Joanne Kwon: Midterm Portfolio – #5 Audio Descriptions of Captions
Project Description:
This project is a remix of the Audio Description and Captions projects, which focused on how audio descriptions can be embedded in the captioned final scene in Elemental. A majority of this scene is without dialog, so I began to wonder how I can represent this dialog-free scene with dialog and still convey the same emotions that the audience feels when watching the scenes, the visible emotional states of the characters, and overall sentiment the film it trying to convey. Rather than describing the scene based on just what’s seen, I felt that describing the scene in a more descriptive, poetic, abstract manner would make it more open-ended and up for interpretation by the audience.
Documentation:
Transcript:
Beneath the canvas of morning’s tender hues, Where day unfolds, painting skies anew. A daughter departs in the dawn’s soft trance, A departure framed in the morning’s dance.
The ship awaits in the early light, Silhouette against the canvas of light. Excitement sparkles in their searching gaze, Dreams unfurl in morning’s warm blaze.
Yet, a subtle sorrow threads through the air, Whispers of farewells in the morning’s care. In the parent’s gaze, pride and concern blend, A silent conversation, love without end.
The bow, a tender ritual shared, A universal language in the morning air. Proud footsteps echo in the waking day, As a daughter sets forth on her own way.
reflection questions:
This remixed version obviously does not tell the same one-to-one narrative as the original captioned scene, loosing the cohesive narrative told throughout the entire Elemental film. Although this remix doesn’t fit into the narrative of the original film, it works perfectly as a stand-alone scene. Because this piece is centered around the auditory experience, this piece may not be as affective for those who are unable to hear the audio description. Therefore, in future iterations it might be good to explore how I can give more context to the scene as a stand-alone and explore how I can convey that this scene is a distant memory through the visuals in the scene. Possibly by adding a short description as a part of the caption or using more video effects to convey the memory like state I am envisioning.
Furthermore, it would be interesting to look into how I can create a more subtle abstract visuals to support the audio description to bring even more attention to the audio description and less on the visuals telling the narrative. In one of my other classes, we’re learning about the correlation between brainwave activity and emotions and I began to think “what if I could represent each character’s emotional state through waves on the screen. I could use color and texture to distinguish between characters and the intensity of the wave would depict the intensity of each characters emotion. I think it could be a really cool experiment. More to think about 🤔