This chapter looks at how the genre of a ST affects AD strategies in terms of writing and delivery. While the broad principles of AD apply to all categories and genres, there are some differences that are useful to note.
Genre is discussed at the level of the various subsets of film and TV programmes.
8.2 Genre and suitability of AD
Genre is important as regards audience expectation. This may help a describer to narrow down and select what are relevant visual features: certain features may be more relevant in one genre than in another. As Evans and Pearson note in their audience research for the RNIB (Evans and Pearson, 2009: 387), ‘In certain genres, but not all, the image is the central site of meaning making’. Toms and Campbell (1999: 9) showed that the attributes of a printed document’s genre determined the ease with which a person could interact with it, such that a
user, even before reading the content, may recognize a document, for example, as a newspaper through the appearance of columns and headlines; an annual report features numerous tables, and a dictionary contains an alphabetic sequence of tabs. These features evolved as an efficient means of representing the semantic contents of particular types of information. As such, they trigger a user’s recognition of socially-familiar discourses – in essence a user’s mental model – to such a degree that if the words labelling the form were omitted, the documents’ functions would remain perceptible and interpretable.
In the same way, the ability to recognise that an AVT ST lies within a particular genre should ease the cognitive load on the part of AD users.
In the UK, some genres and therefore channels are exempt from AD, such as the BBC’s Parliament channel. Ofcom’s Code on the Provision of Access Services (Ofcom, 2015: point A4.24) states: ‘Although visually-impaired people like to watch the same sorts of programmes as everybody else, not all programmes lend themselves to audio description. Some programmes are too fast-moving, or offer little opportunity to insert audio description (e.g. news), or may not be significantly enhanced by the provision of audio description (e.g. quiz programmes).’ The focus-group participants in Evans and Pearson’s report into visually impaired audiences and TV (Evans and Pearson, 2009: 385), commented: ‘There’s a lot of programmes out there that should be described, and there’s a lot of things described when they don’t need to be, like [the quiz show] University Challenge.’ Indeed, in the case of University Challenge, AD was felt to be detrimental to participants’ enjoyment:
Audio description was felt to be inappropriate for programming which already relies heavily on aural cues, with current affairs programming particularly cited. Said Michael, ‘You’re not as excluded from news or current affairs, or a game show than [sic] you are from dramas or film.’
Participants in Fryer’s research agreed. One man with partial sight said:
There are a couple of quiz shows which are [audio described] which is a bit of a waste of time in my opinion, um The Crystal Maze, which anyone who knows the game show, knows it’s impossible to describe. There might be one or two games on the whole show, on the whole programme, that might be describable but not really, so that person should be sitting describing something that’s of more use, really. Um, and another one which is Catchphrase, another game show from the ’90s, it’s impossible, I’ve watched it and several times attempted to watch it but never got it, never understood it, so that’s no use to me, so those people should definitely be describing something else.
A woman who is partially sighted said:
A similar view was expressed by another participant in relation to cookery programmes: ‘Like Ready Steady Cook or something like that. And they tell you oh he’s just like beating the eggs together or he’s just done this or done that, pointless.’
Rasheed and Shah (2002) developed a system of classifying movies into two major classes (action and non-action movies), with non-action movies further subdivided into romance, comedy, horror and drama/other. Their system automatically analyses the audiovisual features of previews and estimates the visual disturbance or motion content, sound profile and average shot length. As genre affects the audio and visual streams differentially, there are direct implications for AD. For ‘action movies, the audio is always correlated with the scene. For example, [scenes of] fighting, explosions etc. are mostly accompanied with a sudden change in the audio level . . . Movies with more action contents exhibit smaller average shot length. On the other hand comedy/drama movies have low action content and larger shot length’ (2002: 4). Reflecting the differences in shot length, description for action movies is best kept short and punchy – limited, for example to the scale of the explosion and the visual evidence of the damage caused. For romantic films, descriptive utterances will feature longer sentences, with a more lyrical turn of phrase. Describers may also have the challenge of describing the visual attractions of the protagonists, which can be controversial. For example, one partially sighted woman in the author’s research said:
It bothers me in films when [the describers] say something like, when they’re introducing a character and they say ‘Jenny an attractive blonde’ or something . . . it bothers me in the sense that like they think she’s attractive and I think are they saying that they think she’s attractive or are they saying that it’s pretty obvious that this woman fits the general stereotype of attractive blondiness in a certain type of film . . . and they’re trying to get across this is the attractive blonde type to me, but because I haven’t been able to see enough for ages, I’m not really aware of what people mean by that stereotype, but on the other hand there’s not time in a film to say any more, so I can understand why they do it but it still bothers me a bit in films. But I’ve just generally found that description for theatre and art work seems to me to be of better quality, probably because there’s more time and although . . . obviously the describer’s own perception comes into it, I feel like that most of the time they do their best to um, to describe it as accurately as they can, and quite often they’ll say something like, I don’t know, this image might make you feel like this, or like this, or like this and it sort of gives you an idea where they’re coming from, but it’s open enough to know that you might have a different interpretation yourself.
An AI might resolve this constraint on character description in films and will be discussed in Chapter 12.
There may also be scenes of a sexual nature that will need to be described. Vocabulary needs particular attention, especially in explicit scenes. (This is addressed in detail in Chapter 11.) Action movies often bring with them the issue of the corpse. Can we be sure that a character is dead? If we know, do we need to say so, or is it self-evident? One strategy is to follow the American guidelines and simply say what you see – that the body lies very still or that the eyes glaze over, and draw no further inference. This may be more convincingly portrayed on screen than is possible in a live performance. In a live show, the ‘corpse’ usually gets up to take a bow at the end.
In their article analysing visual scenes, Matamala and Remael (2015) discuss the phenomenon of the cinema of spectacle ‘with its supposed focus on visual effects to the detriment of storytelling’ (ibid., 2015: 63), arguing that ‘effect-driven narratives require carefully timed and phrased ADs that devote much attention to the prosody of the AD script, its interaction with sounds and the use of metaphor’. This is because the point of the film is not to follow the logic of the narrative. Such a prosaic raison d’être is overridden by a desire to dazzle and amaze with effects designed only to ‘bewilder the eye’ (Paci, 2006: 313, cited in Matamala and Remael, 2015). In this situation the What is trumped by the How. A similar situation occurs in live events, especially in grand-scale musicals, where audiences who have paid high ticket prices expect dazzling effects from the set. One of the reasons why the musical The Lion King (Taymor, 1994) has been enduringly popular (as of June 2015, it had sold more than 80 million tickets around the world) is the way the creatures of the African plains, and even the plains themselves, are brought to life. As described by VocalEyes in the AI:
[The Lion King] Mufasa and his family live on Pride rock – a stylized circular staircase that twists up out of the stage. When fully raised, with Mufasa standing on its summit, the rock towers some five metres over the grassy plains below. These plains are shown in a number of ways. At times they’re a simple strip of tall grass which travels like a conveyer belt across the front of the stage. At other times they are more animated – literally – as dancers balance squares of pale, dry grass on their heads like hats – swaying and swishing them in different formations.
One of the delights for the sighted audience is to be transported to the plains or Pride Rock while simultaneously being able to see how those locations are created. Simply to state the location, in the AD, would allow blind people to follow the story but deny them the same sense of awe and wonder experienced by the sighted audience at the spectacular stagecraft on display.
Lighting, as previously noted, is also often a distinguishing feature of genre, as is colour. According to Rasheed and Shah (2002: 3):
High-key lighting means that the scene has an abundance of bright light. It usually has lesser contrast and the difference between the brightest light and the dimmest light is small. High-key scenes are usually happy or less dramatic. Many situation comedies also have high-key lighting whereas ‘In horror movies shots are mostly low-key. On the other hand, comedy movies tend to have more high-key shots.
While it may seem obvious to mention long, looming shadows in a horror movie, it is easy to neglect to mention sunny scenes in a comic genre, as by default they seem less noticeable.
Irena Michalewicz (2015) points out that in horror movies the action usually takes place in a restricted space. The isolation of a location (carrying with it the implication of limited possibilities for escape) needs to be emphasised in the AD if sufficient tension is to be generated. For example, the Overlook Hotel in The Shining (Kubrick, 1980) is cut off not only by its location halfway up a mountain but also by the time of year (it is closed for the winter) and a fall of snow. The lack of people available to come to Danny’s aid is underlined by a shot of only three lighted windows across the hotel’s façade as dusk falls. An AD that failed to highlight this aspect of the spatiotemporal setting would be selling its audience short in the build-up of tension as events unfold. Tension is also increased in horror movies by the cinematic trope of metonym, whereby a part represents the whole. A shot of a hand pushing open a door allows us to speculate (fearfully) as to who the owner of the hand may be. This is often more successful in developing tension than a full reveal. Camerawork is also key. Filming over a character’s shoulder as they walk away gives us the sensation that the character is being followed. Voyeuristic camerawork focusing on a character carrying out everyday activities such as cooking, filmed through an uncurtained window or an open doorway, especially at night, gives the sense that they are being watched. In The Shining, as Danny plays with his cars in an empty corridor of the hotel a tennis ball rolls up to him, seemingly from nowhere. This lack of agency is critical to generating an impending fear that Danny is not alone.
Michalewicz (2015) also notes an increase in cross-genre films – for example, overlaps between horror and other genres. The strapline for Zombieland (Fleischer, 2009), for example, was ‘a comedy that kills’. The generic horror storyline of the hero/heroine as prey is also common to the wildlife documentary. Here, spatial distances between the animal ‘characters’ can be key to understanding how near our ‘hero’ is to escape. In a thriller, actual spatial relations may be suspended. The describer of any James Bond movie will quickly realise that truth is not allowed to get in the way of a good story (or at least, geographic fidelity is not allowed to get in the way of a good chase sequence). The description will need to reflect the narrative fiction by concentrating on the relative positions of the characters (who is gaining on whom) rather than on trying to create an accurate map in the mind of the user.
An awareness of genre is also important from a practical point of view. Films that come under the explosion/fire subdivision of Rasheed and Shah’s action film category are likely to take longer to script by requiring more description and being more difficult to time than romantic films. In both types the soundtrack will be important, but for different reasons. Action movies will have a louder soundtrack and description will need to be threaded through bursts of gunfire, explosions, etc. One blind user who lost his sight in an accident when he was seven years old feels very strongly that it is ‘important for the describer not to skirt round stuff like sex or blood’ (interviewed by author). This excludes him not only from content but from the shared audience experience. As he puts it:
| A: | Sometimes you get a glossing-over feeling. |
| LF: | What leads you to suspect they’re glossing over? |
| A: | Because it’s bound to be worse than it is. |
| LF: | Maybe your imagination makes it . . . |
| A: | . . . If your neighbour knows but you don’t know – that’s the difficulty. |
A more detailed analysis of descriptions of sexual and violent content is given in Chapter 11.
8.3.3 Historical films and costume dramas
Exclusion can also stem from visual references that are oculo-culture-specific. For example, according to Claire Monk and Amy Sargeant, British historical cinema has been ‘central to the popularity, commercial success and exportability of British cinema since its earliest decades. Indeed, British period films have often been closely equated in the eyes of the world – many would say too closely – with Britain’s “national cinema” itself’ (2002: 1). As examples they cite Shakespeare in Love (Madden, 1999) and The Private Life of Henry VIII (Korda, 1933), and they point to the ‘strongly held belief that the central duty of films set in the past is to document historical fact – or at least the material world of the period depicted – as faithfully as known sources permit’. This creates a burden of research on the describer in terms of accuracy of terminology (see Chapter 5), and for the AD user in terms of culture-specific references relating to costumes and artefacts.
Porter defines intertextuality as the principle ‘that all signs arise from a single network: what Vygotsky called “the web of meaning” . . . Examining texts “intertextually” means looking for “traces,” the bits and pieces of Text which writers or speakers borrow and sew together to create new discourse’ (Vygotsky, 1986: 34). This places a burden on the describer to recognise those references and incorporate them into their AD so that their audience can enjoy the same warmth of recognition as the sighted audience.
8.4.1 Intertextuality and historical films
Intertextuality is particularly evident in historical films. For example, McKechnie (2002) points out that much of the visual template of Shekhar Kappur’s film about England’s sixteenth-century queen, Elizabeth (Kappur, 1998), is based on two contemporary portraits, in particular the Coronation portrait, painted in 1559 (displayed in the National Gallery, London), and the Ditchley portrait of 1592 by Marcus Gheeraerts (displayed in the National Portrait Gallery, London). Although the describer would not necessarily make overt reference to these portraits, the AD should give sufficient detail of Elizabeth’s appearance that such an inference may be drawn by anyone familiar with the portraits. As the mise en scène is a major part of any historical film’s appeal, given that anyone conversant with British history will generally already know the plot, what constitute the essential visual elements will be different from what might be deemed essential in another genre. Similar observations might be applied to TV costume drama such as adaptations of Dickens, Jane Austen, or Hilary Mantell’s Wolf Hall (Kosminsky, 2015), or to stage productions such as that of Sondheim’s musical, Sunday in the Park with George (Pimlott, 1990), in which Seurat’s famous pointilliste painting Un dimanche après-midi a l’Ile de la Grande Jatte was recreated and brought to life on stage. In Girl with a Pearl Earring, when Griet first enters Vermeer’s workshop, a reflection of her profile is captured in a mirror with a gold frame, foreshadowing the painting of the title. This anaphoric reference is not mentioned in the description, either implicitly or explicitly, and yet it is a visual reference that will have passed few sighted viewers by. Taylor (2014: 31) argues that, given such intertextuality, ‘the describer must decide whether the audience needs any assistance’, i.e., a describer must decide how much explanation to include. In the example cited above it may be enough simply to say ‘as she passes the mirror, Griet’s image is caught in its gilt frame’, without having to spell out the reference any further. In Sunday in the Park with George, describing the arrangement of the characters on stage should be enough to make the reference clear, without explicitly naming the painting they recreate.
Concerning intertextuality in general, a describer must be able to recognise the reference, and for this they may need to recognise their own shortcomings, research widely and seek help if necessary. In live AD settings, access to the show’s designer or director, stage or company manager are possible routes. In recorded AD, useful information may be contained in the screenplay, which may be available online. This is another reason for the describer to work in house with the creative team, as advocated in the approach known as accessible filmmaking (Romero-Fresco, 2013). This will be discussed further in Chapter 10, under the topic of auteur description.
As discussions on historical films by the sighted audience often centre on authenticity, it is critical that the describer reflects the mise en scène as shown. Monk and Sargeant (2002) also point out that a history film tells us more about the time in which the film was made than about the time in which it is set. Obviously this is not exclusive to film. It may also be true of historical operas and other stage productions. For example, Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana (Jones, 2013), designed by Ultz at London’s Royal Opera house, presented an Elizabethan England that was closer to the 1950s, on the accession of Queen Elizabeth II, when the opera was written, as opposed to that of the first Queen Elizabeth, in the sixteenth century. The opera was presented as a ‘play within a play’, the curtains lifting to reveal a view of a village-hall stage and beyond, into the wings, where a first-aider sat next to the prompter on one side; the director paced about on the other side; the stage hands were waiting and, between scenes, changed the set in front of us as the action alternated between public occasions – a joust, a pageant, a masked ball – and more intimate scenes between Elizabeth and her favourite courtier, Essex, Elizabeth and her advisors, or Essex and his confederates – his wife, his sister and his sister’s lover, Lord Mountjoy. During the Prelude, director Richard Jones gave us a quick canter back through history as one British monarch after another ascended a wooden throne, in reverse chronological order, the visual style reminiscent of the drawings in the spoof history book 1066 and All That (Sellar and Yeatman, 1931). The source needed to be made clear in the AD if the laughter of the sighted audience was to be understood by those who could not see.
8.5.1 Sport, news and current affairs
Annette Hill (2007) points to the increasing hybridity between factual programmes and fictional genres and acknowledges news as the most recognisable factual genre. It may seem surprising to a sighted person that a blind person should choose to watch the news on TV rather than listen to the radio. Evans and Pearson explained in reference to one member of their focus group that ‘turning on the television instead of the radio seemed more natural; his habitual allegiance to television has prevented radio from taking a significant role in his life since he became blind’ (Evans and Pearson, 2009: 379)
Both the live nature and the high speech content of news mean that it is rarely audio described, yet there is still plenty of visual content that remains inaccessible. Research has shown that ‘rapid judgements about the personality traits of political candidates based solely on their appearance, can predict their electoral success’ (Olivola and Todorov, 2010: 83). A Polish project for talking newspapers for the blind (e-kiosk), recognising the importance of the visual dimension of news, recruited young people to audio describe the photographs that accompany the news stories (Sadowska, 2015). In the UK, TV news channels are exempt from AD, on the grounds of practicality – that there is little time to fit in any AD and it is hard to avoid treading on the audio content, given the live and therefore unpredictable nature of the genre. In the USA, Fox News used the objectivity/subjectivity argument to seek exemption. Bridge Multimedia (2011) reported:
The Fox News Channel and The National Association of Broadcasters have petitioned the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requesting that news organizations be given exemption from video description requirements mandated in the 21st Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, which became law last October. According to the National Association of Broadcasters, ‘Unlike closed captioning, which is intended to repeat words spoken as precisely as possible, video description inherently carries a subjective element, and accordingly should not be required to add a non-journalist describer’s words into the editorial product.’
Documentaries offer a very different genre in AVT, although they often pose similar challenges, such as requiring a degree of technical knowledge and specialist terminology with which the audience may or may not be familiar. As suggested in Chapter 5, suitable strategies include omission, explicitation and, probably the best, naming with explication. Methods of comparison to more familiar objects via analogies, similes and metaphors are likely to be required, with attention being paid to qualities that go beyond the purely visual, to involve other senses, e.g. haptic and tactile, such as weight and texture. Lidia Cámara and Eva Espasa (2011: 417) argue that in the literature ‘AD has been addressed in non-fiction documents only as an exceptional case’. They point out the paucity of guidelines for documentaries, explaining that ‘The Spanish Standard on audio description, UNE 153020, mentions that it is generally applicable for documentaries (AENOR 2005: 4), although, unlike the ITC Guidelines, there are no specific sections for each programme type.’ By contrast, ‘The ITC Guidelines provide two further specific instructions: the recommendation to use specialist vocabulary with precision (ibid.: 9) and the relative importance of providing details in the script (ibid.: 22).’
Cámara and Espasa point out that, as the camerawork is often particularly important in a nature documentary, the first Spanish documentary to be described (Los ritmos de la vida/The Rhythms of Life) was fifteen minutes longer in the described version than in the original, due to the insertion of an AI explaining techniques such as slow motion and animated ‘infographics’. The AD also used rhetorical language with plenty of metaphors and similes, and the authors note ‘that this is consistent with current AD guidelines’ and also ‘a distinctive feature of popular scientific discourse, which helps to convey very specialised knowledge to general audiences, as is shown by the start of National Geographic documentaries’ (Cámara and Espasa, 2011: 420–421).
This poetic type of discourse is very much a feature of the AD of the National Geographic film March of the Penguins (Jacquet, 2005), which describes the penguins as a ‘superfluity of nuns’ and ‘like a slow chugging train’, as well as providing a detailed description of their appearance:
[they] have smallish black heads adorned with white and yellow ear patches, short thick necks, a streamlined shape short wedge-shaped tails and tiny flipper-like wings . . . the Penguins’ apron-like bellies are white but with their upper breasts showing a pale yellow. Viewed from the front they appear like a group of waiters heading with due diligence to their posts.
It seems ironic that for a scientific genre that may be thought to require the most objective language, the AD for this documentary employs more vivid, and potentially more subjective, language than for most dramas. One reason for this is the large amount of space available in the soundtrack. Narration for wildlife documentaries is typically sparse. Another reason is that the nature documentary long ago left behind the travel-and-safari style in favour of Walt Disney-style drama, so that, in an anthropomorphised way, animals play out human themes such as survival against the odds, territorial conflict and love stories. In order to achieve this, the camerawork is less than objective and so, too, is the narrative form with which the AD will interact. The complexity of filming is such that recent David Attenborough documentaries come packaged with a ‘making of’ mini documentary showing the shenanigans the camera team had to go through in order to achieve particular shots. Michael Gunton, the executive producer of the BBC Natural History Unit’s series Life Story (2015), emphasised that a unique aspect of the filming was having cameras at the animals’ eye level. The effect was to give the viewer a ‘tiger’s eye’ view of a chase or to put viewers in the tree canopy with the bonobos. This extra sense of spatial presence was, he felt, one reason for the series’ huge popularity. This was reinforced by focalisation techniques that sharply picked out an individual, while consigning the rest of the pack, group or herd to a more blurred image. Following the experience of a single animal made it easier to identify and empathise with the individual. In addition to describing the camerawork, the describer may be called upon to do much extra research, especially in terms of the ecology of the environment in which the encounter takes place. Again, naming and explication is the way to go. Largely freed from time constraints, the describer is able to create a vivid script limited only by their literary abilities and imagination. Again, heightened observation is not necessary. The ITC Guidance (ITC, 2000: 22) points out: ‘In a nature film, there may be wildlife in the distance, but if they are too far away to identify, there is little point in examining them through a telescope. If they were more than incidental to the sequence, they would have been filmed in close-up.’ As with films, the description will, to some extent, mask the emotive music in the soundtrack, but the ambient sounds of the creature’s habitat, along with any characteristic cries, should be left unobliterated if the sense of otherness and elsewhere is to be effectively conveyed to the AD user.
As with all description, as well as relying on the soundtrack, it is good to be able to draw on sensory information other than vision in order to get across the characteristics of the creature being described. For example, a chameleon not only comes in a variety of colours, but its skin has the texture of a beaded purse. As locomotion or gait is often an identifying characteristic, the speed, direction and effort involved should all be described. Scale is often hard to judge or may be cheated for effect. A giraffe might look particularly tall if filmed amongst young saplings. Comparisons with human metrics or everyday objects are often preferable to actual measurements using centimetres or inches. For example, a spider might fit on the tip of your finger or be the size of a dinner plate. Other measurements such as the weight of a creature will often be provided in the narration, but can be inferred, either from the soundtrack or, for example, from the depth of a footprint in soft ground.
Documentaries were traditionally made for the purposes of instruction or to document reality. They both show and tell. This suggests that accuracy of description is paramount, although the describer must take care to avoid redundancy. In one of the earliest reception studies of AD (and Kirchner and Schmeidler, 2001) participants reported that some description repeats information people could have figured out themselves. This can happen as a function of filmmaking because the editing of speech requires a cut-away – an image to distract the viewer from the non-consecutive mouth movements of a speaker. In general, a shot is chosen that illustrates the topic being discussed and the image may add limited extra detail. As the information is often conveyed by real people (as opposed to dramatic characters), their physical appearance is likely to have little bearing on our understanding of the subject matter; instead, the interviewees or speakers may be identified by a caption stating their name and perhaps job title or area of expertise. Ways to deal with text on screen are discussed in Chapter 9. This is also relevant to documentaries in which interviewees from a different country, if not dubbed, may well have their speech captioned.
Adopting of the same terminology as the ST is a way to establish coherence, characterised by Braun (2007: 365) as ‘connectivity in discourse’. Braun furthermore distinguishes between local and global coherence, with ‘local coherence being created within individual scenes and global coherence reaching out across scenes’. The longer the duration of the AVT product, the potentially more difficult global coherence becomes. For example, it is common practice in the UK for the description of a stage play to be split between two describers, each taking one act. Once each has prepared their part of the AD script (usually this work is carried out independently, although they may have brief discussions following their initial viewing of the production) they must work together to ensure consistency of terminology. The same might happen when describing a film with a tight turn-around before broadcast, as different reels of the film may be allocated to different describers in order to speed up the scripting process. The potential problems become heightened with other genres such as series and serials, whether for TV or for films that elapse over a longer time span or a larger number of episodes. Point A.34 of the Ofcom Code advises: ‘Ideally, the same people should be used to describe a series of programmes, both to ensure a consistent style (e.g. in terms of level of detail) and because the description forms a part of the programme for users’ (Ofcom, 2015). For example, the Harry Potter films were all described by the same describer, Di Langford, to ensure consistency over the ten years of their release (2001–2011).
For soaps and long-running series it can be helpful for an AD unit to maintain an up-to-date database of names used for characters and locations. Standard descriptions for opening titles may also be shared so as to provide consistency and to avoid having to reinvent the wheel. Titles are discussed further in Chapter 9. The Code on Provision of Access Services (Ofcom, 2015: 4.3) suggests using the opening sequence to provide a brief summary of the previous episode. Although many series do this as a matter of course, editing together a montage of short snippets from the previous episode, in practice these usually contain little space for description and the BPS audience may have to rely on dialogue alone, or their own memories. Some series make this montage explicit; the words ‘previously on Ally McBeal’ spring to mind, as these prefaced the opening of every programme in the series before a quick montage recapped events in the previous episode(s). This type of montage has become an industry standard for TV series (see Michlin, 2011). Where this is not the case, the describer may choose to provide a similar introduction to prepare the AD user for what is about to follow.
Matamala and Remael (2015) discuss working on the Flemish soap opera Thuis. They point out that in a soap the storyline generally revolves around intrigue and emotion, carried through the dialogue, and each episode follows a predictable format consisting of a recap, the credits, then the episode itself, ending with a preview of what to expect next time. A limited number of settings are frequently revisited, and most scenes involve only two or three characters, who are strongly connected to particular places. Most soaps also have an accompanying website where descriptions of characters could be made available, as there is rarely time within the dialogue-heavy episodes and descriptions of regular characters could quickly become tiresomely repetitive for a dedicated fan. Remael also suggests that such descriptions could include the character’s biography, e.g.: ‘Simonne is Yvette’s daughter. She and Frank have one son, Franky. A few years ago she met her father Stan, who was one of Yvette’s puppy loves. Simonne has always had a very good relationship with Frank’s mother, Florke, who has meanwhile passed away and with Florke’s husband Rogerke. When she needs someone to talk to, she can rely on her best friend Julia.’ This may be helpful not only to AD users but also to sighted audiences watching for the first time.
The RNIB (2009) has produced some specific guidelines on describing for children, based on ‘feedback from parents, children and teachers and in consultation with the speech and language therapists’. Benecke warns that blind children ‘have normally a smaller memory of images, because they were born blind or simply had a shorter period in which they could see – compared to grown-ups this at times had the [sic] whole youth to fill their memory of images. The describer therefore has to be very careful not to rely on too much presupposed knowledge and has to describe in more detail – if the gaps between the dialogues allow that’ (Benecke, 2007: 5). Over-complex AD for children is best avoided. The RNIB points out that a significant proportion of visually impaired children may also have learning disabilities or hearing problems if their sight impairment is part of a spectrum of other disabilities, often stemming from being born prematurely. Blind children are also likely to have delayed language development and may display other speech problems such as pronoun reversals and formulaic speech (Hobson and Bishop, 2003; Pring, 2004). However, Pring (2004) suggests that the majority later ‘catch up’. The RNIB guidelines point out that AD can help facilitate this because the AD ‘signposts objects and events, and reinforces the meaning of words’. When audio describing for children, repetition can be beneficial rather than dull. Leaving space for sound effects is all the more important to help blind children make cross-modal associations. Below is an example featuring plenty of repetition from the AD of a stage adaptation of the children’s book The Elephantom by Ross Collins, directed by Finn Caldwell and Toby Olié at the National Theatre of Great Britain (2013). The production was mimed by actors, whose movement was choreographed to a soundtrack, and used an inflatable puppet as the mysterious Elephantom, which apparently appears from nowhere and behaves like a naughty and oversized poltergeist.
Slowly, slowly, an enormous blue balloon starts to blow up on her bed, Bigger and bigger. The girl stares. Clutches the duvet. Bigger and bigger. Bluer and bluer. Suddenly, little balloon legs dangle. The girl dives out of bed. Bigger and bigger – the size of an elephant. An elephant’s head floats on and joins its body. Elephantom glides off the bed, blue and blowing. He sails round in the air to face the little girl.
Playing with rhythm is also recommended, as is verbal economy. In an attempt to describe the American cartoon The Powerpuff Girls in the early days of TV description in the UK, the describers at ITFC adopted a particularly playful style, abandoning a narrative form, such that when one of the protagonists was about to come to a sticky end, the describer might simply say ‘she aims a punch at the window, [pause] . . . Oh dear! [SFX: shattering glass]’. This approach allowed the sound effect to convey that the action resulted in the glass breaking.
AD for children is not specifically mentioned in the Spanish guidelines, whereas the ITC Guidance (ITC, 2000: 3.2) advocates using a more intimate tone, such as describing in the first person plural, e.g. ‘Now he’s coming towards us. His mouth hangs open. His arms are outstretched and he’s breathing heavily . . . ’. Orero (2011) discusses the film Monsters Inc. (Docter, Unkrich and Silverman, 2002), in which the opening sequence is given over to description of the characters rather than a description of the action. It is important to remember that a programme described for children is likely to be watched by the child on their own, but also possibly by sighted parents watching with their blind child. Or by a sighted child watching with their blind parent(s) or by a blind child watching with their sighted sibling(s). The aim should be to create a description that a family can enjoy together. In terms of delivery, the Spanish standard advises: ‘When AD is for children the voice-talent (male or female) should have a tone which is more adequate for children and which can be more expressive’ (AENOR, 2005: 12). Ofcom (2015: A4.35) suggests: ‘Language and pace of delivery for children’s TV need particular care, having regard to the age and background of the target audience, as well as feedback from children and their parents. A more intimate style may be appropriate than would be the case for programmes aimed at adults.’
A Polish study (Krejtz et al., 2012) using eye-tracking data showed another useful application of AD for children: that of helping to guide the attention of sighted children. This is one of the many educational functions of AD, along with aiding foreign language learning.
8.8 Genre and live performance
The importance of recognising variation between genres is not limited to screen AD. In the theatre, the production genre carries similar implications for the AD. Description of comedy may benefit from breaking the rule of never letting the description override the dialogue (Crowley and Fryer, 2015). In some genres, such as pantomime and popular musicals, it may be necessary to describe the antics of the audience (e.g. dancing in the aisles in Mamma Mia! or joining in the actions during the community song in a pantomime). Occasionally plays are deemed to need only an AI rather than a full AD. One example is the production of Under Milk Wood at the National Theatre of Great Britain (1995, dir. Michell), the justification being that Under Milk Wood was conceived by its author, Dylan Thomas, as a radio play or ‘a play for voices’. It was therefore possible to follow the play with no AD, as the settings, characters and actions are identified in the dialogue, which left extremely limited space for any AD. Yet, it was beautifully brought to life and the costumes and stage design added to its charm.
As with screen series and serials, it is important to have continuity of voices and set/character descriptions for two- or three-part plays – for example, the two plays adapted by Nicholas Wright from Philip Pullman’s trilogy of novels known collectively as His Dark Materials, staged at the National Theatre of Great Britain in 2003. Or more recently, The James Plays, a trio of history plays by Rona Munro (2014) that were all staged on the same set in a co-production between the National Theatres of Scotland and Great Britain and the Edinburgh International Festival. A single description of the set sufficed for all three; it would have been ridiculous and confusing to have it described three times by different describers.
In this chapter we have explored how the need for AD and the style of AD can change according to programme genre. We have discussed the importance of consistency and continuity in series and serials. It is acknowledged that not every genre benefits from AD. Where resources are limited, they should be concentrated on describing genres that are the most popular or can most benefit from the addition of AD.
8.10 Exercises and points for discussion
1 Watch two short, described films or programmes of your choice – of contrasting genres. Under the categories of Who, What, Where, When, note any differences between genres. Look for differences in the language and delivery style of the description as well as the content.
2 Practise your verbal skills by describing some still images of animals. Try again using moving footage. How does your descriptive focus change?
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Film references
Elizabeth, S. Kappur (1998).
March of the Penguins, L. Jacquet (2005).
Monsters Inc., P. Docter, L. Unkrich and D. Silverman (2002).
The Private Life of Henry VIII, A. Korda (1933).
Shakespeare in Love, J. Madden, (1999).
Girl with a Pearl Earring, P. Webber (2003).
The Shining, S. Kubrick (1980).
Zombieland, R. Fleischer (2009).
References to live events
Gloriana, dir. R. Jones (2013). Royal Opera House, London.
Sunday in the Park with George, dir. S. Pimlott (1990). National Theatre of Great Britain, London (pre-dates UK description).
The Elephantom, dir. F. Caldwell and T. Olié (2013). National Theatre of Great Britain, London. AD by in-house team (describers Bridget Crowley and Louise Fryer).
The James Plays, dir. R. Munro (2014). National Theatre of Great Britain, London. AD by in-house team.
The Lion King, dir. J. Taymor (1994–ongoing). Lyceum Theatre, London. AD by VocalEyes (original describers Louise Fryer and Andrew Holland).
Under Milk Wood, dir. R. Michell (1995). Royal National Theatre of Great Britain, London. AD by in-house team (describers Louise Fryer and Andrew Holland).
References to TV programmes
Life Story, Sophie Lanfear (2015).
Wolf Hall, P. Kosminsky (2015).