[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.)

[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.

[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? ;)

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!