Seun Elemo: Midterm Portfolio – #5 Audio Descriptions of Captions

Project Description:

This is a video that contains text audio descriptions for the sounds made from the original video. Since my first video was a music video, I wanted to continue with that theme. This project was a bit hard since the video is so fast, but my goal personally was to heighten the sounds of the video with the captions. I felt the original video had so many interesting sounds and I wanted to draw that out. This assignment was a complex technically as it mixed both audio and text captioning. Meaning twice the work was needed to be done. I would say the hardest part for me was getting the text captioning to sync perfectly. There was a lot going on in the video, so ensuring it was accurate to the flow of the video was important to me. 

Video:

Original video:

https://www.youtube.com/results?sp=mAEB&search_query=telephone+lady+gaga

Transcript:

AUDIO DESCRIPTION: Due to my intentions with this video, there isn’t any actual audio (aside from Beyonce saying: “You selfish m**********r!”, but rather just a collection of sounds.

N: Isn’t that Beyonce?

*Coughing*

*Excited background audience*

*Miscellaneous and whimsical sounds*

*Boots tapping against the floor*

*Heavy liquid being poured on food*

*Coughs*

*Violent coughing and gasping*

Beyonce: “I knew you’d take all my honey, you selfish m**********r! ”

*Brief upbeat music*

*Inhales*

*Crunching*

*Tense music*

*Dramatic coughing and gasping*

Reflection questions: 

What is the theme of the work? What is it you aim to express?

My theme is to highlight how honing in to particular sounds can help amplify the story a bit more. I was thinking about how they say when you lose one sense, another one gets heightening, so that’s what I was aiming for here. Another theme I was aiming for was the zero in to a piece of a music video and make it to focal point of an art project. Like I did in my first video.

How is that theme particularly expressed through the modality of the week?

To express this theme, I made a conscience decision to use the part of the video that uses the least audio dialogue from the original video. This part of the video had a lot of verbs which made it perfect, so I was able to enhance and emphasize certain movements/actions more. For example, pouring syrup in a quiet background adds more of an effect that if that same syrup was to be poured in a noisy environment.

Which elements of the work are beautifully/wonderfully/perfectly expressed through the modality?

I believe the elements that are best expressed are the way the voice overs that I did make you pay more attention to the sounds of the clip and less about the video.

Which elements are lost or inexpressible through the modality of the week?

I think what gets lost is the context of the clip since it was such a specific part of the original video that doesn’t necessarily tie in to the plot of the original video. You can assume what is going on in the video, but it wouldn’t truly give you insight to the broader context of the entire video.

Who does this project exclude? Who would not be able to interact with this work? Who is this modality not accessible for?

People with blindness/low vision might have trouble figuring out what is going on in the video, and since there’s no real audio dialogue doing on, this can be a bit more confusing to individuals in those groups. While they might be able to hear the sounds, it would be up to them to figure out the context of the video which may defeat the purpose of the video.

Now that you’ve identified who is excluded, what is one way you could remix this piece to include another population? (You don’t have to make this part, but think about it and write about it)

To remix this piece and make it more inclusive, I would have to create more descriptive audio descriptions that explain exactly what is going on it better detail. However, I would only select certain parts of the video I deem important.

For the remixes: what is lost and what is gained in this remix? What did you have to leave behind and what could you take with you?

I feel like if I were to remix this the original intention of the video gets lost, however I think there are creative ways to still keep the integrity of the video while still making it more accessible.