story of a deaf FBI agent named Sue Thomas (it also kinda rocked, in a very low-budget way). It was hailed by the deaf community as portraying deafness realistically, and apparently it as the first tv show to ever include a conversation that happened entirely in subtitled ASL. I think that as long as there is some audio going on (the average person has very little tolerance for silence) you could definitely have subtitled conversations in ASL. Even if it's just the background noise of people having spoken convos while your MCs are signing. And I have to second the comments about Joey Lucas from The West Wing, who totally rocks.