06/03/2024
Happy Birthday, Morpheyes Studio! Five years ago today, seven Deaf students formed NTID’s first Deaf-led film studio and blazed a new path forward for Deaf students on campus. By providing Deaf artists with an accessible place to develop their filmmaking skills, NTID amplifies Deaf creators to tell their own stories through Morpheyes. Cheers to more authentic Deaf and Disabled stories making waves!
Descriptive Transcript: The video opens with white text being typed across a black screen and a blinking yellow underline to show the letters being typed: “Five years ago…” The text slowly fades while a video fades up in the background, showing two of the original founders–Natasha and Rajay–sitting against a dull blue background. Natasha asks Rajay a question in ASL while captions appear onscreen in a regular TV closed captions style: “What do you think Morpheyes will be like in 5 years?” Rajay considers this, looking up and exhaling sharply before the video cuts off to black.
White text is typed across the screen in all caps with the same blinking yellow type effect: “Morpheyes Studio.” Underneath in regular white text is “Est. June 3, 2019.” The text fades to a black screen.
The next sequence shows several clips of Morpheyes team members and various productions from 2019 through to 2024. An extreme close-up of someone’s eye opening, team members in front of a green screen, a film project being edited onscreen, an extreme close-up of someone’s face twitching their lips, three team members sitting in front of the same dull blue background as earlier, someone holding a color board in front of the camera on a beach, two hosts of a show signing “right?!” a woman in a car signing “It’s sensitive!”, someone holding a camera and doing a “hang 10” sign, crew members on the set of our “INSPIRED” short film throwing a peace sign, someone signing “back to start” in front of theater seats, an actor shaking out their body as if to “restart,” a woman framed by a car window having a piece of hair put back in place, a blonde person signing “Relay” to the camera, two crew members reviewing a shot on set, the Morpheyes team sitting around clinking their coffee cups together in a toast, and the sequence ends with one team member, AJ, sitting in front of an editing computer. AJ looks back at the camera–gives a nod, a smile, and a wink before his video “shuts off” like a TV program to a black screen.
White text is typed across the screen in all caps with the same blinking yellow type effect: “THANK YOU” and underneath in regular white text is “to all our founders.” The text is covered up by a TV that drops down onscreen from above. The TV “turns on,” showing a series of clips that feature each of the original 7 founders as their names are shown accordingly with captions. Each time the video changes, the screen distorts to mimic an old TV changing channels.
The founders are shown in this order: Moises, a Hispanic individual riding his bike; Rydrea, a Black individual high-fiving another team member on set; Natasha, a white individual smiling in front of a lush green background; Patrick, a white individual holding his cochlear implant in his hands; Rajay, a South Asian individual on a beach who turns to the camera and signs “Yes, I’m Deaf;” Rachel, a white individual looking offscreen with the blue sky as her background; and Chad, a white individual standing shirtless addressing the camera directly: “What are you doing?!” He signs before the video “turns off” like a TV program.
Inside the TV frame, more white text appears in all caps: “We’re proud to continue the work you started.” The text disappears and the TV “turns on” to show one last video inside its frame. We see Rydrea, now sitting in a green screen studio addressing the camera. As he signs, the video and TV slowly expand to fill the screen until they disappear out of the frame. Rydrea signs: “One day, trubiz Deaf culture will be brought to the big screen in Hollywood. That’s my goal.”
There is a flash effect to mimic a photo being taken and we see three different photographs of the Morpheyes team in Polaroid form, where the team is all standing together in a line. When all 3 photos are up onscreen, text is typed out in black font over one of the Polaroids to read “Happy Birthday, Morpheyes!” Everything fades. The last video that fades up is an old compilation of the 2020 Morpheyes members individually signing “Morpheyes” and cut together so each person is signing a different piece of the whole sign. When Natasha finishes the sign with a big grin, the official Morpheyes motion logo with an abstract eye and lashes closes out the video. End of descriptive transcript.
