Interactive Transcripts and Multimodal Shakespeare

The interactive transcript is a multimodal presentation technique that became prevalent in online video platforms during the past decade and has recently begun to penetrate digital humanities. A transcript is interactive when it allows users to view the spoken dialogue within a video as a continuous/scrolling text synchronized with video playback (e.g., by means of a moving highlight) and to navigate to a desired location within the video by clicking on the corresponding section of the transcript (and vice versa). I am currently working with scholars at the University of Texas to develop a publicly available edition of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar that combines a video recording of a performance of the play with an interactive transcript of a text of the play. In my presentation, I will showcase this project to illustrate the practical, pedagogical, and scholarly rationales for interactive transcripts in multimodal editions featuring recorded dramatic performances.