tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-484708487915515531.post4171596912891791184..comments2023-10-31T05:10:00.060-07:00Comments on LiveDescribe Audio Description Work: LiveDescribe Week 5Kat-LiveDescriberhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09267010113721942901noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-484708487915515531.post-46848400123370214342009-06-08T07:37:56.432-07:002009-06-08T07:37:56.432-07:00Hi Kat! I've been following the updates on thi...Hi Kat! I've been following the updates on this blog for a few weeks now and I've definitely become a fan (both of the mind-mapping in the posts and the content available from the LiveDescribe website).<br /><br />Your musings about description provided in the context of a character in a program caught my attention this morning. According to the establishment of descriptions standards, style guides, and best practices (including the Described and Captioned Media Program's <em><a href="http://descriptionkey.org/how_to_describe.html#how_point" rel="nofollow">Description Key</a></em>), description should be delivered by a neutral party, and consist of content-neutral information.<br /><br />Adding a new character that exists only in the description is problematic on several levels. First, it adds content that is not available to those watching the program without the description. Second, it makes the describer part of the story line, which invites subjective interpretation and other no-no's identified in "the rules." Third, the content producers who created the original work (unless they are of the ilk that like to share their copyright via certain creative commons license, for instance) will not take kindly to this modification of content. Convincing them that description is beneficial to people with vision loss (and not just some expensive add-on) is tough enough without them having to worry about the integrity of their creative work, which, again, would be admittedly compromised by adding a character.<br /><br />It's a wonderful topic for discussion (I hope other describers stumble upon your blog here and can interject their thoughts), however. And, to add on to your thoughts about changing one's voice for description, I recently reviewed several titles from one of the big description vendors in the States on which they employed voice actors who could "match the tone and style" of the program while maintaining an objective and non-judgmental presence on the description track. It actually played very nicely (one of them was a retelling of the classic "The Monkey's Paw" story on which a female voicer with a slightly creepy accent delivered the description) and would probably be all the more appealing to audiences WITHOUT vision loss than "standard" description, delivered in a vanilla, uninflected manner (not that that is ideal either).<br /><br />Sorry for the lengthy diatribe--just wanted to weigh in with my two cents, adjusted for inflation of course!Unknownhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03546655449147118454noreply@blogger.com