Neve Holland

What is your name?

Neve Holland

What role do you do?

I have various roles within the office, probably due to my inability to say no! When I joined the Complete Comms team, I worked within bookings, dealing primarily with booking and organising various support, whether that be Disabled Student Allowance (DSA), Access-To-Work (ATW) or Training opportunities.

Over the summer of that year, I trained in finance, which I surprisingly loved. I liked the methodical nature of it and the way that there was a clear answer for everything. During this time, I also trained to be able to mark our electronic notetaking course.

Now, I work as the Client Experience Co-Ordinator within our sister company Complete Independence. We work to deliver person-centred support within the community to encourage people to live fulfilling and independent lives. Some may call me a Jack of all trades (hopefully, I’m a master of at least one!).

In March of this year, I, along with six other members of the team, undertook training to become a Theatre Captioner. Captioning is a form of live subtitling in which the speaker’s or actors’ words appear on a screen, projection or smart device, which provides scrolling text as they are spoken to make events accessible to those who require it. Captions can be displayed above, to the side, or creatively added within a theatre production on sets and backgrounds.

The training took place over two days, was pretty intense and has continued as part of a CPD training group. It was amazing to have the opportunity to get stuck in and learn whilst using the equipment. It was interesting to learn about the technicalities of the equipment, and the technology behind it, even if it didn’t make much sense to me!

Why did you choose this role?

When the training was proposed to us, I was a bit apprehensive, as it is a huge responsibility to caption a show. I wouldn’t want to complete the training and then be rubbish at it! But I spoke to Daryl about the fundamental aspects of the role and the motivation behind providing this service, which convinced me to partake in training and agree to caption Mamma Mia in June! The bottom line is that you are directly making a difference to the audience. Because of the service we are providing, the show is accessible – how amazing is that!

What do you enjoy the most about your role?

Once we had all been trained, I got allocated to caption Mamma Mia the musical at the Hall for Cornwall in June. It was daunting to commit to such a big show, but I felt quietly confident as I already knew all of the songs of by heart (Mamma Mia is my favourite film). What came after that was hours and hours of watching a recording of the show repeatedly, making notes of sound effects and musical descriptions, and trying to pick apart who was singing what, which became the bane of my life.

I have found the experience of prepping for a show to be quite fun. I have been able to really focus and apply all of my attention to that one task, which has been a nice interlude from the usual craziness of the office. I also love Mamma Mia, so I will take any excuse to sit and watch the show!

The thing I have struggled with the most is the musical descriptions. It is easy enough to input a script and format it in the appropriate way, but describing music is so much more difficult than I expected. If a piece of music is underscoring dialogue, how do you describe it? Do you say which instruments are playing, how fast the music is, or the emotion it is trying to evoke? You have to answer many questions, and the worst bit is, it is all down to you! I am notoriously bad at making decisions, let alone when I know an audience of 1,200 people will watch my decisions on a big screen.

What are your favourite aspects of being part of the office team?

As I said, the office tends to be pretty hectic, which I love. I couldn’t imagine working somewhere boring! The great thing about the team is that none of us really have a filter, so if you think something, you say it. We have these ridiculous ‘would you rather cards’ that we do every day that always leads to some funny discussions.

What is your favourite moment/story from within the office?

When someone asks you what your favourite film is, your mind goes blank… that has happened to me. I think the ‘Would You Rather’ cards have led to some of the funniest conversations in the office. For a while, we had a competition every Friday where we all had to do a gymnastic move, and Jasper would rate them. Seeing Holly try and do a roly-poly is something I wouldn’t wish upon my worst enemy, but it was funny.

Any tips or advice you would share to those who are in similar roles?

I recently had a meeting with the person who trained us, and he explained musical descriptions in a way that made it more approachable. He said that in theatre, music is used to create an emotion. In order to portray the message of the show, you need to figure out what that emotion is. Why has that piece of music been added there? What does it make the audience feel? Once you have the answer to that, it makes it much easier to describe the music. The show I am captioning is taking place in two days, so from now until then you will find me at my laptop, frantically trying to figure out why the directors of Mamma Mia decided to add a musical interlude at every opportunity.

To find out more about our out upcoming captioned events, check out our events calendar!