[Sophia Manalo]: Midterm Portfolio – #4 Audio Description

The Project

Link to project

Project Description 

This project’s task was to audio describe the creative captions project’s video. I thought I was supposed to edit the video that I had captioned, so that is what I described (instead of the original video.)

Documentation 

I first staring out by re-watching the video before getting started. I actually just imported the mp4 I exported for the creative captioning assignment. Next I tried to make a script, which I initially found pretty confusing because I felt like there was so much information going on in the beginning of the video. For example, there was like my captions, screen graphics, and also music, and I felt like this was really overwhelming when I first started writing the script. I eventually got through it, but while writing it was when I decided to do extended audio description. Because I felt like there was so much to talk about/describe on the screen, I felt that it would be better to do this.

I also ran into some issues with recording on premiere when I had finished my script, so I actually just decided to record on my phone. I also had to learn how to pause the video on a frame before explaining it which was insightful and useful to know (even outside the context of this project.) The only worry I had was making my descriptions too long and having the video be extra long, which I felt could be disruptive.

After Tuesday’s I also cleaned up the script a bit and found out that the assignment was actually to audio describe the original video. (oops)

 

Reflection Questions

• What is the theme of the work?
  • The theme of the work is making my creative captioning video easy to understand for those who may have low-vision or visual disabilities. I wanted to make a piece that allowed the importance of my message about on screen graphics to be understood in a different modality.
• How is that theme particularly expressed through the modality of the week?
  • The theme was particularly expressed through the week by emphasizing the captions that I had written in the beginning of the video. These captions were important to understand the context of this work, thus I wanted to read them out, so that everyone could be able to experience my creative captions. I actually intentionally did not read the captions, since they were supposed to be unreadable, and that is why when the white/red captions showed up, I just prefaced that with a message about how the captions were supposed to be unreadable.
• Which elements of the work are beautifully/wonderfully/perfectly expressed through the modality?
  • The elements that work beautifully in this modality is the initial captions, because those are the only captions that are read aloud, while everything else is just dialogue. This means that the message was more emphasized than the rest of the other audio descriptions, and hope that the viewer was able to understand the importance of my message.
• Which elements are lost or inexpressible through the modality of the week?
  • I think elements that were lost were exactly what some of the on screen graphics said. Although the point of the project was to comment on how poorly they were done, I felt like almost wrong for not trying to read what they were trying to say. Also, I couldn’t even really make out what some of the words said? So I think I ffelt conflicted that some of this information was lost.
• Who does this project exclude? Who would not be able to interact with this work?
  • This project excludes maybe those who have cognitive disability because I tried my best to be as descriptive as possible, and sometimes that meant using language I don’t think everyone would easily understand. I also think that it would be hard for them to understand because the grouping of the audio could be confusing to follow.
• Who is this modality not accessible for?
  • I think that is not accessible for those who may have a hearing disability. They could use captions, but perhaps audio description might another layer of context and understanding about my creative captioning project. Additionally, I think those with cognitive disabilities might find this project hard to follow and difficult to understand because of the awkward pausing. Also maybe people with cognitive disabilities may have a shorter attention span which could make them find extended AD a little bit hard to concentrate on.
• 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).
  • If I could remix this piece, I would make it include maybe those with cognitive disability. I think I would want to use plain language so that everyone would be able to understand it. If this were the case, I would also want to try to use better language for captioning as well, since this is usually read verbatim. I think that this would actually be a good idea for my midterm project!

Additional Modality (if applicable) 

What modality did you apply? 

How did you decide on this modality?

What does the beholder gain from this additional modality? Why? 

Does the beholder lose anything from this modality? What? 

Show documentation of this modality, and describe it if it’s not accessible on a screen (ie, if it’s tactile if it’s a scent)