Aliens - Supplemental Audio Description
One thing largely unremarked about the new release of the film Aliens on UHD blu-ray, is that it includes an audio description track for people who are blind, low-vision, or just want to listen to a film while they're doing the dishes.
This is significant. Previously the film was undescribed, except (somewhat poorly) by a Canadian streaming service, and an unofficial fan version written by myself; both of these only last year.
I believe the new description was written and recorded by Deluxe and narrated by Jedidiah Barton. On 'X' one user, a horror fan, described the script as "detailed and muscular".
Unfortunately, while it is a well written script, and faultlessly performed, it is not particularly detailed at all. As a sighted user of audio description, I observed that many elements of the film are just not described.
There are two especially egregious omissions.
The first is it lacks diversity information of the cast. I know some people don't care about skin-colour and racial characteristics, but others — often those who fall into those groups — do care a great deal as it ties into issues of identity and representation. From a certain point of view, omitting this information looks painfuly like erasure.
Secondly, and this baffles me entirely for a film called “Aliens”, it largely fails to describe the alien creatures themselves. (about the only adjectives given are "giant", "towering" and "beast", which are woefully inadequate to describe Stan Winston's interpretations of Giger's unsettling and disturbing designs).
So, I wrote an audio introduction for the film.
In theatre an audio introductions, supplemental pre-show material that typically describes the stage, characters, settings, props and context in greater detail than could be achieved with interstitial audio description.
There have been a few attempts to create similar material for film and television, but it's rare.
For Aliens, I describe the main characters, all the marines, the power-loader, the drop-ship, the motion-tracker, the smart-guns and all of the alien creatures in common with the first film Alien ().
The lines were recorded by US voice-over artist Marisa F. Miller who also edited the script. I found myself having to give myself a crash course in audio production to assemble it. I added some fantastic creative-commons music from Scott Buckley and Insectarium, some audio clips from the film, and some supplemental visuals for low-vision folks.
Other than supplementing the audio description, one of my goals was to play with the form. In particular, one of my frustrations with audio introductions is that I tend to not be able to retain much information about a large number of characters. I theorised that linking the description of the character to an early clip of their dialogue may promote retention.
In this version, the clip follows the description, but Marisa and I both felt that if we did it over again, we'd announce the character's name, then have the clip, and have the character description follow.
I was very interested in ways to demonstrate the physicality of one of the unique props of the film, the smart-guns and wrote a 7 step guide “How to Walk Like a Smartgun Operator”.
It also includes still-frames from the film, and pictures of props, for people with low vision.
While it was a fun writing exercise, and an opportunity to put into practice some of my ideas; and also to collaborate with someone on the other side of the world to me, it is important primarily as promoting accessibility, as an aid to enjoying a film.
I consider it a success. After I released it, someone on Discord noted:
I still have a bit of memory of what the different creatures look like from when I had more sight, and I refreshed it a bit by reading the novelizations a while back. This is a much better solution than to have to read an entire novelation, so thanks for this.