[216/366] audio description's unsolved mysteries

[cosmolinguist]

Today I learned that there really seems to be absolutely no way of finding out what company did the audio description for a movie without buying the movie and listening to all the damn credits (or otherwise accessing it, I skimmed all the credits of the Battleship movie on Netflix this afternoon for this information, but the other one I want to use as an example isn't on Netflix or Amazon). And I don't want to buy it, partly because a random movie I saw three years ago is not a movie I particularly want to watch again and I'm broke, but more because it's the damn principle of the thing.

This information just does not seem to be written down at all, anywhere, ever for anything. Even when I asked Andrew for help, he's usually got the best google-fu of anyone I know. He could find out the catering company and the names of the different stars' chauffeurs but he couldn't find any information on who made the audio description. It's so frustrating. I know it's because the AD isn't part of the normal film production in the way that the chauffeurs' names are, but still, it's just not anywhere else either.

This is all way outside the scope of my essay but I've had a hell of a time finding information about AD at all and think my essay is going to get slated for not having enough theoretical support. There's just nothing out there (and when I complained about this, people who don't know me that well said "graduate and postgrad work is supposed to include original research!" so now I've been reminded that no one thinks I'm an undergrad at my age, which has been an extra little fun thing for my feelings of inadequacy to chew on).

It's not all bad, don't get me wrong. I can take out the glancing reference to that movie if I can't cite it; it's a darling I can kill. And this unsatisfying scavenger hunt has introduced me to the adorable concept of The Audio Description Narrators of America, a website run by blind people who just...want to know whose voice is in our ears telling us about all these movies and TV shows. I like to see this recognition that this is important to people, it's like Audible letting you search by reader as well as author. I've definitely gotten a couple of books that I was on the fence about when I found out they were read by someone I liked

Frustratingly, they do have a credit (for the person, not the company, since that's the point of this website but not what I need for the citation) for the movie I want but I don't think it was the person I heard because the whole reason I want to mention it is British vocabulary being applied incorrectly to an American thing. But then maybe it was her, but reading out a script written by a British person for a British audience? I've definitely heard British describers for USian movies; I guess people want a more familiar accent and someone saying "torch" instead of "flashlight" even when it's a Hollywood movie or whatever. But maybe the same company is responsible for USian and British audio description anyway; that's all I need, I don't actually care who's saying it for these purposes. But there's no way to find that out, outside the movie itself! As far as I know...

Please don't take any of this as a request for suggestions; I've almost certainly tried it and I'm too frustrated now to be a gracious recipient of advice. Unless you have the UK DVD of Going in Style (2017) or can otherwise tell me the name of the company that did its audio description, please limit your helpfulness to sympathy and perhaps outrage at the inaccessibility of accessibility information, heh.

Comments

[jenett]

Would you like me to ping the person at work who does audio description? (Mostly theatre and other live show stuff in her case, when it's not work stuff, but she's pretty looped into the community of audio describers.) Glad to do so if you'd like, and she might know if there's some hidden resource that shares that info.

(Also, all the sympathy and all the outrage, because besides the excellent reasons you note about wanting to know who you're listening to, good audio describers work super hard to make that happen, and it's truly an art form.)

[cosmolinguist]

Oh yes please do! That'd be great, thank you.

I do wish the describers' work got more credit than what is effectively a fan site. They deserve it. And one of the things I'm writing about in my essay is how AD feels like its sprung fully-formed from the original TV/film/etc.

(Which brings me to another tangential frustration I've realized in the writing of this essay: I don't know of a very elegant or standard way to talk about the undescribed version of a TV show. Like this essay is about the AD track of a particular episode, and comparing it with what I'm struggling not to call the "normal" version. The lack of, or obscurity of, the vocabulary around these things is also telling/exhausting. Like so many bits of my experience here have been. :) )

[jenett]

I have thrown this onto my todo list to do tomorrow! (She's usually pretty fast about replies, so I hope to have something for you tomorrow.)

[cosmolinguist]

That's so kind of you, thank you.

[jenett]

And she got back to me very promptly!

I'll drop the entire contents in a PM to you, but for everyone else reading, here's the summary: there are a lot of descripton companies, and most of them hire contract work (and these days, some companies and distributors manage their own).

Some narrators are also the author of the script, but it's probably more common for it to be separate people. This may depend on union contracts: for example, at WGBH (Boston public television station) where she's worked, narrators have to be SAG members, and describers must not be in the Writer's Guild.

She suggests contacting the describer in this case directly (and I'll drop the links for that in the PM), and says that describers are often quite willing to talk about this kind of thing.

[cosmolinguist]

Please thank your friend for me! While part of me is exasperated thefe isn't a secret database somewhere to make this easier than "just track down strangers and ask them," I'm also glad in a way that I wasn't missing something really obvious that should have been apparent!

[barakta]

I sometimes use "regular" rather than normal, but perhaps "inaccessible" or "undescribed" is a reasonable term for this concept?

Otherwise ob-outrage at inaccessibility of access information. Also how much non-disableds don't understand the reason for us wanting details. I have spreadsheets comparing the relative merits of UK live Speech to Text Reporters (STTRs) [called CART in the USA] cos I can tell the differences between the humans and some are better than others (faster, more accurate). I am quite tolerant of errors (which tend to be phoneticised) so I say "speed over accuracy" whereas other deaf, esp BSL users who don't think English-phonetically are less able to be tolerant so would need accuracy over speed. Wheelchair using friends need other specific info and there's differences between 'accessible' and 'friendly'. Something can be technically wheelchair accessible but not quite spacious enough, or takes ages to get into, whereas friendly is so easy you don't think about it...

Can I be cheeky and ask to read your essay when you get the results? I know so little about audio description and what an auditory-focused blind person's experience of it might be (cos I know you're not all blind people).

Sending you motivation and spoons for finishing the fucking thing as well!

[otter]

I'll add my outrage to the general inaccessibility of accessibility information. And offer a hug.

[silveradept]

It is amazing how inaccessible accessibility information can be, and how little information there actually is regarding the people who make things accessible. Much sympathetic rage at your frustrations.

[ewt]

Oof, this seems like something that by any reasonable standard *should* be easy to find, and I'm so sorry that it isn't.

[cosmolinguist]

Yeah, Andrew and I were surprised it has proven this impossible.

[diffrentcolours]

Now I'm wondering about setting up the Internet Movie Audio Description Database, in the same vein as the Internet Movie Firearms Database, to try and crowdsource this information. If you build it, they will come? ;)

[cosmolinguist]

It's not really useful information, nobody really cares about the companies. I can see the individual people's names being useful, but even that fansite doesn't tell me the names of the companies they were working for at any given time. It's not something I can see being crowdsourced.

Damn, this is another instance of

[jesse_the_k]

"Special needs syndrome."

It's like they somehow think that people audio describing are doing it to be nice.

You can use IMDb.com to find out the sound editor and the second sound editor and the second sound editor9s assistant, so WTF they don't list the audio describers!

Re: Damn, this is another instance of

[theandrewhickey]

Yeah. I literally got an IMDBpro account to check this (free trial) and it's not there. The key second assistant accountant, the catering company, the on-set tutor for the children in the film, and "Global Director Of Motion Picture Logistics: Altour Travel (uncredited)" are all listed there, but not the people who were responsible for a significant chunk of the viewing experience for a significant proportion of the film's audience.

[cosmolinguist]

Ha, I don't feel like I'm ever thought of as a significant proportion of an audience.

[theandrewhickey]

I think I can say pretty safely that more people's viewing experience is affected by the identity of the narrator than by the identity of the additional second unit camera loader ;)