Join Lee and Alex for a conversation with Liz Gutman, an audio description content creator. In this episode, Liz discusses her process of writing audio description, what inspired her to get into this field, and more.
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Join Lee and Alex for a conversation with Liz Gutman, an audio description content creator. In this episode, Liz discusses her process of writing audio description, what inspired her to get into this field, and more.
Questions? Email us at darkroomfilmcast@gmail.com
Search for Audio Description availability for any title on the American Council for the Blind's Website!
Find transcripts of our episodes on our hosting site, Buzzsprout!
Subscribe to our YouTube Channel!
Support us on Patreon!
Follow us on Instagram!
Find us on Facebook!
Lee Pugsley
Happy July, everyone! Welcome back to The Dark Room, where two blind cinephiles illuminate the sighted. I'm Lee Pugsley.
Alex Howard
I'm Alex Howard.
Lee Pugsley
And this is a podcast for film lovers of all abilities, hosted by yours truly, two legally blind individuals.
Alex Howard
Today, we're gonna be interviewing Liz Guttman. You probably heard her name at the end of a lot of specifically Netflix titles for writing and voicing audio description. But I met her on a Sundance panel. We were on the Sundance panel in 2021 together to talk about audio description. And she is very knowledgeable, and she works for IDC and also does audio description training. So, welcome Liz.
Liz Gutman
Thank you both so much for having me. I'm really excited to be here.
Lee Pugsley
Yeah, such a pleasure to have you on our podcast. You are our first audio describer.
Liz Gutman
Oooooh.
Lee Pugsley
So this is very exciting. Before we begin, we just wanted to remind any new listeners out there what audio description is. And audio description is a narration track that describes the action of a scene in a movie or television show between lines of dialogue. And this is what Liz is involved in.
Alex Howard
Yeah, so I have so many questions for you, just like on a personal level, because I know we were on a panel together. But I didn't really get to ask you about you. So I wanted to know how you got into this niche thing of audio description, how you found it. Now you're writing and voicing, and I know you're very, very busy. So how did you get into all of this?
Liz Gutman
Yeah, I didn't actually know audio description existed until I heard about it on a podcast. I was listening to an episode of a podcast called Twenty Thousand Hertz, that was all about audio description. And I think this was in 2017, I want to say. And on the podcast, they interviewed a person named Colleen Connor, who talked about how they did audio description training. They are a blind individual with a theatre background, who loved performing and who got into audio description, sort of after they started losing their vision as well. And I was like, "Oh, I didn't know blind people watch TV, how does this work? What is all this about?" So I got in touch with Colleen and did a training that they did with their co founder of Audio Description Training Retreats, who was a sighted describe her herself. And that was my first experience with audio description, was doing that training. And it really, it changed my life. Because it wasn't just about learning how, learning what audio description was and how to do it, but it was also really centered on disability justice and disability awareness. And there's a whole section on like, blind and disabled etiquette. You know, how do you as a non disabled person interact with folks who have disabilities? And that was something I had never experienced before. It feels sort of like weird and embarrassing to say now, but I didn't have any disabled family members or friends. I just hadn't grown up around folks who are disabled or blind or low vision. And it just really blew my mind. This was back when the retreats were in person. So I traveled down to North Carolina and spent four days, I think it was, with Colleen and Jan and my fellow students. And that was my first experience as a non disabled person hanging out with disabled folks who were, you know, just kind of living their lives, but also very generous and open with their experience and time. Because I was terrified of saying the wrong thing, or asking the wrong question or something to offend somebody. And everyone was really, really generous and open. And I learned a lot. And I was kind of blown away by how much I didn't know, in general. So that really lit a fire for me to learn more about audio description. So I did another training. I went to the ACB conference in 2018, the American Council of the Blind conference, and met a bunch of people there. I got hooked up with a blind mentor there who, we're still in touch. She's the best. She's taken me on audio described museum tours, and to audio described plays. And then I started freelancing audio description and then got hooked up with someone who worked at IDC, and they were hiring for a staff writer and I was lucky enough to get the job. The whole point of going through all of that is that I'm really lucky that I have been able to meet so many people in the audio description industry in particular and in the accessibility space at large. And everyone has just been so generous and open and really just wanting... Like everyone's working towards the same goals in a way that I found really cool and uplifting. Because this work can be really hard, you know, it's deadline based, it's post production. So things get shifted around a lot. And it can be very demanding. I've gotten to where I am, in large part because of the generosity and openness of others, being able to share experiences and learn from them. So that's kind of why I was going into really great detail about all of this stuff, because I'm just, I don't know, I just feel really lucky to be working in this space. But to bring it all back to the beginning, I heard about it on a podcast.
Alex Howard
That's awesome.
Lee Pugsley
And I want to touch on your experience as an audio describer. But before we get there, I'm just curious to know, in your time doing all of those trainings, and everything, what types of things did you learn about the blind and low vision community? Or maybe other insights into life itself?
Liz Gutman
Yeah, well, it's, it was really just learning how other folks navigate the world, in a way. I just couldn't even wrap my head around it. We sighted folks are just so visual, we're so tied. And I mean, the world that we live in is also highly visual, right? So it's something that's like, it's not just who we are, but it's reinforced by a lot of society. And a lot of the way things are structured, to the point where, you know, I as a as a sighty never really thought about it that hard. It just felt, you know, "Oh, this is the way things are," and, "Oh, wouldn't it be so hard to do something if you, you know, if you had a lower level of one kind of sense, or if you had some kind of disability or other kind of difference, right? It was just something I had the privilege of never having to think about, until I became friends with folks who were blind and low vision, or identified as otherwise disabled. And it was just learning how other folks move through a world that is not set up to accommodate them. It's humbling to me, because I take so much for granted. I went on a museum tour with my friend. And she's part of a team, she has a guide dog. I was just like a sighted person tagging along on this described tour. And I think was the second one I've been on. So you know, I had a little experience, but it was it was really cool to hear the different descriptions and stuff like that. And as we were moving through the museum, you know, I was trying to help, I'm like, "Okay, I can grab your chair and carry it if that's easier for you." And my friend was like, "Oh, sure, that's fine." And she, like, I had trouble keeping up with her. Her guide dog is just like the most New York guide dog I've ever met in my life. She's just like, moving through people, past people, just like zipping right along. And I was like, I can't. [Chuckles.] I don't know, like, I had this assumption, right? Going into it, I'm like, "Oh, well, I'll have to make sure I don't walk too fast, and I don't do this," and whatever. And I was the one struggling to keep up with her, just because they were, they're such a great team and just had it down. And it also just makes me notice a lot more that I might not have noticed before. And even moving through the city, which you know, New York is a pretty accessible place, from what I understand, in terms of the rankings of like, accessible cities. And even so, there are just so many, you know... Anytime there's an escalator that's broken, anytime there's an elevator that's out of service, anytime the accessible entrance is shut down because of construction or something, I notice that stuff now when I wouldn't have before. And I don't know, that's not to say that that is like necessarily a helpful thing in and of itself. But it does alter the way you think about things.
Alex Howard
Yeah, no, I think even as someone with low vision, I mean, my vision has gotten worse since I was in college. And I feel like changing the way I do things is really hard. Like, I didn't think about it a lot before. But I know what you mean by like, oh, like there are things that I notice that I can do, that I used to, and I'd have to find workarounds to like, you know, do those kinds of things.
Liz Gutman
Well, and even just thinking about, you know, if you want to go out and meet someone for a meal or a drink or something, and there's stuff that you have to think about ahead of time. Like, what's the entrance like? Are there steps? Is there a ramp? But is it an actual ramp? Or is it a ramp where they're like "No, no, we have a ramp," but the angle is too steep or it's unsafe? Like there are no rails on the sides or how does the door open? Just all of that stuff.
Alex Howard
I make it a point to get there before them so they find me and I don't have to find them.
Liz Gutman
Hmm, yeah. Yeah, all that stuff.
Lee Pugsley
I do the same. It's also funny what you're talking about with your friend that, you know, you said that you had a hard time keeping up with her. Because sometimes when my friends are guiding, doing a sighted guide thing, where putting a hand on my shoulder or something, they'll be like "Whoah, slow down, you're going so fast." And I'm like, "I'm on a mission!" And that's why, like, I love New York, because New York is very much everyone's on a mission. And that guide dog you're talking about definitely sounds like she was on a mission. And had to be somewhere.
Liz Gutman
Yeah, she had places to be for sure.
Alex Howard
So what's your, walk us through like what's your process of making a track for audio description.
Liz Gutman
So I can just walk you through like the general workflow, if that's helpful?
Alex Howard
Yeah.
Liz Gutman
I work for a post production company. So I don't work for any particular streamer or anything. I work for a post production company, IDC, that's based here in New York. And so the company does all kinds of other stuff. You know, we do closed captions, subtitling, dubbing, color correction, editing, everything. But for the AD department, a client will assign us a particular project. And then my department head will decide who is going to write it. We have staff writers. We also work with a bunch of freelancers too, depending on how busy we are. So he'll decide who is going to write it, kind of depending on, it's a bunch of different factors. Availability, maybe it's something that plays to a particular strength. Like, I used to work in food. So if we did a cooking program, that might come to me, because I have experience in kitchens. But it's not exclusive to that. You know, all of our writers are trained to be able to write pretty much anything that's, you know, sort of, of general interest. We're all really, really good at Googling stuff. Which is weirdly a big part of the job. So once the project is assigned, then let's say it's assigned to me, I as the writer will start working on it. And every writer has a different workflow. In an ideal world, we could watch through the whole thing before we started working on it. But for the most part, we just kind of like start watching it, maybe watch the first 20 minutes or half an hour just to get a sense for what the tone and the pace of it is like, and then start writing. And while we write, we keep track of... We have a separate document that we use to keep track of character names, pronunciations, when the characters are named in dialogue. So if there are any pronunciation questions later on, you're like, we'll drop a timecode in there, or it's like, go back and listen to it here. Often now, we'll also record a pronunciation guide, both because it's just helpful for everybody. But also, since we've been working with more blind and low vision AD narrators, that's also just a really useful tool to have right off the bat. So everyone's on the same page. So we can all be listening to the same file and going, "Oh, that's how this name is pronounced, or that's how this place is pronounced." So while we're writing, we'll be sort of building out that document. And, yeah, it's really just a matter of what the content is. Like, I'm working on a really dense action movie right now. It's taking me forever, because it has all this made up technology. And everyone has two different names and someone's double crossing, or are the triple crossing? So something like that will take longer than, I don't know, a reality show, like a dating reality show or something. So we'll write the script. If it's a newer writer, they might go through a script QC, where they finish the script, and then one of our staff writers will look over the script and just make sure that it's sticking to our format, our style guides, the way we deal with certain things, you know, how we name people, just how we lay everything out in the script. If it's one of our staff writers, we don't need that stuff, because they're already trained up to our standards. Then when the writer starts working on it, there'll usually be a conversation about casting. So what are the prevailing voices in the project? Is it mostly sort of male sounding or mostly female sounding? Do we want something that complements it or something that contrasts with it? You know, there's kind of an older school of thinking where it's like, well, if it's mostly women, then it has to be a man because otherwise you won't be able to tell. But there are more nuanced aspects of that. If it's a project about sensitive content, for example, an assault or something like that, you wouldn't just want to randomly put a guy on it. So we might just cast a woman who sounds different from the majority, there might be some sort of more subtle mixing choices around that. But either way, we'll cast somebody who works well with the material but is different enough where you can tell that that's the describer. And you won't mistake it for one of the characters. And especially if there's VO too, that's like another thing. If there are subtitles, we'll have to take that into account. If it's a heavily subtitled project, we'll need to consider whether one Narrator can handle it or if it's better to have a couple of subtitle readers to differentiate and just make it less confusing. Sometimes it is actually better to have a narrator do all of it, but... So we really take it on a case by case basis. Because it depends on the narrator too. So once the casting decisions have been made and the script is written, then it goes into recording session. And most of the time we do that in the studio. We do work with some narrators remotely. But that's more rare. Just for security purposes, it's a little more complicated to get everyone logins and stuff like that, if they're working remotely. So generally we'll have the VO talent come into the studio to record. And then we'll have an engineer and sometimes we'll have a director too. So during the session, the focus will be on making sure that the pronunciations are correct and consistent. Making sure that the script is read exactly as written. We word everything very deliberately. So we want to make sure that it's read exactly as written. And to make sure that any on-screen text is read verbatim, so that it matches up. They'll also be listening for, you know, stuff like mouth noises or clicks, or slushy reads. Or occasionally they'll kind of be listening for like, "Oh, the way that's worded is sort of confusing." But generally we save that for the QC step, which is the next step. After it's recorded, the first session was recorded, the engineer will mix the track into the native audio. You know, we duck the volume to an extent so that when the AD comes in, you can hear the AD nice and clear. But you can still hear the native audio of the movie or TV show underneath. So you can still get the feeling from any kind of background music that's going on. You can still hear sound effects to a point, you know, again, it's a really fine line to make sure you can still hear it, but that it's not distracting, or making the AD difficult to hear. And then we'll have someone QC that. We'll have someone QC the mix to again, be listening for any kind of slushy reads, mouth noises, stuff like that. But also to make sure that it's clear, that it flows well, that any pronouns that are used are easy to understand. So you know, you can't have six guys in a room, and it's like, "He stands up. He punches him in the face. He falls." We're like, "Who?" So any kind of clarity and flow, stuff like that. And then all of those notes will be compiled into a separate document that will be made available to the engineer, to the director, and to the VO talent. And then we'll decide what needs to be sort of, we call it pickups, anything that needs to be re-recorded for whatever reason. So then we'll have the VO talent come back in for a pickup session. Hopefully it doesn't take too long, re-record some lines, and then the engineer mixes those into the final mix and packages it and delivers it to the client's specs. And that's the lifecycle of an audio description project.
Lee Pugsley
Very interesting. Yeah, thanks for sharing that process. It kind of stimulated a few quick questions for you on that. The first one is, when you're writing your audio description script, do you actually get a copy of the shooting script as well?
Liz Gutman
Almost never. Very rarely, we can ask for that. It's not something that's provided. And I'm talking mostly about like bigger streaming clients, right? We do work on a lot of independent and sort of smaller things. We do, we work with a couple of film festivals, which is always really fun. When we're working with a smaller client like that, we may have a little more access and a little more ability to connect with the creator and say like, "Hey, do you have any, you know, could you share the shooting script with us or something like that?"
Alex Howard
Does that help?
Liz Gutman
It can. This is the flip side of that, though, is that the shooting script, because shooting scripts have like stage directions... Like, kind of directions for the actors occasionally, right? Like, you know, "She looks up, lost in the moment of emotion," da da da da da. You know, it gets a little poetic, when it's like directions for an actor or something like that. What you're meant to be seeing on the screen. That can be detrimental to a describer's workflow, particularly with new writers, because it can be easy to sort of want to lean on that language, and try and interpret what the character is feeling or thinking. We really try and avoid that.
Alex Howard
You try and describe only what you can see, right?
Liz Gutman
Yeah, exactly. You know, there can be a little, kind of, interpretation. If it makes it more clear. Saying someone gives a smug smile, as opposed to just "Smiles," can be useful information, right?
Alex Howard
Right.
Liz Gutman
Where you know, they're not just being friendly. It's like, "Oh, that person's being a jerk, because they're giving a little smug smile." But we wouldn't want to say something like, "He smiles, smug in the knowledge that he's pulled one over on them." It's not necessary. And the feedback that we overwhelmingly hear is, that stuff, like writing like that, is condescending, and just not necessary. I actually teach now with Colleen, because their original teaching partner retired a couple of years ago. And one of the things that I learned from the training that we still teach is, the describer is acting as the eyes, not the brain. We're translating visual information. We're not explaining it.
Lee Pugsley
Yeah, that all makes complete sense. And then when it comes to the voicing, I was curious, do you guys hold auditions for who's going to be an audio? describer? Like, do you put out like, notice for people to come in? Or do you guys have a pool of people, that's more of a in-company sort of thing that you just pull from those people?
Liz Gutman
Yeah, it's more the second. We have a roster of folks we pull from. That's more my department head's area. If we have a hole in our roster, or we you know, maybe there are a couple of folks who are unavailable for the time being, or for whatever reason, he'll occasionally put out a notice to just say, "Hey, we're looking for this type of voice in, you know, living in this area, or [indiscernable] or whatever. So get in touch with us if you fit that description." So that's more occasional, they'll sort of put out notices, like, "Hey, we're looking for people." But otherwise, yeah, we generally have a pool that we pull from.
Lee Pugsley
Gotcha.
Alex Howard
And how early, like, if it's something like Stranger Things, obviously, it's very sensitive, they don't want spoilers out there or anything --
Liz Gutman
Yeah.
Alex Howard
-- how early do you get the content to view it, usually?
Liz Gutman
Honestly, that really depends, because even some of the bigger stuff we'll get, like, uncomfortably close to when it launches. It just depends on the post production process from the client side, really. Usually, for bigger stuff, for more high profile stuff, we'll be getting the finals months ahead of time, because they'll often want to do, even with our QC passes, they'll want to do their own internal QC. Very occasionally, for really big projects, they'll have some, you know, kind of creative notes or thoughts on the language. But that's, that usually would happen more upfront, when we get assigned something. They'd say, "Hey, can we have a call about how to deal with this type of information?" But you know, sometimes things are code named. We can't refer to it by the real name, we only have the code name for a while before the real name comes up. And everything is super secure from our end, you know, we use VPNs. And everything's encrypted to within an inch of its life. [Laughs.]
Lee Pugsley
When you say creative notes, like you said that sometimes the bigger studios will give you a creative note, what's an example of a creative note?
Liz Gutman
I can't give a specific example. Because NDAs.
Lee Pugsley
Sure, ha!
Liz Gutman
But there was, there's one big project that's coming out in the fall that we're working on right now, where the client had thoughts on casting for the AD narrator. And they kind of wanted to be looped in on certain other aspects of the production process. Like, again, I can't really get into it. But for that particular project, there's going to be an extra part of the AD. So because it's kind of new, there's been a lot of back and forth. Not a lot, but more back and forth than usual. While we're working on a project, for us to be like, "Hey, here's a demo version of this, what do you think?" And they're like, "Okay, great, we'll get back to you." And, you know, sort of having active conversations about how to deal with certain things and how to, like the kind of language we're using. And it, you know, they don't say like, "Don't use this word, use that word." They more just want to, like, sign off and say, "Yep, that sounds good." Or, "Actually, the creative got back to us, and they have some other thoughts on the direction we want it to go in." I hope that's not uselessly vague.
Lee Pugsley
No, I totally understand the whole NDA thing. And I get where you're coming from. Cuz I was thinking, when you said creative note, if that would be like a director saying, "Okay, why don't you do this part, but try to be a little more emotional or a little more excited or a little less excited." Would that count as a creative note?
Liz Gutman
You know, I can't think of a single instance when we've gotten notes back on the narration read itself. Generally, when we have a back and forth with clients, it's about the script and the casting, but not the performance or the read itself.
Lee Pugsley
Okay, okay.
Alex Howard
Are there any projects in particular that you're proud of? Like, I know it's hard, but are there a few that come to mind that you're particularly proud of?
Liz Gutman
Yeah, actually, um, well, I'm super proud of Bridgerton. I'm proud of that one on several levels. A) Because we really swung for the fences on the language in the scripts for Bridgerton. When we first got assigned that project, I was super excited about it. I went and read the first couple of books because it's based on a book series. I'm a huge bookworm. Reading is like my favorite thing to do. It always has been. Uh, and I love fiction. And I love language in general. And so I was like, "I wonder if for this project, we could make the language of the AD itself a little more romance novel-y, and maybe use some period terms that might sound a little anachronistic today, but might fit with the tone of that. So for an example, this was something I actually was talking to a colleague of mine about. She's blind. She is a QC expert. I believe she's described some stuff, too. Anyway, she's rad. And she had brought up to me, she was like, "Quits the room is not something you usually hear in AD." And I was like, "Oh, what did you hate it?" She's like that, "No no, I thought it was cool. It's just, it was just unusual." That's the type of language that I was kind of like, "Okay, this might be too much." And we had a bunch of conversations about it, between the other writers and between our department head and myself. And we just kind of felt like, this was such a big, fun, splashy project that, you know, let's go for it. And the response has been really amazing. So I'm super proud of the scripts themselves. But we also... There was some backlash from Season One, because the way we had written it to specs at the time, and then when Bridgetton came out, there was rightly, there were a lot of people upset that, you know, we didn't mention that the Duke is black, and that the Queen is black. And that, you know, multiple characters are played by non white actors. And we were like, oh, you know, trying not to step on any toes, talking about it, but caught some flack for it. And then when Season Two came out, we went back and said, "Hey, what if we went and adjusted the language in Season One, based on all this feedback we've been getting?" And Netflix was like, "Yeah, go for it." So that was huge for them to let us like, improve the first season. I think it's greatly to their credit, and shows that they take it really seriously. You know, that they listen when people when people tell them opinions about what's going out. So I was really proud that we got to make that change too. That was really gratifying.
Lee Pugsley
Have you ever --
Liz Gutman
And Squid Game. [Laughs.]
Lee Pugsley
Oh, Squid Game. Yeah. Squid Game's great.
Alex Howard
That was, I was so happy when that got audio description because I was waiting. It was months after it came out that it got it.
Liz Gutman
Oh, I know.
Lee Pugsley
Now, have you ever had something like the Bridgerton thing happened again, where you were able to go back and improve an audio description track for a previously described work?
Liz Gutman
No, I wish. I wish. I will say this forever. There is not a single script I've ever written that I wouldn't go back and change something about if I could. So it's probably just as well. It's a really slippery slope, if you let me go back and mess with stuff. I understand why it happened there. And I do think it was the right decision. That's the only time that that's happened.
Alex Howard
I noticed on ummm... I know they probably did this a long time ago. But I was watching the Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire on Netflix. And the audio description track said, "An Oriental man." And I was like, "What?"
Liz Gutman
Whoa.
Alex Howard
I was like, "Um, I don't know that we can say that anymore." I was very surprised that that was still in there. But I don't, obviously, it's like an old... Much, much older track. And I don't even think IDC did it. But I was just surprised that that was even allowed when they did it, you know?
Liz Gutman
Yeah. Oh, no, we definitely didn't do that one. [Laughing] That's what's tough, though. I mean, that-- Listen, that feels very Yikes-ey to me.
Alex Howard
Yeah.
Liz Gutman
But this is also why it's really important to increase diversity in the field of audio description. Because no offense to white people, I am one, but I guarantee you that was written by a white person.
Alex Howard
Yeah, promise.
Liz Gutman
And that's extremely, you know, that's not cool language. But at the same time, these standards are always evolving. So like, you know, who knows? Like stuff that I write now could be Yikes-ey in 20 years. I hope not. But as standards evolve, and as language evolves, particularly to reflect the diversity that we're finally kind of starting to see on screen... You know, not just racial, ethnic diversity, but disability, you know, limb differences, body size, mobility aids, everything. Gender presentation. We're always doing our best to keep up with the language around everything. And we're constantly going back to, you know, the blind and low vision community and the communities that we're looking to represent in our description to just be like, "How does this sound? Is this right? Does this sound right to you? Is this neutral to positive? Is this, you know, and are these the right words to use?"
Alex Howard
Yeah. So I feel like you're a good person to answer this question. But I've been wondering for a while about licensing, because I know like, if Netflix has you guys make a track on a third party, like not their movie but a movie they've licensed from another studio, it seems like they own that track. Or you guys own that track. And like, if the studio puts it on, you know, if it's a Universal movie, and they put it on Peacock, it doesn't have it. Or even right now, Spider-Man doesn't have AD on Disney Plus, but it has it on Netflix. Why doen't the track travel? Do you guys own it? Or Netflix owns it? Or what's the... How does the licensing of the track itself work?
Liz Gutman
I'm part of an industry group. I'm on the accessibility subcommittee of that group. And we were literally just talking about this today. For everything we work on, the client owns the AD. So whoever's commissioning it, whoever's paying us to write and record the AD, they own it. They own the rights to it. Now, this is such a huge question.
Alex Howard
I'm sorry.
Liz Gutman
No, no, no, it's-- Listen, everyone should be asking this it. It drives me bonkers, because I know instances where there are multiple tracks for the same show.
Alex Howard
And then it's not anywhere.
Liz Gutman
And then it's not anywhere.
Alex Howard
Yeah.
Liz Gutman
Like you can, like, you know, on a certain platform, if you buy a movie, it won't have AD, but if you rent it, it does. Which I don't, I can't even wrap my head around how that makes sense. Which again, I don't... I don't even know what I don't know. I'm just speculating at this point. So I don't want to I don't want to run around all you guys...
Alex Howard
What I was thinking, I mean, I'm sure people thought of this. But like, I feel like it should be an FCC thing. Like we should regulate it. So that once there's a track made, it follows the movie, wherever it goes. A track can't be owned, because it's a public service. But I don't know if we can get like a FCC petition? But then I'm like, would we be creating less work for audio describers? Or are you frustrated if there's a track and you're like, I have to make another one?
Liz Gutman
Well, I mean, it is, it is tough, right? Because I-- Listen, if there's a track that exists for a movie, and it's not very good, or it's outdated, or --
Alex Howard
Like the Spider-Man one.
Liz Gutman
-- or uses, for example, for example, yeah. Maybe the language needs to be updated. I think you make a good case for redoing it in that case. But when it's something that is, that's just been done multiple times. Yeah, I don't know. I don't want to call it a waste. Because yes, keep giving us work. But I feel more strongly that, if there's something already has AD attached to it, the AD should travel with it. Now, if the AD is deemed substandard for some reason, then I think people should make a fuss about it and say you need to redo this track of AD. And then someone should redo it. But if it exists, I just wonder if it's a question of people not knowing to even ask for the AD, or to to know that it should be part of the package that travels from platform to platform. I don't know if it's a money issue. If you know, whoever commissioned it is like, "No, we own this." Because if it's a licensing thing, why wouldn't you just be like, we have to jack up the price a little bit because now there's AD involved. From beginning to end, the cost of including AD is so minuscule compared to literally everything else about producing a movie or a TV show. It's beyond me why people want to nickel and dime when it comes to accessibility. So I don't know. I don't know if it's just a knowledge thing, or if it's actually a money thing. I suspect maybe it's a bit of both.
Lee Pugsley
That seems to track, that it could be a little bit of both, like you were saying. Because I mean, there's like major platforms, you know, that I'll see it with an AD track on one platform. Then it travels to another platform that does have AD and does do AD on a regular basis, yet for this movie that they just acquired, you know, it doesn't have AD, and I'm like, "Okay, you had the AD track. And it exists because it was on this other platform. Why isn't it here?" And then like you were saying too, it's like, you can rent a movie on you know, Prime Video, or you can rent a movie on iTunes. One of them has AD sometimes and the other one does not. But I'm like, it's the same movie and the track is the same. Like why isn't it there? It makes no, it's bizarre.
Alex Howard
Yeah.
Liz Gutman
Yeah. So I suspect that like, it may be just an education thing, or maybe just an information thing. Where other people don't know what they don't know. But trying to come at it from an AD provider side is also weird, because we don't own the track. So we can't really say what happens to it. I don't know. It's wild speculation at this point.
Alex Howard
Yeah. Do you have any advice for people, low vision or not, who want to get into the audio description industry?
Liz Gutman
Hmm. That's a really good question actually. I would say, sort of all the stuff that I tell anyone who's looking to get into the industry. Like, get active on the Facebook group, and check out the ACB ADP website and just kind of see what trainings are going on. If you can swing doing a training, that never hurts. I know there are some other workshops and stuff out there. I can't vouch for anything. That's not my training. But they're out there. You know, talk to other people who've done trainings. Say, "Hey, how did you like this? What did you learn?" If you were to talk to us and say, "Hey, I am interested in working with you in X capacity." You know, if you're looking to do voiceover narration, we would want you to already have a home setup, like a home audio setup, and be able to be comfortable recording stuff on your own. That's just part of it. Or if you're local, let us know that you're local, that you're in New York City. If you're able to come into the studio, that's pertinent information. If you have experience doing audiobooks, VO, anything like that. In terms of QC and other stuff, that's a little trickier, just because even if you have training, and this is for writers too, we will still train you. Even if you come to us with like the school resume, we'll still give you a test, we'll still have you do additional training, just because other companies have other style guides, they have other standards. We just want to get everybody on the same page. So yeah, I don't know, just, you know, get active with other folks already doing it and start having conversations.
Alex Howard
For anyone listening to this too. If you want to get on involved with the Facebook group, you can always email us and we can give you the info that way. You can email us at DarkRoomFilmCast@GMail.com. And we will connect you with the community.
Lee Pugsley
And along those lines, too. If you have any other questions about any of the conversation topics that we've talked about today with Liz, or anything else that comes to mind in relation to audio description or accessibility, feel free to reach out and email us as well for that. Once again, it's DarkRoomFilmCast@GMail.com. And Liz, this was such a wonderful conversation. There's honestly so much more that I would love to talk to you about. So maybe we'll have to have you on again sometime. But thank you so much for taking the time out of your busy schedule to talk with us today.
Liz Gutman
Yeah, it's absolutely my pleasure. Thank you both for having me. And yeah, let's do a sequel.
Lee Pugsley
Yeah, thank you so much. And also a shout out to All Senses Go for making transcripts of this episode possible. And that will do it for today. So thank you guys so much for listening, and we will see you next time on The Dark Room.
Alex Howard
Yeah, thanks, guys.
Transcribed by https://otter.ai