Art by Jon McCormack.
This episode was written and produced by Marissa Flaxbart.
Audio description allows you to enjoy a movie or TV show without the need for any visuals. But how do these narrators strike the right tone for a scene? How do the writers decide what needs to be described? And what’s in store for the future of described audio? In honor of Blindness Awareness Month, this is a brand new story about the world of Audio Description. Featuring AD Narrator Roy Samuleson and AD experts Thomas Reid and Melody Goodspeed.
MUSIC FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE
Original music by Wesley Slover
Lost In Translation by Wendy Marcini & Elvin Vanguard
Bumblebee by Mike Franklyn
Basketliner by Bitters
Dutiligi by Sound of Picture
This Party Sucks (Instrumental) by Josh Sahunta
Donnalee by Bitters
Ranch Hand by Truck Stop
Windows by Sound of Picture
The Rebellion by Ryan Taubert
Copely Beat by Skittle
Elmore Heights by Skittle
Shines Through the Trees by Sound of Picture
Ice Fields by Martin Gauffin
Let’s Run Away (Instrumental) by Sarah Kang
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View Transcript ▶︎
You’re listening to Twenty Thousand Hertz.
[Clip: Fast & Furious 9]
This is a clip from Fast and Furious 9.
[Clip: Fast & Furious 9 Clip continues]
As you can tell…
[Clip: Fast & Furious 9 Explosions, screams]
It's pretty intense.
[Clip: Fast & Furious 9 explosions]
It has a lot of cool sound design…
[Clip: Fast & Furious 9 Clip continues]
And it looks pretty awesome too.
[Clip: Fast & Furious 9 Clip continues]
Oh right! It’s probably hard to tell what's going on without the video.
[Fast & Furious 9 Pauses]
So let's rewind and try this again.
[sfx: Rewind and then pause]
But first, let’s pull up the settings and turn on the audio description.
[sfx: UI button]
[clip: Full Fast & Furious 9 clip plays with audio descriptions]
Roy Samuelson: The technology has changed so much even since the last time you had an audio description podcast.
That’s Roy Samuelson, a voice actor and an audio description narrator.
Roy Samuelson: Each streaming service that's launched in the last few years have had their own approach to bringing audio description.
Roy was the one who recorded that description for Fast and Furious 9. He’s narrated hundreds of titles, including Spiderman: No Way Home , Star Trek: Discovery, and HBO’s Watchmen.
[music out]
[clip: Watchmen AD]
The officer in the pirate head scarf hops out of the van with a shotgun and bangs on the back door. Red Scare opens the door and tosses a man onto the ground. He zipties the man’s hands behind his back.
When people ask Roy what audio description is, he answers in a way that only a professional could.
Roy Samuelson: You know, in the world of audio description also called video description or descriptive video or descriptive narration, a describer who might be the writer or the narrator, or maybe it's both the writer and the narrator, or maybe it's the company, but not the production company nor the distributor, but a special other company gives their creation of a split track or a mixed track of a narrator, if the film or TV show even has it, which is depending on the distribution channel, like streaming, theatrical, broadcast, physical like Blu-ray or DVD or downloadable to your iTunes or Google play, or even YouTube with any of these, each of which offers varying levels of access of the audio description, either on an app or a TV or a cable box or a Chrome browser with a special plugin…
[music out]
It’s not exactly a simple answer.
[music in]
Roy Samuelson: Maybe the audio descriptions separately downloadable that syncs up that you can listen to a narrator or a synth voice, so it sounds like a conversational robot, or maybe it's a narrator that sounds like a synth voice. But you don't know if the audio description is there until you hear it, which could be a few minutes into the show.
Roy Samuelson: So you wait and wait and wait and hope and then, you don't hear it. So you have to decide either to stop and complain or just put up with it. But if you do decide to complain, who do you complain to? Is that the local broadcast affiliate or the movie theater manager who was dealing with Karen's complaint about her unpopped popcorn kernel?
[music out]
Thomas Reid: I like to call it an art form of describing scenes in visual content.
That’s Thomas Reid, who’s an expert in audio description.
Thomas Reid: Describing the scenes where there's no dialogue, and therefore someone who is blind would have a really tough time understanding what's happening. So audio description is that art, bringing that information to life.
Thomas grew up sighted, and was always a movie buff.
Thomas Reid: So I was a big, avid fan of movies. That was a big part of my relationship too, with my wife. When we went to the movies, it was something that we enjoyed together. So we experienced it together.
But then, Thomas lost his vision, and that shared experience changed.
Thomas Reid: So not having access to that, that same experience, was really, that was difficult. That was really really difficult, not only for me but for us.
Thomas Reid: Now, going to a movie or even watching something at home, as a blind person, it was sort of like, “Wow, I can just imagine how she would look over and realize, ‘He's not enjoying it the same way I'm enjoying it.’”
[music out]
At first, Thomas just tried to get through it, and enjoy movies using the standard audio track. He remembers the first time he put on a movie after losing his sight.
Thomas Reid: So that HBO movie music.
[clip: HBO Feature Presentation theme]
Thomas Reid: You know, when it starts up, right? You know that thing that they have?
Thomas Reid: So that was coming on. So I'm like, “Okay, cool. What is this?” And the movie started
[clip: movie without dialogue]
Thomas Reid: And there was no dialogue. There was no dialogue for like five minutes. I mean, it was a while. So I'm like, “Am I going to invest my time? Like, what is this?”
Thomas Reid: You know, so that happened several times. So it was always these decisions that had to be made. “Am I going to continue to watch it? Are you really understanding what’s happening?”
[music in]
Melody Goodspeed: I don't want to work to be entertained (laughs). It's enough work!
That’s Melody Goodspeed, who works at the American Foundation for the Blind.
Melody Goodspeed: You go to work all day. I have two kids you know, and a husband, and you have to cook and clean, and I do all of that stuff. And sometimes you just want to veg on the couch and watch a show and zone out, you know?
Like Thomas, Melody used to be sighted, but is now blind. After she lost her sight, she struggled to find TV shows that she could enjoy like she used to.
Melody Goodspeed: I was watching TV and just kind of would start to pick shows that had a lot of dialogue on them, because I wasn't finding enjoyment out of the ones that simply had a lot of visuals with no context of understanding what was going on on the screen.
But then, Melody's husband stumbled onto that “audio description” setting.
[sfx: Switching on AD]
Melody Goodspeed: And he's like, “What is this?” And we picked it on and my whole world just opened up because there was an individual that was describing those scenes, like these action packed scenes.
[music out]
Here’s an example from Breaking Bad.
[clip: Breaking Bad AD]
“Just bang a U-ey over her.” Walt watches oncoming traffic, then makes a sharp U-turn right in front of an SUV. The SUV collides with Walt’s car. Later, Hank wears a neck brace and eats frozen yogurt in bed. “Mmm, hits the spot. Thanks guys.”
Melody Goodspeed: I was really excited because I got to understand and I completely would follow and I was so into this, cause now I'm finally getting the visuals that are not accessible to me.
[music in]
Imagine watching a movie, in a language you don’t know, without any subtitles or dubbing. It’d be almost impossible to follow the story. But once you turn one of these options on, it completely transforms the experience.
For Melody, that’s what it felt like when she discovered audio description. And to top it off, once the show was over, she could actually talk to people about it.
Melody Goodspeed: The funny thing is it was a show that was very popular and I happened to be walking down the hallway. It was on my way to work. And somebody was talking about the show the night before and I said, “Oh my gosh, wasn't that car scene amazing?” And of course they just stopped, you know, because they’re like “How'd she know there was that car scene, and how did she know it flipped, and how'd she know all this?” And that is just an example of like, I am now included in the conversation. And so it's fun to be able to have that back.
[music out]
At its core, audio description is just a single extra track of narration. But the process of creating that track can be pretty complicated.
[music in]
Roy Samuelson: What happens is, the distributor hires a company that creates the audio description. And if you can imagine the audio description distinguishing itself from closed captioning, that it is a fully created script. It's almost like an adaptation.
In order for it to work, the description doesn’t just need to be well-written. It also needs to fit between the natural gaps of the dialogue and other important sounds.
Roy Samuelson: If you can think about, you know, the old thing, “a picture is worth a thousand words.”
[sfx: film projector sound]
Roy Samuelson: Well, a picture in a movie is 24 frames a second. So every second of a film or TV show, that's 24,000 words to choose from per second. And that's like 2 million words in a typical movie. And each one of those words needs to fit between lines of dialogue. So it's incredibly limiting.
The people who write descriptions have to make careful decisions about what needs to be described.
Roy Samuelson: What is the most important element of this story visually that needs to be communicated in that incredible limited size? So it’s really cool to see how that happens.
[music out]
For instance, listen to this classic scene from Seinfeld. In it, George has to push a Frogger arcade machine across a busy street. Notice how the description lets you understand the visual joke.
[clip: Seinfeld AD]
An overhead view of a 3 lane street. George pushes the machine into the street, and mimics the Frogger game. George continues to push the machine, bobbing in between cars, and moving back and forth between the lanes. He pushes it to the curb. A large truck drives toward George. George holds up his hand. The truck approaches. George leaps onto the sidewalk. [crash] Bits of the machine lie on top of George. “Game over.”
Described audio is much more prevalent today than it used to be.
Roy Samuelson: These streaming companies are opting into it, and I can't help but think that they recognize the value, whether that's from pressure from blind organizations or whether that's their own bottom line, recognizing “Here's that many more subscribers that we can get,” that there is something that's changing.
But even so, it’s still pretty hard to guess which titles have descriptions, and how they’re gonna sound.
[music in]
Roy Samuelson: Because not everybody knows about it, and everyone has their own kind of siloed approach to how it's being done, it really feels like the wild west. And so what's happening is that there is an inconsistency. There could be a ten million dollar episode of television that might not even have audio description.
Thomas Reid: We sit down as a family and make decisions to watch something. And if it doesn't have audio description, we're pretty much not watching it. And that's them, so my wife and my two daughters. They're the ones who are really making that decision, because often I might say, “No, just go ahead and watch it.” And they're like, “No, we're not watching it.”
Or maybe there is described audio, but it’s badly mixed, so it’s hard to hear.
Roy Samuelson: And then on the opposite side, there could be a low budget film, and the audio description just sings.
Melody Goodspeed: There just needs to be consistency. And I don't think people think about that.
[music out]
[music in]
Depending on where you watch something, audio descriptions can be wildly inconsistent. And sometimes they can even go completely off the rails. More after this.
[music out]
MIDROLL
[music in]
In recent years, audio description has become available on more platforms than ever. And as blind and low-vision audiences hear more of these descriptions, they’re learning what works and what doesn’t.
Melody Goodspeed: I have a friend of mine who’s Roy Samuelson who teases me that I am a kind of a snob or a connoisseur (laughs).
Roy Samuelson: There is this kind of audio description snobbery that's happening in the best way possible, that our audiences are becoming sophisticated and demanding an experience that is in parity to what the sighted audiences get.
[music out]
As a professional narrator, Roy often asks people about their experiences with described audio.
[music in]
Roy Samuelson: I've talked to audiences who listen to audio description, and they say, “I couldn't stand it. I had to turn it off. It was too hard to listen to.”
Sometimes, the narrator’s voice might completely clash with the type of movie that you’re watching.
Roy Sameulson: Does the narrator of a scary suspenseful movie talk to you like you're a baby toddler? Does the kid’s show have an uninterested adult narrating who sounds as tasteless as cereal too long in the milk? Or even kind of creepy, like a horror monster made to describe the lighthearted comedy romance film to you?
But it’s not just about genre. A good narrator should be able to change their delivery on a scene by scene basis.
Melody Goodspeed: If there's a part that's very touching, you know and very slow and in the rhythm, you don't want to have a piece of audio description where the voice like is not portraying that.
[music out]
For instance, if you’re watching Titanic, you probably wouldn't want the audio description to sound like this.
Fake Titanic AD: Rose pries her hand out of Jack’s grip. “I’ll never let go. I promise.” She kisses his hand, then releases him. Jack sinks into the icy water, and vanishes in the gloom.
Melody Goodspeed: Or if it's a fast paced speed chase…
[sfx: car chase]
Melody Goodspeed: I don't want to hear something like—
Fake AD: The car’s going fast down the road.
Melody Goodspeed: It's, “Okay, well, I kinda hear it's going fast. ‘Cause the engine clearly tells me it is. Are they being chased?” Like just walk me through it, like a dance.
Fake AD: Stingray reaches under the wheel and presses a red button. Flames erupt out of the tailpipes. Stingray’s car lunges ahead, leaving the pursuing car in the dust.
[music in]
Ideally, the description should include as much detail as possible. But Thomas Reid has noticed that descriptions of a character’s race or ethnicity are often left out.
Thomas Reid: The rule of thumb has always been “Only mention race if it's relevant to the story.” And I like to say, “This is America, it's always relevant.” It's information that you have. A sighted person gets that information automatically. What they do with it is their choice. What I do with that information should be my choice.
Today, there’s more diversity on screen. So it makes sense that audio description should accurately reflect that.
Thomas Reid: Finally, it seems like the world is kind of catching up and we're thinking about these things and we need to think about them for audio description, too.
Thomas Reid: We have to be specific about the choices of words that are used to describe. Whoever is writing that needs to be familiar with the culture that's on the screen at that particular time.
[music out]
A few years ago, Thomas saw a movie that he felt didn’t do a great job of this.
[clip: Black Panther trailer]
What happens now determines what happens to the rest of the world.
Thomas Reid: Black Panther. There was all the hype around Black Panther coming out, but it was so much more than that. It was like this experience, especially for black people, and it was an event. Because it was blackness in all its glory. Beautiful blackness on display. And my audio narrator, who was probably a nice guy, he sounded to me like a British white male to the point where he actually mispronounced Wakanda and said, “waCANda.”
[clip: Black Panther AD]
Audio Description: “My prince, we are home.” Wakanda. Mist floats around mountain ridges. The Wakandan’s look on. The tall towers of Wakanda rise up. Wakandans. Wakandan mountains. The high rise buildings of Wakanda.
Thomas Reid: So I laugh because I remember seeing an SNL skit and one of the guys was saying “waCANda.”
[clip: SNL]
“You talking about Wacanda? Sweet! Wacanda forever!” “Ahhh, it’s like indigestion, but racially?” “Oh I feel it like right here.”
Thomas Reid: And it was so funny. And you know, it brought back that for me. So when I finally had the opportunity to experience that event, I was taken out of it.
Currently, the actual creators of a movie or TV show are almost never involved in the description. So director Ryan Coogler probably had no idea what the description for his movie sounded like.
Thomas Reid: If I was able to have a conversation with Coogler, who made Black Panther, if he knew that, I don't think he would have went for that.
Melody Goodspeed: When it comes to movie directors and producers, a lot of them actually don't even know that they have audio description, or even what that is on their show.
Getting more people who are blind involved in that process would almost certainly result in better descriptions. For instance, one of Thomas’ biggest pet peeves is when he turns on described audio, only to realize that it’s an artificial text to speech voice.
[clip: E.T. Ending]
[music in]
Thomas Reid: Blind people such as myself are quite used to synthetic speech, because that's how we interact with computers. And while those voices have gotten a lot better and continue to get better, it can't replace an actual human narrator, you know? And unfortunately, there are some who are cutting a lot of corners because they want to save money.
But when you compare the cost of a hiring narrator to the overall budget of a movie...
Thomas Reid: It's tiny, it's tiny. It's nothing. It's like the coffee that's served to the staff creating it or something.
Audiobook companies could also save money by using text to speech voices. But of course, no one wants that. They want a professional, human narrator. And people listening to audio description want the same.
Thomas Reid: You know, the idea that they're taking these shortcuts and the biggest insult to me is that we're not included in that conversation. So it's almost like, “Just take what you get and be happy.
[music out]
At the end of the day, making audio descriptions better and more available is good for everyone.
Melody Goodspeed: My son was downstairs and he had the TV on eating breakfast. And I noticed he had audio description on his show.
[Clip: Gravity Falls AD]
“Every step of the… Oh my gosh a pig!” On a poster, “Win a pig!” Mabel runs across the fairgrounds to the Win a Pig stand. “If’n you can guess the critter’s weight, you can take the critter home!”
Melody Goodspeed: And I'm like, “Jonah, I'm not watching that show. You don't need to have it on.” He's like, “No, I like it!” And I'm like, “Well, why do you like it? Can you explain?” ‘Cause I was curious. And he's like, “It helps me concentrate on the show. Like I get more out of it with audio description than I do if I don't have it on.”
[music in]
If you’re not hearing impaired, but you often watch shows with the captions turned on, then you already understand this. There are plenty of situations where audio description could come in handy, even if you’re sighted.
Melody Goodspeed: My husband likes to watch audio description when we're in the car because he's driving. I mean, he's not going to go look at the screen. At least I hope he doesn’t, or else we're in trouble (laughs).
When you combine sound design, music, and dialog with a great narrator, it’s an incredible experience, whether you can see it or not.
Melody Goodspeed: It's an art form. It's writing, it's the sound engineering, and it's the narrator. When you're into a show and they have the whole mix of those three things, it does create kind of an audiobook for a sighted individual as well.
[music out]
To hear what Melody means, listen to this clip from House of the Dragon, with descriptions by Roy.
[clip: House of the Dragon AD]
A sea of white fluffy clouds stretches to the horizon. A huge gold dragon rises above the clouds on leathery wings, bearing a rider. The sun at its back, the dragon glides over the clouds, then dives beneath them.
So to all of you streaming services, here’s an idea.
[music in]
Right now, streaming apps tether people to screens, so they can really only use them when they’re sitting still. But what if people could tap a button, and switch over to an audio-only mode? This disable the video, so it doesn’t eat up much data. And it would default to described audio.
Suddenly, people could enjoy their favorite shows in a brand new way. On their drive, on a run, while they’re cooking, on a road trip, and the list goes on.. It could even take a big chunk out of listeners from podcasts… but hopefully not this one.
[music out]
There are over two hundred and eighty five million visually impaired people in the world. And everytime a movie or TV show comes out that doesn’t have audio description, it locks this entire group of people out of it.
But if audio description wasn’t just an afterthought, things could be so different.
[music in]
Melody Goodspeed: What if the writer of the film had the script, but then also shared that script with the audio descriptive writer, and they worked in tandem? Could you imagine how great that would be? To be able to have a new, fresh way of building an inclusive environment, but elevating entertainment for the whole world.
In the long term, getting more direct involvement from the writers and directors is an exciting idea. But in the short term...
Melody Goodspeed: The best and the most critical thing, I think, is having blind individuals that want to be a part of this and want this as meaningful employment to lead that charge in audio description, for them to be the thought leaders.
Thomas Reid: There are several different aspects of producing audio description. And I personally believe that we can be involved in every aspect.
Roy Samuelson: As a sighted narrator, and as a sighted advocate, I want to make sure that our audiences, who are experts, can contribute to this, whether it's in the sound engineering, it's editing the writing, voicing the work, professional voice talents who are blind, or quality control.
Of course, we all love being entertained, but audio description goes beyond entertainment. It’s also about sharing an experience with people you care about.
[music in]
Thomas Reid: It’s not just the individual, it’s the families, it's work, it's just being able to interact with people, like it's so much.
Thomas Reid: We go to movies together, we watch TV together and we all want to be involved. We all want to have conversations. I can't tell you how many times I've used movies and television shows to make points to my daughters about things they need to know, and they can get, they can relate to. Well, what if I can't really access that? You know, that takes away an opportunity to bond.
Roy Samuelson: It's connection. I think about every time that there is an experience that I've had with a movie that moved me emotionally, the first thing I did was want to call one of my dear friends and share. “Wasn't this great! This is such a great experience.” Or if I saw it with someone, it's like, that experience is a connection, and our blind and low vision audiences deserve that experience too.
Thomas remembers going on a special anniversary date with his wife.
Thomas Reid: She found out that this particular theater had audio description. And we went and I had no idea. And it was a movie that we both enjoyed. It was a really romantic movie, Die Hard (laughs)
[clip: Live Free or Die Hard AD]
Thomas Reid: And the audio description worked wonderfully.
Thomas Reid: So during the movie, I just remember kind of leaning over to her and saying. “Did that look as cool as it sounded?” And she was really happy. Like she always talks about that particular event because it just made her really happy.
[music out]
[music in]
Twenty Thousand Hertz is hosted by me, Dallas Taylor, and produced out of the sound design studios of Defacto Sound. To hear more, visit Defacto Sound dot com.
This episode was written and produced by Marissa Flaxbart and Casey Emmerling. It was story edited by Colin Devarney, with help from Grace East. It was sound designed and mixed by Jai Berger with original music by Wesley Slover.
Thanks to our guests, Melody Goodspeed, Thomas Reid, and Roy Samuelson. If you’d like to hear more about their work, you can start by subscribing to two different podcasts. Thomas’ podcast is called Reid My Mind Radio, and Reid is spelled R-E-I-D. Roy’s podcast is called The A-D-N-A Presents, where he hosts an ongoing series called Know Your Narrator.
And the next time you’re binging your favorite show, turn on the audio descriptions. You never know, you might like it.
Thanks for listening.
[music out]
