Imagine you’re watching a horror film. There’s a tense silence, a creaky floorboard, and then – BAM – a zombie bursts out of the bathroom! If your audio description says:
“A man enters. There is a noise. The man turns,” then you’ve successfully sucked all the fuel out of my potentially racing pulse.
You’ve correctly stated the facts, but you’ve killed the flair. You’ve taken a thrilling feast fit for a king of a visual and turned it into a microwave meal for one – cheap, bland, distasteful – because you wanted it to be ready in seconds!
What if the visuals of this same film matched the level of enthusiasm as that lacklustre audio description? A pasty bloke half-heartedly splattered with what is very obviously some blobs of congealed tomato ketchup, popping his head out of the toilet door and looking about shiftily – perhaps incriminatingly in some ways, but hardly enough to keep you awake at night.
My point is that audio description is not a cream cardigan. It shouldn’t go with everything. It should be a glittery cloak for fantasy, a leather jacket for a thriller and a moth-eaten jumper for your classic British sitcom.
It needs to shape shift and morph, appealing to its audience accordingly in order to have the desired effect. Audio description is not an afterthought, but an art form in itself.
Because different genres speak different visual languages. A fast-paced heist needs snappy, rhythmic description – short sentences, ticking-clock vibes. A Jane Austen adaptation? A bit more lingering. Give me the empire lines, the longing glances, the full-on bonnet report.
The best directors care deeply about getting that perfect shot that captures the full spectrum of emotions that go into one poignant moment of a story. They consider everything from angle to positioning to filters on the footage. It’s not so much about the facts of what you can physically see, but how it looks to you in your mind’s eye. How to receive it, how you consume it, what it reminds you of. The impact it has on you and how long that impact might last.
In my opinion, the best describers are those who understand that colour is not just something you can see. It’s something that can shade, blend and light up a scene when you use the right vocabulary to do so. Just as a laser-blasting spaceship would appear ludicrous in a period drama, the kind of matter of fact, simplistic audio description which might work for a corporate training video is never going to sit right when placed in a Disney fairytale.
It’s about understanding who you’re appealing to – and what kind of description will make the most sense.
One thing to keep in mind here is that, no matter what the genre, audio description is primarily used by those of us with low or no vision. So, that being the case, be careful to consider the kind of language you’re including. If you choose too many words with very visual connotations, it’s unlikely that someone like me will be able to follow it. What if I’ve never seen someone twitching their nose or wrinkling their forehead? What does a wrinkle actually look like? These are things which are easy to take for granted as common knowledge and yet they can be more mysterious than one of Inspector Clouseau’s cases to those of us who are blind.
And then of course, there’s tone. If the show’s a comedy, let the description wink at me. If it’s tense, let it tighten. Don’t give me the same delivery whether it’s a cat video or the collapse of civilisation. That’s not access – that’s a car crash, a mismatch of varying vibes. I don’t want good vibes only, I only want vibes that are good for what I’m watching.
So, here’s my dream: genre-savvy audio describers. The chameleons of access. Masters of mood. If they can do funny, suspenseful, romantic and sci-fi, that’s BAFTA territory in my eyes, (well, ears)!
Because at the end of the day, description isn’t just about what you see. It’s about how it feels. And feelings, (unlike plastic, theme park ponchos) certainly don’t come with a one-size-fits-all guarantee.