Chris Reviews His Custom Audio Description

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And if I don't, I at least give a good reason why I can't. This week, Chris's watch list . When I was a kid, my dad got me into all of like the universe This is Chris. He's twenty six years old. He lives in New York City. And for as long as he can remember, he has loved watching movies. I just love the thrill, the fear, like the emotional excitement, you know, this like heightening of an experience. And I just like took that with me for my entire life. To this day, the horror genre continues to be his favorite. But Chris is one of those guys that truly watches everything. You know, old movies, new movies, foreign, domestic, and he keeps these myths ive lists of movies that he wants to see . But the reason he came to us is because many of the movies on his list are completely inaccessible to him. Not because they're out of print or they've been pulled from streaming, but because in addition to being a massive movie lover, Chris is also blind. Could you tell me when and how you lost your sight? Yeah, um it was actually my 16th birthday . I was in high school. I wanted to join track because a lot of my friends were on the team and I had to get a physical and they had me do the the eye chart with like the big E at the top and I covered my right eye, and I could read the chart fine, and then when I covered my left eye, it was just bewildering . There was like a big blob in the center of my vision that was just blocking out the whole chart. I couldn't even see the E . And at first I didn't understand. I was like rubbing my eyes. I was like, is it just really bright in here? Like I don't get it. And the doctors didn't understand it either. And for some reason we just kind of brushed it off like because my other eye was compensating. But um over the next few months I started to notice my other eye began to deteriorate as well. And after a spate of frantic doctor visits, Chris was diagnosed with an extremely rare genetic mutation called labor hereditary optic neuropathy. I forget the statistics, but it's like, you know, this is like a one in a million kind of thing. So essentially the effect is that in both of my eyes, I can still see peripherally, but my central vision is complet ely gone. Okay . Now I know what you're probably thinking. A minute ago, I told you that Chris is only able to watch some of the movies on his list. But if Chris can't see, how is he able to watch any movies at all? Well, in the same way that closed captions have made movies accessible for people with hearing impairments. Pe withople visual impairments are able to watch movies through the use of something called audio descriptions, which are pretty much exactly what they sound like. Here's a quick example from the movie Top Gun Maverick. Lights on. Let's turn and burn. Maverick goes into a steep climb. Bamboy, you see him? Nothing on the radar up ahead. He must be somewhere behind us. Maverick shoots up between their planes. Maverick loops up and around, dropping behind Payback and Fanboy. Easy Maverick. Let's try not to get fired on the first day. That voice you just heard explaining what's happening on the screen? That's the audio description. You can find these on streaming services as an alternative language option. On broadcast television, they're sometimes available as a secondary audio channel. And in movie theaters, they come out of a special headset, which, thanks to the Americans withabil Ditiises Act, movie theaters are required to carry. And for a Cinephile like Chris, who also happens to be blind, having a track like that is a lifeline. To this medium, to this art, and to the culture that exists around it . The problem is that not every movie that gets released gets released with an audio description. Unlike closed captions, which are available for pretty much everything at this point, audio descriptions are only available for some things. And there seems to be no rhyme or reason behind what does and does not get an audio description. Like, when I asked Chris to name some of the titles on his list . I was shocked by the variety of material that has not been audio described. You know, there's mainstream stuff like the show Mad Men I Can't Watch. That is ridiculous to me. Um oh there's like a whole bunch of like Hitchcock's films that I can't see That also seems bonkers to me. The Foreign Correspondent, The Lady Vanishes, Um, Shadow of a Doubt.. Vertigo Even even Vertigo is not available. That is crazy ! Oh, I've really wanted to see Pan's Labyrinth. I have a deep, deep affection for Garmel Del Toro , but I can't see that. Especially like foreign films too. You know, everybody loved Parasite when that came out, but I can't see that. But some stuff like Squid Game was described, so I could see that. Starship Troopers, um, twenty days later. Dog day afternoon . Magnolia. Fight club. The Big Lebowski. It anya. Malcolm X. The list truly goes on and on. And what this means for Chris is that in addition to losing his sight, he feels like he's lost the ability to participate in huge swaths of our culture simply because someone somewhere is making a choice not to describe these movies. And I deserve to access this culture like everybody else does. And it really pisses me off when there's something that I'm really excited about. And I'm like, oh, that looks really good. I want to see that. And then I'm like, oh, it's not available. Um especially if it's like an older classic or something and like everybody know has seen this film and I just haven't. And I know that like nobody's gonna describe this because it came out fucking 50 years ago. Like who's gonna go back and you know do this? So what does the solution look like to you ? Um in w in what sense? I guess my question is to put it in delicately, what do you expect me to do about it? I would just love it if I could whittle down this list I have of inaccessible films. You know, if somebody could make a track for me something, uh a descriptive audio track. And also I would just love to this whole indust ry make sense to me. And I think if it did, and I kind of understood like what's actually going on behind the scenes and why why are some films described, why are some not? It would make the experience of like finding films that aren't described a little less frustrating. Because it's not just this mysterious, inscrutable black box that 's not giving me what I want for unknown reasons. Well, thank you so much for your time, Chris. We're gonna get to work on this and see what we can do. Um yeah, thanks so much for taking an interest. I wasn't sure if it would be too gargantuan to throw on a little team like yours. Or listen, um even it we love taking on stories that are way too big for us and then about six months later getting into a meeting and being like, yeah, this one's too big for us. But at least we give it a shot. Yeah, yeah. Well I won't feel offended if for whatever reason the story doesn't work out. But I deeply appreciate uh the consider ation. Okay, so there are two things we need to do. One thing we need to do is figure out why some things are being audio described and not others. And we suspect this decision has something to do with the cost of producing descriptions and also with the legal standards established by the Americans with Disabilities Act. But whatever the case, it seemed like this question was going to be pretty easy to answer. So we decided to table that for a bit and instead focus our energy on the not-so-easy part of Chris's problem . We wanted to create an audio description for one of the movies on his list. The North American style of audio description tries to be as objective as possible. Sa onlyy what you see. Do not presume intent. You are giving your audience access to the exact same amount of information that the sighted audience has access to. No more, no less. This is Jenna. She is a professional audio description producer. She works at a company called Descriptive Video Works, which is the largest producer of audio descriptions in North America. And she's widely considered to be one of the thought leaders in the audio description space. So when we committed ourselves to creating an audio description track for Chris, we knew Jenna would be the best person to tell us how to do it well. But within the first five minutes of the conversation, we realized that this was not the kind of question that could be answered with a step by step list of instructions. Because although audio descriptions strive to be the subjective representation of what's happening on the screen, you know, Maverick goes into a steep climb, Maverick shoots up between their planes. Creating that objectivity is actually a highly subjective process. It requires the producer to make countless microdecisions about what information is needed in order to give their audience the same quality viewing experience that a sighted person would have. And that may seem like a straightforward idea, but I will give you an example of why it's not. Take Starship Troopers, which is one of the movies on Chris's list. On the surface, it's a sci-fi movie about the people of Earth being at war with a race of giant insect aliens. But that's not really what it's about. Starship Troopers is actually a movie about fascism. And the human characters in the movie are the bad guys. Their war with the aliens is a colonialist project, and one of the ways that's conveyed is through their clothing, which is very reminiscent of Nazi uniforms. So I asked Jenna , you know, given the rules about objectivity, how would you describe something like that? And her answer, which could easily be applied to just about everything else in the world, was it depends. It depends how blatant it is because there is a lot of gray area with when to make a judgment call and to sort of presume on behalf of the audience So ideally, we would want to describe why do I think this looks like a Nazi uniform? What made me think that? What are the parallels that I can draw? Pick out those details and then describe those. So rather than saying like they wear uniforms that are representative of like uh Nazi SS, rather than say that outright, we would say something like uh they have uh, you know, like this certain style of collar, the col ors, the uh like the badging on the collar, so that maybe if the person who's listening is a history buff, uh they can draw the same conclusion and they can draw the same parallels, even if they're not a history buff , they might say, Wow, the person is like really describing this crisp, clean uniform in such detail. I wonder if there's like some symbolism behind that, and maybe they go look it up later. The same way a sighted person who's not a history buff might get curious about why these uniforms look the way that they do and go look it up later. But that's not the only factor that goes into decisions like this. In fact, it's not even the most important factor. Because beyond objectivity, the primary constraint when it comes to writing audio descriptions is timing. Everything that we say has to be able to fit within the timing between when people are talking. If there's a scene with continuous dialogue and they're doing a walk-and-talk and there's no time to squeeze things in, we might not be able to describe any of that because the dialogue is more important. And we can't just arbitrarily choose to pause the source media to insert more of our descriptions because one, it's impossible the way that the workflow works, but two, people don't really like that. Like we've tried experiments with that in the past and people don't really like when the narrative flow of a scene gets broken just to throw in more descriptions. So we have to be very concise and oftentimes that brevity means we have to sacrifice some of our rules of objectivity because it takes longer to say the things that made us come to the conclusion that the uniforms in Starship Troopers are reminiscent of Nazi uniforms. It is a highly specialized form of technical writing. I've become an expert at finding synonyms that are fewer syllables. Because sometimes you find the perfect word to describe something and it's five syllables and, you just do not have time to say that entire word. So finding language that is concise and evocative is probably our biggest challenge as describers. But also like us being able to mentally take a step back, take in a scene or a setting or a character, and be able to pick out certain elements or details of it that made us feel like some cohesive way. Like if there's an opulent ball room I ideally if I have time I'm not gonna just say it's an opulent ballroom. I'm gonna pick out like okay there's crystal chandeliers, there's red carpet, there's gold filigree, like I'm going to pick out certain details that made me think opulence and then describe those rather than just telling the viewer this is an opulent ballroom. Like that doesn't add a whole lot of flavor to it. It's such a fun mental challenge every time you come upon something. Not to mention you kind of have to become an expert in visually identifying whatever you're looking at. Like is uh is this siege weapon a ballista, or is it a trebuchet? Or is it like you have to you end up Googling so many weird things? And I'm so appreciative of communities that put together comprehensive wikis for like martial arts kicks, wrestling moves, types of knives. Like this is stuff that I'm probably on a list somewhere, because I've Googled so many weird things in the course of my work . And again, choosing how and when to describe the things that are happening on the screen is just one example of the countless curatorial decisions that have to be made to replicate the essence of a sighted viewing experience. And then once the script is done, producers also have to cast narrators with voices they feel like belong in the world of the movie, but not so much that they might be confused with one of the characters. And then there's mixing in such a way that keeps pace with the rhythm of the movie while also upholding the sonic integrity of its genre conventions. It is truly a high wire plate-spinning act. And the idea of having to make one of these, especially for the movie, I was thinking about making it for was starting to make my head spin. So I decided to pivot our conversation from audio description theory to audio description practice . So, Jenna, you sent over a couple examples of um good audio descriptions. I was wondering if I could play one of them and just have you walk me through the choices that were made, like what's working, what's not working, that kind of is one of those rare examples of a sequel that absolutely dunks on the original, just improves on it in every way. But the reason I wanted to talk through this specific clip is because it shares some characteristics with the movie I was thinking about describing for Chris. For one thing, it has some pretty long sections without any dialogue. And for another, it has some very graphic violence. It's excellent. So good. So for the audience's benefit, a guy walks into a building, shoots a couple guys, jumps out a window, gets hit by a truck. Yeah. And then the name of the movie, Smile 2, is like written in blood basically on the road as he's sort of smeared across the road. Forewarning, there is gore that's going to be uh viscerally described in this scene. Um, but this is an example of really well done audio description in my personal opinion. Alright, let's listen to this one. He pulls metal shelving down against the door, then kicks out a window AC unit. The AC unit breaks free and Joel throws himself out the window as the dealers burst through the door. He lands on a pair of closed cellar doors, then rolls off and keeps running. One of the goons shoots at him a pickup truck collides with him as he reaches the street the goon watches from the window Credits appear. Paramount Pictures presents A Temple Hill produ ction In association with bad feeling, a thick smear of blood coats the pavement . The blood spreads down the road in a wide angular line. One of Joel's boots Reladen path follows the trajectory of the black truck . Spark spurs from an electrical box the truck crashed into. The blood smear ends in the gory mess of Joel's body beneath the truck From above, the smear forms a crimson smile . A title appears in red and black lettering. Smile 2 So first of all, just happy to watch the opening of that movie again. What made it so so good? What like what was made it so effective to you? So right now there's a little bit of controversy in the audio description community for, when and how to describe jump scares. So there were a couple great examples in that scene of I think it's the most common method of currently describing jump scares, which is you leave a little bit of silence right before the jump scare happens, if especially if there's like a big like boom or musical cue, in this case the truck hitting Joel and then screeching off to the right side out of scene. Um and the description in this case chose to have Joel running, he's getting shot at, silence from the narrator, and then boom, truck hits. And then you describe what just happened so that you can get that little , oh God, what was that at the at the same time as everyone else, rather than describing what happens before it happens. Another rule for audio description is to never describe camera mov ements. So like pans, zooms, you don't acknowledge the camera. You're supposed to describe it like in like full immersion. And unless the characters are somehow breaking the fourth wall, like interacting with the camera lens or looking straight at the audience in some way, you never acknowledge that there even is a camera in the scene. So the temptation for a new audio describer might have been to say the view pans along the blood smear or the trail, but instead they described it as just the blood smear stretching down the road and continuing along the road, and then at the end to get the idea of that it's a top-down bird's eye view shot, they instead said from above the blood smear forms the shape of a smile, something like that. That's what I loved about it. That's very interesting because I was watching it and sort of trying to predict what the audio description would sound like and immediately I was like he's gonna say the camera pulls back or the camera pulls up revealing the blood smear that's a smile. But you're not supposed to do that. I didn't realize that that was a deliberate decision. Mm-hmm . So when it comes to this show, I do have a tendency to get a bit over confident. And usually I think that is a net positive. Because that very hubris allows me to tackle problems that I otherwise wouldn't even attempt. But sometimes that confidence bites me in the ass, and it puts me in situations where I have an emotional attachment to an outcome without the skills that I need to achieve it. And this was the moment I began to suspect that I was in one of those situations . I didn't just want to make an audio description for Chris. I wanted to make him a great one. And it was becoming clear to me that I was simply not equipped to do that . So I told Jenna about Chris and his list of movies, and about how I had planned to make a custom audio description for him. Except that I was beginning to think I wasn't equipped to do it. And then just in case I was misreading the situation, I asked her, this is not something that a novice should just do, right? No, I mean I I don't want to discourage anyone from getting into audio description. Of course, if you yourself have someone in your life and you've watched through movies or you've gone to any live events with someone who is low vision, you have probably already been an impromptu audio describer in the past. But professional audio description has a lot of quality standards and is highly technical because we want to create the best possible product for a marginalized community. So nothing should stop any one from casually audio describing things wherever they want to. In fact, there's an entire website for anyone who's interested in helping out called You Describe, which is where blind and low-vision people can submit requests for YouTube videos to gain audio description, and anyone can go in there and record and upload a version of the audio description for that website for whatever videos you want to . That is a fantastic way to get practice, and there's different ways for people to view the multiple audio tracks and leave feedback on your audio description. I would encourage people to read through the quality guidelines that are publicly available. Maybe take some classes if you find that you vibe with it. But yes, Alex, to answer your question, I would not recommend taking on audio description for an entire film if you don't have previous experience with it. So I guess my question to you is um would you be willing in order to make our listeners' lisfe easier . you Wo beuld willing to help us audio describe one of these movies? I would love to. Yes, I would love to help out. Amazing. Will you help out with voicing it by any chance? I would love to. This is a dream come true for me. Um do you have a preference in terms of which one we do? So I personally have always been a massive fan of Pan's Labyrinth . You guys, this was the very same movie I'd been thinking about as well. Not only because Chris mentioned it in our first interview, but because its director, Guillermo del Toro, is a true student of those old Universal Monster movies that first ignited Chris's love for film. And while it's not technically a horror movie, it's certainly horrifying. It's told from the perspective of a child living through the aftermath of the Spanish Civil W ar. And it's full of monsters, both the fantastical and the incredibly gruesomely grounded. I loved the film, both the historical aspects of it and the without spoiling anything, the skin crawling horror that comes with it is fascinating to me, and I would love the chance to audio describe that. Oh my god, I know. It's so good. So what are the next steps? Like what do you need from us in order to start the process? Um, basically copy of the film. And just like that, we were off to the races. Jenna and her team at Descriptive Video Works were going to write a feature-length audio description, a service that normally costs upwards of $2,500 by the way, and they were going to do it for free. On top of that, Jenna had personally volunteered to coach me through the first half of my narration. All I had to do was send her a copy of the movie. So I hopped online, scrolled around a bit, found a digital copy of the movie that met all the necessary text specs, and then just before I hit the purchase button, I realiz ed why nobody's created an audio description for Pan's Labyrinth . That's after the break . Fear is the virus is trending on TikTok. Vaccines are poison. Then your yoga teacher says that sex trafficked children are being sacrificed by satanic liberals, but it's all okay. The great awakening is coming. What is happening ? Every week on Conspirituality Podcast, we explore the fever dreams that suck friends, family and wellness gurus down the right wing cult spiral in a search for salvation . This episode of Hyperfixed is brought to you by Mixtape. Mixtape is a narrative adventure game by BAFTA Award-winning studio Beethoven and Dinosaur. And it features music from Devo, Roxy Music, Lush, The Smashing Pumpkins, Iggy Pop, Suzy and the Banshees, Joy Division, The Cure, and many more. And at least two of my favorite bands of all time appeared in that list. Can you guess which ones? The game is a surreal teenage wasteland where you skate, party, avoid the law, space out, fly, and embrace the optimal teenage exper ience. Mixtape is available May 7th on console and PC. Check it out at mixtape.game This show is supported by Odoo. When you buy business software from lots of vendors, the costs add up and it gets complicated and confusing. Odoo solves this. It's a single company that sells a suite of enterprise apps that handles everything from accounting to inventory to sales. Odoo is all connected on a single platform in a simple and affordable way. You can save money without missing out on the features you need. Check out Odoo at Odo o.com Welcome back to the show. So before the break, Chris came to us with questions about the world of audio description and a list of movies that didn't have descriptions. He wanted us to make him a custom audio description. And of course, we had no idea how to do that. So Jenna from Descriptive Video Works agreed to help us create an audio description for Pan's Labyrinth. But just before we hit purchase on a digital copy of the movie to send to Jenna, we realized that there was actually a very specific reason why nobody's made an audio description for Pan's Labyrinth . The story goes that back when Guillermo del Toro was looking for funding to make the movie, Hollywood producers came knocking. And they offered him massive amounts of money. The kind of money that would have allowed him to make any version of the movie he wanted. All he had to do was agree to one condition . He had to make the movie in English. And Guillermo del Toro refused. He argued that for a movie set in Spain, about the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War that steeped in so much Spanish iconography, the Spanish language was essential. So not only was the movie made in Spanish, it has very intentionally never been dubbed into En glish. Ever. Which means if you don't speak Spanish, the only way to watch the movie is with subtitles. Which are great, by the way, because Guillermo del Toro translated them himself. But reading subtitles isn't an option for Chris. So we had to go back to square one and pick a new title from Chris's list of undescribed movies . So back when we first spoke to Chris , he mentioned the names of a bunch of different movies he desperately wanted to watch. Movies like Vertigo, Parasite, 28 Days Later, Starship Troopers. So when we realized we had to pivot, those were the movies we wanted to prioritize. But we didn't end up picking any of them. Because it turns out they actually have been described. In fact, we discovered that nearly half the titles on Chris's list have audio descriptions available somewhere online . We just can't tell you where to find them. Because these are not official audio descriptions. They're not made by the film's distribution companies. Which meant, as we were about to learn, that they're not technically legal. And understanding why that is, is actually the key to answering Chris's original question about why some things are audio described and other things aren't. So that's what we're going to talk about right now . Initially, we thought the answer to Chris's question had something to do with the accessibility laws that had been established by the Americ ans with Disabilities Act. And I guess that's sort of true. Just not in the way that we thought. Nuanced and complicated than the caption and the issue. This is Carl Richardson. And if there's anyone who understands Chris's frustrations, it's him. Carl has dual sensory loss of vision and hearing. But before losing his vision, he actually went to film school and he worked in the film industry. So today, Carl channels his passion for film into advocacy, working as the co-chair of the audio description project for the American Council of the Blind. And his headline for this part of the story is There's no law or mandate which covers audio description for film and television. There are laws that cover accessibility for the four main broadcast networks and the top five cable networks, which get reassessed every three years. But for film and streaming, nothing . So obviously we were curious why it is that any movies are getting described at all. Well, the story of how we got to this spot could begin in a dozen different places. But the most straightforward version begins in 2011 . That was the year the National Association of the Deaf brought a lawsuit against Netflix for violating the Americans with Disabilities Act. They said that by failing to provide captions on some of its streaming content, the company had denied equal access to the deaf and hard-of-hearing community. And rather than lose the court case, Netflix agreed voluntarily to caption 100% of the films and TV shows on Netflix. And it was then that the American Council of the Blind decided, let's see if we have a shop for doing audio description. Now, given the success of that first effort, you might expect that when the American Council of the Blind brought their own accessibility lawsuit against Netflix just a few years later, they would achieve the same outcome. Netflix would agree to describe 100% of the content on its platform, and everyone would be happy. But the thing is, Netflix doesn't have the right to describe everything on its plat form. Because unlike closed captions, audio descriptions are technically classified as derivative works, meaning it can only be created by the party that owns the copyright to the movie . Now I want to pause really quickly here and make sure that everyone understands what I just said, because it is the key to everything. Remember all those little decisions that Jenna was talking about making, about casting a narrator and how to mix the music, how to describe what's happening on the screen. Well, when you put all those together, they make their own modified movie. And if that modified movie hasn't been authorized by the copyright holder, it's considered copyright infringement . So after that 2016 settlement, Netflix agreed to make audio descriptions for 100% of its original content. But nothing more. So at first, the other movies and TV shows on its platform, that is, the vast majority of its offerings, none of them had audio descriptions. But then something pretty amazing happened. After Netflix settled that lawsuit, a whole bunch of other streamers and distributors started describing their own movies and TV shows. And they've been doing it ever since, on an entirely voluntary basis. And sure, you could say that they're only doing that because they're afraid of being sued, and yeah, that probably does have something to do with it. But according to literally every person we spoke to about this issue, that's definitely not the whole story. I also think they do it because they can track who's watching it and who's not, and they wouldn't be doing it if the numbers didn't back it up . These companies don't share their consumer data , but it seems like accessibility is actually good for business. And that seems to be reflected in the choices they're making about what does and does not get described. work with companies to do back catalog but that's complicated too because they cost money and back catalog tend not to get the viewership they of a new show right um I'm sure many films on your list Honestly, when I looked at it initially, I didn't think that Chris's list was full of old movies. But if 2016 was the bellwether year for audio descriptions, then yeah, it's full of stuff that was made before that mark. In fact, of the 55 movies that are on Chris's list, only two of the English language titles were released after that point. And they were both very independent movies. Like one of them had a budget of just three million dollars. As for the foreign language films, Carl says that pretty soon we're gonna start to see a lot more of them getting released with audio descriptions. Because just last year, the EU passed a new law, the European Accessibility Act, that, among other things, requires broadcasters and streaming services to provide audio descriptions for all their new video content. As for the back catalogs, those will need to become accessible by 2030. How this will impact new theatrical releases or titles that aren't owned by streamers or broadcasters, Carl is not entirely sure. What he does know is that in the United States, right now, an estimated 80 to 85% of new movies are being released with audio descriptions. And that number will go up