2025 Oscars Audio Description Roundtable

Alex and Lee host the 2nd Annual Audio Description Roundtable. This year we are featuring the audio describers behind Anora, Dune Part Two, and The Substance. 

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Transcript

Lee Pugsley
What's up, everyone, and 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 today, we are so thrilled to be able to bring you this special presentation of the second annual Oscar's Audio Description Roundtable. We did this last year with some of the audio description writers from the Oscar nominated films, and we are back this year.

Alex Howard
Yeah, super exciting. For people who don't know, we had this idea from The Hollywood Reporter doing their actor roundtable and director roundtable, and we were like, "Why not do it with audio description?" So we're back.

Lee Pugsley
We have a wonderful panel of guests that we are so excited to just dive in and get deep within the audio description, nuts and bolts of the films that they worked on this year. We will have them introduce themselves in just a minute. But for any new listeners out there who don't know what audio description is, it's a narrative track that describes the action that's going on in a film between lines of dialog. It is sometimes referred to as AD. So we will probably be abbreviating it to AD in this episode. But before we do that, we will go ahead and introduce ourselves. We'll start with Alex, me and you, and then we'll have our panelists introduce themselves as well with their name, physical appearance, and the film that they're representing. I'll go ahead and start. My name is Lee, and I am a middle-aged Asian man with black hair. I'm currently wearing a silver, shiny long sleeve shirt.

Alex Howard
I'm Alex. I am a Caucasian male with glasses, and I'm wearing a black polo.

Lee Pugsley
Now we'll go ahead and throw it over to our guests. Let's start with Roland.

Roland Bearne
Hello, my name is Roland Bearne. I'm a middle-aged Caucasian male, late middle-aged, I'm afraid, with salt and pepper hair, I think they call it. A bit of chin fuzz today because I had to do a self-tape earlier on. I got brown eyes, I've got a white open necked shirt and a velour jacket. Today, I'm going to be talking to you about my experience with Anora.

Lee Pugsley
Wonderful. Really fun film, and I love the attire as well. Thanks so much for being here, Roland. Now, we'll go ahead and pass it on to Anusha.

Anusha DeVagiri
Hello, I'm Anusha. I'm an Indian woman in her mid to late 30s. I have dark hair, dark eyes, I'm wearing glasses, and I'm representing Dune Part 2, and I work for Deluxe.

Lee Pugsley
Awesome. Me and Alex are huge fans of Dune Part 2, and we're so honored that you're here to talk about it.

Anusha DeVagiri
Thank you for inviting me.

Lee Pugsley
And last, but definitely not least, we have Meg.

Meg T. Ryan
Hi, I'm Meg T. Ryan. I am a mid-30s white lady with bold-flamed blue glasses, light-brown hair, a black jacket, and a black shirt. And I'm here representing The Substance, and I also work for Deluxe.

Alex Howard
Great. And I would also like to acknowledge that our roundtable has gone international this year because Anusha, you're in India, right? And what country are you in, Roland?

Roland Bearne
I'm in the UK.

Alex Howard
Awesome. So exciting.

Lee Pugsley
Absolutely. To start with, if you guys... And what we're going to do is we're going to go ahead and go in alphabetical order of the films that you guys are representing, and then we'll do reverse alphabetical order for the next question. But for starters, just go ahead and tell us briefly how you got into audio description, and we will start with Roland.

Roland Bearne
I got into audio description in 1999. In fact, I can tell you it was quite random. I trained as an actor. I was sitting out in the sunshine one day with a glass of champagne in my hand. A friend of mine phoned me up and said, "You write, don't you? Say yes." So I said, "Yes." Mostly poetry at that stage. So I went in for a test at Sky Television, and they said, "Yes, you can write indeed." So I started cutting my teeth on Star Trek: The Next Generation, Voyager, and other things. And it went on from there. And I have never stopped ever since.

Alex Howard
So you wrote the audio description for those series?

Roland Bearne
Yes, I did so. Not all of them. There's a heck of a lot of them. But I wrote a good number of episodes with a couple of very good friends of mine.

Alex Howard
That's awesome. That's really early audio description. That's great.

Roland Bearne
Oh, we were working on Word.

Lee Pugsley
Nice. Let's go to Anusha.

Anusha DeVagiri
I had been working in a captioning company, and at the time, I think around 2015, it was, that the Netflix Daredevil show came out, and I was interested in the show, so I was following all the news about it. And I found out, I read about this thing called audio description that they hadn't provided on release, and it was a big thing, especially considering the protagonist was blind. And so I looked it up because it sounded interesting. Then when they did put it up on Netflix, I watched the whole show with audio description, and I thought, "This is the coolest thing ever. I can't believe this is a job and somebody gets paid to do it." When I was moving on from the captioning company, I was looking around and I found Deluxe, and I knew they did captioning as well. And that's what I interviewed for. But then somebody at the company asked if I wanted to test for audio description, and I had a sense of what it was, so I said yes. I did the test, I got in, and it's been about eight years now, and it's the best job I've had.

Lee Pugsley
Great. That's a very fun journey.

Alex Howard
That's so awesome, especially, I think a lot of us discovered AD with Daredevil. And Dune, what you wrote, I think has a lot of crossover audience with Daredevil, so that's awesome.

Anusha DeVagiri
[chuckles] Yeah.

Lee Pugsley
Definitely. Let's go ahead and move to Meg.

Meg T. Ryan
Yeah, I also had a nonlinear journey to get to audio description. I think I applied to a job at Deluxe for an audio description editor position, thinking it was an audio editing position. And then our director reached out and asked if I'd-- like, gave me a series of tests that were pretty involved, and I just fell backwards into it through that. I have a background in writing comedies, so I definitely found the challenge of being able to write comedic audio description very rewarding and just expanded from a freelance position to a full-time staff position.

Lee Pugsley
It's always so interesting to see the journey that each person goes on to get into the audio description field because like you were saying, Meg, a lot of times it does seem very nonlinear, and it's just really fascinating to see how one thing can lead to another and bring all you guys to the places that you are now. With that in mind, we are going to go ahead and dive into some of the nuts and bolts now of the audio description work that you have done for these Oscar nominated films. Once again, we'll go ahead and start in reverse alphabetical order this time in order of film represented. The first question that we have for you guys is, every film has a unique visual language. How did you approach capturing the specific visual style of your film in the audio description? We'll go ahead and start this time with you, Meg, and The Substance.

Meg T. Ryan
Sure. The Substance was unlike anything I had ever worked on before in terms of just operatic and visual gore. It was also maybe the most intentional and, like I said, heavy-handed message. I wanted to make sure that I nailed not pulling any punches in terms of describing the visuals because it was so blatant feminist propaganda, and I wanted to make sure that everybody understood that every detail was very intentional. Being that it was unlike anything I had worked on before, I definitely was checking in a lot with my manager being like, "Can I use similies and metaphors to describe what's going on here?" Because I don't know how else I would describe a person emerging from another person's back or, other than "a seam splitting along their spine," and just being given the go ahead to be as descriptive and zany and unabashedly just going for it, which was unlike any other assignment I had worked on before, definitely.

Alex Howard
That's awesome. And having just watched it, I rewatched it before this. It's one of my favorite AD tracks of the year. And I know exactly what you're talking about because I think you compared in the beginning when she's coming out of her back to a baby kicking, right? Her being pregnant?

Meg T. Ryan
Yeah, "baby shifting in utero," which is like, how else do you describe that mound shifting between her shoulder blades? There was no other visual metaphor I could come up with.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, it was really fantastic. The work that you did on that. The metaphors were great and really gave us, as a blind and low-vision viewer, the essence of what was going on in a very tangible and digestible way that really captured the imagery so well.

Alex Howard
Yes. And if you ever get the chance to describe The Fly or Society or Slither, any of those other gross body horror movies, I would love that because you did a great job with this one.

Meg T. Ryan
Well, thank you very much. I'm really pleased to hear that you guys enjoyed it so much.

Lee Pugsley
Well, let's go ahead and move on now to Dune Part 2 and Anusha. Once again, Anusha, how did you approach capturing the specific visual style of your film with the audio description? I know there's a lot of intricacies and complexities in this film.

Anusha DeVagiri
Yeah. So Denis Villeneuve, who directed both the Dune movies, his work is famous for being visually evocative. He's gone on record saying that he doesn't care much about dialog. So most of his work is conveyed usually through images and sound, and it's usually on this large scale. That was true of Dune Part One, which I also worked on. So with both these movies, as an AD writer, I felt that I had to do justice to the sweeping shots that you go to an IMAX theater for to really convey the scale of this world. We're talking about planets and stuff that's retro-futuristic. It's a little bit of stuff we're familiar with in the contemporary world, but it's also alien things, technology, costumes. Things are different in some ways, similar in some ways. So I think the challenge was to make sure that all of that got represented in the AD, that I was able to convey all of that and paint a picture for the audience. I hope I was able to do that because otherwise, I feel like if Denis listened to AD, he would be very mad at me.

Alex Howard
I think you did a great job. I have the Dune popcorn bucket back there, but, uhh-- behind me. But no, I think right from the opening shot of them in the sand dunes, watching, and then the... Oh, my gosh, I cannot remember the name of the villain group. When they go up on the rock above them.

Anusha DeVagiri
The Harkonnens.

Alex Howard
Yes. It was such great description. And it's so visual. I mean, I'm low vision, so I could see parts of it. But having your description, describing a world that's not ours is always very difficult, and you did a great job of that.

Anusha DeVagiri
Thank you. I'm glad you enjoyed it.

Lee Pugsley
Now, since you worked on Dune Part One as well, was it a little easier in Dune Part Two? Because you'd already built the visual style of Dune Part One through the audio description. So you had a little bit of a foundation. Was it easier to do Dune Part Two in certain ways? Obviously, it has its own unique challenges as well, I'm sure.

Anusha DeVagiri
Yeah. Having read the book, I did think that Dune Part 2 was going to pose a little bit of a challenge because I know that the first half is a lot of world building, but in some ways, it's a lot more similar to what we might be familiar with. It's a royal family and their journey through this political world. Then I knew the second half of the book was set in the desert almost completely. There was a lot more of this strange alien world coming into play, a lot more action in the second half. I thought it was going to be a little harder. But like you said, Lee, because I had already worked on the first one and I had done the legwork in terms of figuring out this world and being immersed in it, Part Two ended up being easier for me to work on, even though it was just as long and just as heavy in terms of the description. It did come easier to me. It was easier to fall back into that world and just find the right words. I was more confident about what I was doing. I was not second-guessing my choices as much. So I did think, yeah, that it was easier to do it just because I had so much of the knowledge from the first one going into it.

Alex Howard
One thing I think that really stood out to was the end fight in Dune Part 2. There's so much build up to that. And obviously, there's no dialog. We're solely relying on the description to know what's happening. And I think you really did a great job of describing every punch because it was so intense. So having the choreography described really well was really important in that scene.

Anusha DeVagiri
Thank you. I think we will talk more about some of the details that went into that. But yeah, thank you.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, really wonderful work. Now we'll go ahead and move all over to Roland and Anora. Roland, how did you go about capturing the specific visual style of your film and the audio description?

Roland Bearne
Well, of course, this film came with a number of its own, shall we say, intricacies. But the visual style became apparent very, very quickly. The best way I could describe it is gritty, grainy. There was nothing glamorous about this, this visual at all. It was showing that even the richer people, the people who've done well, the successful element, even their massive houses had a slightly gray element about them. There is very little sunshine in this film. It's showing even the rich parvenu element of New York society or the New Jersey society. There's money, but there's still grit and grain and dirt under the fingernails. And my perception of getting to grips with it was, that kind of needs to be brought out somehow in how you describe the weather, the clouds, wet streets, whatever it might be to bring that to the forefront of it. That was my take, and nobody particularly disagreed, so I hope I got it right.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, I think that you hit it on the head when you said, gritty and grainy, just due to the world that she's in. That totally encapsulates it really accurately, I think. I definitely had a sense of that through the description when I was watching the film. I mean, I do have a little bit of vision as well, but I definitely walked away from this film thinking, "Okay, that was the world that we were just in." And a lot of that was due to the description that you were able to convey within the choices you made. So I really appreciate that.

Roland Bearne
Well, thank you, gosh.

Alex Howard
And I know that we're obviously also going to get into the nuts and bolts in future questions, but I do want to say that I think Anora, the reason why it's getting so much critical acclaim is that it goes against the grain in terms of a romantic genre and all of that. It goes against all the tropes. And so I'm curious to find out how you wrote the AD to plant those seeds for the audience as the film went on.

Roland Bearne
Absolutely.

Alex Howard
So I will ask the second question, and we will start with Anora, since we're going back in reverse alphabetical order this time. We were just wondering, were there any unexpected challenges that came up when writing your description?

Roland Bearne
Yes, indeed. And I think the first thing that struck me when I was first presented with the project is, I got about just a few minutes into it and I went, "Wait a minute." Should this be dubbed before we audio describe it in English? Because I was immediately confronted with what felt like a tsunami of Russian and Armenian dialog. And I know, going back many, many years, that this can be a real quagmire. It can turn a bit nasty. I'll tell you a little story, if I may, if we got time. There was a movie many, many years ago, I think it was a famous Spanish director, and it landed on the desk of I don't remember who. It might be even an old wives' tale. They were told, English audio description required. It's all in Spanish. Of course, the poor audio describer at the time was trying to navigate through the visuals, through this particular director's, again, tsunami of Spanish dialog and trying to differentiate between who was talking. It all went, apparently, so the legend has it, rather horribly wrong. The whole thing was rejected. The audio describer in question was thrown under the bus and never heard of again in terms of audio description. So when I saw how Anora was going to play out and the way it was written and the way the story was going to be told, I had a little bit of a panic attack. I kind of pushed back a little bit and said, "Are we sure you want me to read out all of these subtitles? Can we not cast some other voices?" You play with the hand you dealt, and I was dealt the hand of doing them all. So we just to forge on with that. That was pretty unique about this one.

Alex Howard
Oh, I think we were unaware you voiced and you wrote it?

Roland Bearne
Oh yeah.

Alex Howard
We did not know that. Wow, that's cool.

Roland Bearne
I write and voice most things I do, to be honest.

Lee Pugsley
In some ways, do you think that makes the narration part of the audio description easier? I don't know if I want to say easier, but you're very comfortable with the AD scripts that you wrote. And so you know exactly the tone that you were trying to capture within the language. So when you narrate it, is it accessible to find that tone more quickly, maybe?

Roland Bearne
I would say yes. Years ago, the whole job was write and record. It was very rarely divided up between a writer and a narrator. You wrote it, you voiced it. So I got very used to that over many, many years. This one, I think, particularly would have been really hard as a script to hand over to a narrator, someone to voice it, coming in and just saying all of this stuff, the descriptions and the dialog and all the rest of it, and have any idea coming in from a cold start, how to get their head and their voice around that. So, to answer your question, yes, Lee.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, that makes sense. With all those dynamics that you had to juggle, you did a great job with both the writing and the narration. So kudos to you with all of those moving parts that were definitely quite tricky.

Alex Howard
So then with that, we will throw it over to a new show. Were there any unexpected challenges when writing the audio description for Dune Part 2?

Anusha DeVagiri
I think because I had worked on Part 1 and I had read the book, I kind of had an idea of what was coming, so I wouldn't say anything was hugely unexpected. We had maybe less of an issue, but we did have a bunch of subtitles here as well. But luckily, we were given permission to have a couple of extra voices doing them because I think that really does help differentiate the speakers and make it clearer. I think it's also helpful, I've been doing this for about eight years with the same company, and a lot of times you get used to the narrators who are going to do the project and you have a rough idea of their cadence, of how fast they can speak, of how they would tackle certain things. So it's easy to write to them. I'm sure it's not as easy as just voicing and narrating something yourself because you know what you're able to be able to do and what fits your voice. But you also get into a rhythm with the narrators. So I know Billy, William Michael Redman, who did the first movie. I mean, I listen to the AD afterwards. It's always fun to hear your words being spoken out loud by a professional, and I listen to that. So I have a sense of what he's going to sound like in the second one, and I know kind of how to write to his cadence. But yeah, so I wouldn't say anything hugely unexpected. But as I mentioned before with Lee, I think the unexpected part was that it turned out to be easier than I expected just because I had had so much experience or I had done the work with the first one. That was a pleasant surprise, if anything.

Alex Howard
There's a scene in it where it switches to black and white. How was it describing that?

Anusha DeVagiri
It's strange because unless you're doing black and white as a specific effect, like you're going into a flashback, usually that's the kind of thing you do black and white for. This is a stylistic choice, of course, but it's also coming from some of the physics of the planet. So in the script as well, there is a mention, I think, if I'm remembering correctly, there is a mention of the Black Sun. I think it was important that I convey that this is what it looks like. It's happening in black and white, but it's also kind of a feature of where we're at in terms of the set. It's not just suddenly switched. You can kind of see it gradually transitioning because it's not completely black and white at the very start. Just because we get into Giedi Prime, I think that's the location, we don't immediately switch to black and white there. It's sort of gradual in the arena where the sun is the most obvious. That's where you get the most black and white thing of it. So it was important to call it out, but it also incorporated as part of the story, which is how they intended it to be so that it's not completely jarring. It is one of those alien strange, you know, we're on a different planet kind of, reminders of the movie.

Alex Howard
Oh, so you had access to the script before you wrote it?

Anusha DeVagiri
Yes. We're not always sure whether we're going to get a production script or something, and we're very lucky when we do. For both Dune Part One and Part Two, we had access to the production script. Of course, things change between when the script was written and then when it was shot. So you have to obviously go by the final video that you get. But the script is immensely helpful in just getting a sense of what was intended. So I was very lucky to have them for both Dune movies.

Alex Howard
That's so cool. See, this is why Lee and I do this. We had no idea that anyone had access to the shooting script before writing the AD. So that's really, really cool.

Anusha DeVagiri
I was just going to say that it completely depends on the studio. It completely depends on the project. Sometimes you won't get it from the same studio, but we always request for one if we can have it because you can't get something closer to the truth than that. It's just such a huge help in terms of resources. If you have that, it's a big bonus. Then there are times when they've changed so much from when they wrote the script to when they shot it, that it's pretty much useless. But most of the times, I would say 90% of the times when we get it, it's helpful, but we probably get it 40 to 50% of the time. It's not always a guarantee.

Lee Pugsley
I can imagine, especially for a movie like Dune, whether it's Part One or Part Two, having that production script has to be so incredibly helpful because I can't imagine just someone throwing a script of Dune at you at the last minute and be like, "Here, do this in a very compressed amount of time." When you have all these new terms that you're learning, and all of these new locations, and it's kind of like learning a second language, in a way, to get this world right. And if you didn't have the script, I feel like that would be so stressful.

Anusha DeVagiri
It would be. Even if you did read the book, which I did, it's always a challenge trying to figure out how much of it should you rely on in terms of the terminology, the glossary of terms of somebody who's a diehard Dune fan, knows all of this stuff already. But this is also meant for people who are coming into the world completely new. I'm sure there are Dune fans who watched the movies for the first time. That was their first introduction into this world. And you want to do that balance between -- and this is true for sports movies and stuff as well -- you want to bring the casual viewer in, but you also want to cater to the people who might understand that term that you throw away. That I maybe would say is a challenge of a movie like this that has so much terminology that's very specific to it, is finding that balance between describing what you're talking about and then giving a name to it. That's not common parlance. So the scripts are definitely useful there because they also try and do this job of bridging that gap between a book reader and the movie watcher.

Alex Howard
One last minor question about this for you. Since this was a sequel, did you have to put little reminders of things from the first one that were in this one in case they hadn't watched the the first one recently, or were you like, "Well, you must have seen the first one, so we're just going to go with it?"

Anusha DeVagiri
This is one of those movies that's... Sometimes a movie will do all the exposition for you. They'll remind you in the dialog, in the movie dialog. This one doesn't do that a lot, but to be fair, I mean, the first one just throws you into that world and just lets you figure things out on its own. It doesn't do a lot of handholding to begin with. I did, I think, a fair bit of both because there were times when describing the new stuff took precedence, so I didn't really have time to re-describe something we had already gone through before. I think maybe there was a mention of a harvester once, and I just had enough time to mention that these looked different from the ones that were in the first movie because those were Atreides harvesters, and these are Harkonnen harvesters, and they look, physically, they look different. But then you don't always have the luxury of time to remind everybody to begin, to start with. But then you can throw little things here and there just to jog the memory. That happens in other sequels. I think the Marvel stuff, I'm sure there's so much lore there that sometimes you just need those reminders. But this one, because it's so dense and because it doesn't do any handholding to begin with, I think there was a little bit less of that.

Alex Howard
Okay, great. And then, yeah, the harvester scene is awesome, too. Then for Meg, for The Substance, was there any unexpected challenges that came up when writing?

Meg T. Ryan
Uh, sure. So as you noted before, it's not a particularly dialogue-heavy film. And also, just like as a style choice, they're pretty relentless with taking a long time on certain physical acts. So there was the scene where Sue is stitching up Elizabeth's back, and there's only so many different ways to describe each individual suture without it getting repetitive. And she's still doing it. She's tying it off and doing a knot. I feel like also the last 30 minutes of that film, there were only so many varieties of blood, crimson liquid, gore that I could say without it getting, unfortunately, a little repetitive because it's just, that's what's happening. Blood is gushing everywhere and people are getting drenched and it's still happening. I guess I was constantly trying to come up with new ways to say people are getting doused in body matter without it sounding kind of, you know, repetitive.

Alex Howard
One of my favorite lines from the movie is, "The general vicinity of where her ear should be."

Meg T. Ryan
Yeah. [they laugh] When Monster: ElizaSue is driving the earring into, I think I described it as her head flesh. It was such a... And just the sound effects in that scene, the squishing of even it entering her head, were something that I felt like I didn't want to talk over because it's such an important part of the film.

Alex Howard
It's so funny because the audio description plays such a big part in that movie. That's one of the main reasons why I love that movie. And so when people say they're iffy on it, I'm like, "Watch it with the audio description." But I watched it the other night, and then I was like, "You know what? What is this like without the AD?" And I played it. It's so quiet without it. The AD plays such a big part in that movie.

Meg T. Ryan
I was just going to say there's a lot of Demi Moore's expressions say so much of what is happening in her internal world and how she's feeling about herself and her role in society that I feel like it is just such a quiet film without having that to inform you of what's going on when she's staring at herself or scowling. You know.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, and to comment on that, too. The first time I saw the movie in the theater, the audio description wasn't working for me. I watched probably 40 minutes of that movie without audio description. And I picked up on certain things here and there, but I was like, "I'm not getting the full gist of this for myself, visually of what I need to really enjoy this movie." But it was still such a different experience because with the audio description in there, it really fills us in on what's going on as blind and low vision viewers. But it doesn't feel quite as quiet all the time. Once again, for us, that's a very good thing because we have no clue what was going on in a fair amount of moments without the audio description and without it being done as well as you guys were able to do it, too.

Meg T. Ryan
Well, great. Thank you.

Lee Pugsley
So we'll go ahead and move on to the next question. What scene in your film are you particularly proud of how the audio description turned out and what makes it stand out for you? We'll go right back to you, Meg, with The Substance.

Meg T. Ryan
Sure. Well, there's a scene where Demi Moore's character, Elizabeth, is getting ready for a date. She's in the bathroom, and she's constantly looking at the clock on the wall while changing her outfits and reapplying makeup. To me, that just really spoke to this very real experience I think we all have where we can't even stand to look at our own reflection. We just are so unhappy with where we're at mentally, and we also have this existential feeling like time is running out. And so I wanted to do that scene justice by making sure the audience was reminded of the time, the fact that she's constantly got this on her mind. And then what I think is maybe her finest acting in the film when she starts literally clawing at her face and is so just she can't even stand herself or any part of her. I wanted to make sure that I really captured the emotional state that she was in. I feel like I did justice to that scene for sure.

Alex Howard
Yeah. And that's definitely her Oscar submission scene, I think. That's the scene that she's most known for in that movie. And yeah, you did a great job.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, you definitely got the relatable sense of "We all kind of know what that's like" and definitely took me back to certain moments I've had myself in those moments, too. So yeah, really, I commend you for your work on that scene and on the whole movie as well. Anusha, we'll go to you and Dune Part 2. What scene in your film were you particularly proud of how the audio description turned out and what makes it stand out for you?

Anusha DeVagiri
We were talking about this earlier, but the scene with the harvesters, where Paul helps Chani and the Fremen disrupt the Harkonnen spice production by targeting their harvesters. That was particularly fun because there are a lot of moving parts to keep track of, and there's kind of like little action set pieces within the larger hole. Plus, it's all happening on and around these giant machines. So it was a fun challenge trying to figure out how to make it easy to follow. Because sometimes I think when there's an establishing shot or when there's action, sometimes it can be easier to follow visually, but then when you put it into words, it can take a lot more time, and sometimes it can sound convoluted, more convoluted than it needs to be. So some of the challenge is figuring out how to set up this stuff beforehand so that then you can use the shorthand when you're getting to those fast-based bits. Just getting to describe that harvester early on and what it looks like and the mechanics and its six legs and it's like this giant bug on the desert sand. Then just using that knowledge to go forward and talk about how these characters are using the legs as cover and how they move across the sand and how they're running along with it, the ornithopter that's circling and the role that it has to play in that armored shootout. That action stuff is fun because you also have to pick and choose what you want to describe. There's sometimes not enough time to fit everything in. So just trying to capture the important parts while also allowing the explosions and the sound to come through, because that's such a big part of the movie as well, the sound design. So I think that scene came out nicely. I'm quite proud of it.

Lee Pugsley
I remember the scene that you're talking about. I saw the movie multiple times. And I think with the action sequences in that movie, you did a nice job of striking just the right balance to let us as blind and low vision viewers know what's going on without it being confusing. Because I've seen other action movies and stuff where it can get confusing even with the description and just knowing, "Okay, what's actually happening, is it this person that's doing this or that person that's doing that?" But within your description in your action scenes for both movies, it came across very clear to me, and I was never questioning who was doing what. So really solid work with that, in bringing something across that's not necessarily an easy feat.

Anusha DeVagiri
Thank you.

Alex Howard
Yeah, I think that scene in particular had a lot of moving parts. You had to know where Paul Atreides was, where the helicopter was because he's shooting at it, and then where the legs are because he's in the shadows. So, yeah, I can only imagine there was a lot of moving parts on that scene.

Lee Pugsley
And now we'll go to you, Roland, and Anora. And what scene in your film were you most particularly proud of how the audio description turned out?

Roland Bearne
Well, this is a slippery one to nail down. And it's more of, I think it's something that goes across the entire movie rather than down to one individual scene. It was the challenge overall of trying to get some description in because there's an awful lot going on there. A thing that just popped into my mind when we were talking there, and Anusha was saying about the harvesters, but-- is physicality. The two lead actors, Sean and I think it's Mikey, isn't it? Their physicality through the movie is just incredible. It's athletic. It's extraordinary. I wanted to try and convey that. There's also an awful lot of detail. So I'll narrow it down to the scene where the thugs come into the mansion and Anora, Annie, just loses it. So this this Armenian guy, who's pretty much a gentle idiot, really, has to suppress her. While this is, all this screaming and shouting and arguing going on, the DP has picked out some brilliant telegraphing of items around the room, things that either are going to be used or will be significant later, like the telephone, which is going to be used to crack somebody over their head, the candelabra, which gets chucked, or the painting, which gets broken. And to try and actually do some audio description, not just vocalized translation. It was probably that scene. I thought, "Yeah, we've nailed something here." The way she wriggles and fights and scratches and bites in a kind of animalistic way of reacting to being suppressed both physically within the scene and probably metaphorically, physically throughout her life and the story, I thought was rather splendid. And I hoped I got something of that in that scene.

Alex Howard
Yeah, that scene was very intense. Just like in Dune scene, there's a lot of moving parts because there's a lot of characters changing their location all over the place. You had to keep track of where the thugs were, where she was, where her fiancé was. So yeah, that scene was a lot.

Roland Bearne
[chuckling] Yeah, "Who are these guys now?"

Lee Pugsley
You captured the tension of that scene really well. I definitely felt it in the moment while I was watching it.

Roland Bearne
That's very nice of you to say, Lee. Thank you.

Alex Howard
So then, we will move on to the next question, and once again, we'll start with Anora, with Roland. Just like we were talking about with Anusha, were there any scenes where there was so much going on that you had to choose what to prioritize for the blind audience? And how did you make that choice?

Roland Bearne
I think it was putting the foreign dialog aside. We all know that's the big elephant in this particular picture. So let's take that out of the equation for a moment and think of something else. And I think it's the whole running fight through the club towards the end because you've got stuff going on in the back room, in the private rooms, you've got stuff going on in the bar, you've got stuff going on with other punters in the room. It was like, "Okay, I'm going to have to go back and just recheck this." What is the sequence of events so I can build up some comprehensible, logical, audible story in this utter mayhem that's actually going on? Because you've got one argument goes, and then somebody jumps on somebody else in the background at the same time. It's utter chaos. So to try and make order from that chaos was the head scratcher on that one. I think I got there. Hope so.

Alex Howard
Yeah, no, you did a great job for sure. Yeah.

Roland Bearne
And it's all in the dark as well, is it? And of course, with the resolution of videos that we get, you go, "I don't blinking know!" And there wasn't a script for that one either.

Lee Pugsley
I echo what you said. I think that you did get there, and it was a lot of different things going on at the same time, but I think that you were able to nail down the most important aspects of that scene to focus on, and I think it was very effective.

Roland Bearne
Thank you very much. That's great to hear.

Alex Howard
Then we'll go to Anusha for Dune Part 2. Were there any scenes where you had to choose what to prioritize?

Anusha DeVagiri
Yeah, with the whole movie, I think I was always conscious of the fact that sound design plays a really important role in these movies, especially Denis Villeneuve is known for his excellent sound design in his movies. So much is conveyed through slight music cues or sound effects. Sometimes there's a scene where you hear that iconic sound from the previous movie coming in and you know something big is happening. And so there was always a conscious choice for me to let that through the description. I think it can be very tempting, especially when there's less dialog, to just cram a movie full of description because you're trying to get everything in there. And I think as a new writer, I would do that, which is that, "Oh, but I'm missing this. Oh, but I'm missing that." But then I try and think of it now as, the medium informs your decision because you're going to a movie to get that full experience. You're hearing the dialog, you're hearing the sound effects. And they all come together to give you a certain experience. And to deprive you of that... Of course, I think the mix also plays a really important role here if you're listening to it as a mix, the volume has to be right in both those things. I've heard so many complaints where people talk about the AD volume was too loud or the program volume was too loud, and that can totally ruin the experience. But just in terms of the choices I made, I think it was important for me to let those moments come through because they make so much of an impact. Sometimes even just when a scene is silent, it can be tempting to describe every single micro facial expression. But then sometimes just letting that silence breathe and linger makes the scene better. So I think those were the places where I prioritized hearing something over describing a visual. But always, of course, keeping in mind that you do want everybody to have that full picture as well. Just knowing when to let those scenes breathe, I think, is just something that comes with time.

Roland Bearne
Really well said. Thank you. Yes, wholeheartedly. 

Anusha DeVagiri
Thank you. [chuckles] You don't always have the luxury for that, especially when... I think movies with a lot of dialog can be just as challenging as movies with almost no dialog. So it's opposite ends of the spectrum. It's different challenges challenges, but it's just trying to figure out what works best in that particular situation. There's no formula that works for all.

Alex Howard
I think, and especially since all of your movies have such a unique score and all of that as well, especially with Dune, that score is very iconic. So yeah, you want to let that breathe some. Because there are a lot of times where I'll go to a movie and people will be talking about the soundtrack, and I was like, "I didn't really notice the soundtrack at all because the audio description." But with Dune, I can hum it for you right now. Like, I know it. So yeah.

Lee Pugsley
Out of curiosity, on that note, I know you said it's not really a formula, but are there guiding questions or criteria that you have when you're trying to make a decision on prioritizing description over sound? For example, how does it serve the story? Or I don't know, like you...

Anusha DeVagiri
Yeah. So I think the main thing your question is, "Does this make sense without the description? Can somebody follow this without that key piece of information?" You make that choice first, and then if the answer is, "Yes, we can afford to leave this out," is it in service of something like a sound or a score that enhances the experience? Then there are times when you just have to use a little bit of extra effort, put in a little bit of extra effort to figure out how can you shorten something, write something a little bit more concisely so that you can let that little punch be heard or let that little thud be heard in the middle. You can write over it, but then you could write around it. And that's something we do a lot in training at Deluxe, and I can see Meg nodding as well. But we do that a lot. We say, "How can you split this into two smaller sentences to write around that little sound effect because it makes a difference." So I think that's where you get to flex some of those language skills. You try and make something more concise. You use one word instead of three, and then find a way to to let that sound come through. Of course, if the visual takes precedence, if something is impossible to understand without you describing it, then you have to make that choice. And we sometimes have to do that by going over dialog as well, which is like one of the sacred no-nos of description, which is try not to go over dialog ever. But sometimes you're forced to do that just because it doesn't make sense. A joke won't make sense if you don't do the setup first. And so, you try and find the most economical way to do it. You find least intrusive dialog to go over. A lot of that is, they are conscious choices that we're making to be like, [taps table] "This is what I can afford to lose. This is what I can't."

Alex Howard
Great. Then moving over to Meg with The Substance, I'm sure you could add to this conversation, were there any scenes where you had to choose what to prioritize? I know there was one scene towards the beginning where it was described on the action. And then I think later in the movie when Sue and Elizabeth are fighting, there was something where you described it before, because there was so much yelling during that part that you were describing. So, yeah, were there any scenes where you had to prioritize something?

Meg T. Ryan
Well, aside from that crazy fight scene, there's one scene in particular where -- this is really just adding on to the sentiment that Anusha has expressed as well -- just like where Elizabeth is cooking while she's watching an interview with Sue, and you get a real sense for the outright ire that Elizabeth has for her younger self in that scene, while simultaneously--. And this is just a side note, I found a lot of the cooking and how they handled food in the movie much harder to deal with than the actual gross body horror stuff. And part of that experience as well, though, was not just the visuals of the blood sausage or the turkey bones or whatever, but the sound effects that went into her eviscerating a turkey with her hand all the way in its orifice. And I felt like those things, while definitely painted a vivid picture, were not necessarily crucial to the plot and the understanding. It was almost as though to talk over those sound effects would seem like it would actually take away from the plot or the experience for the audience because it's such a visceral... Those noises are just--

Alex Howard
The crunching, yeah, yeah.

Meg T. Ryan
Yeah. Does this-- Ugh, it's just so gross. And I wanted to make sure people were grossed out when they watched the film. So there was definitely some very, like Anusha said, economical word choices to write around side effects or at least not talk over all of them. I think also in that fight scene at the end of the film, I wanted to make sure that when Sue is kicking Elizabeth across the room and she's crashing into a glass table, that final cataclysmic blow is heard in its totality because it's such this like, kind of the thesis of the film is being acted out. It seems like it should land and have its full moment.

Alex Howard
Yeah. And especially in the food scene you were talking about, I think she's yelling at the TV, too. So you had to work with the dialog, the sound effects and then describing the grossness of all the food.

Meg T. Ryan
Yeah, there was a lot going on there. And I wanted to-- I mean, the point of the scene, obviously, was also to gross you out as well as communicate where they're at mentally. So I hope that everybody was grossed out by me allowing that scene to breathe.

Alex Howard
Yeah. Even with the Dennis Quaid shrimp thing, I mean, you had to describe the shrimp, but then allow that crunching, the... The sound effects in that were crazy.

Meg T. Ryan
Yeah. Yeah, that's a very divisive... I feel like everybody... The limp shrimp carcass is a pretty iconic part of the film as well, and definitely sets up early on just what you're in for with this movie.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, it's just so interesting, too, to think about just those little nuanced details that I feel like the average person that isn't in the audio description field may not think about. It's just the difference between letting a sound effect breathe and just writing over it. Because I think that a lot of people are just like, "Oh, it's just a door slamming or it's just a footstep or something." And to think it's okay if we miss that because it's not necessarily a big visual thing. All of it matters too, and all of it says something as well.

Meg T. Ryan
Absolutely.

Alex Howard
Just a side note, I think this roundtable is so great, Lee. I didn't think about it. These are three very different films. I think it's so funny to get all the different answers to these questions.

Lee Pugsley
Exactly. I love it. Yeah. We'll go ahead and we'll move on to the next question now. One of the roles of audio description, among many other things, is being able to convey character through an actor's performance. So the question is, in your film, how did you approach that through the audio description to bring to life the body language, the expressions, and the nuances of the actor's performances in your film? So we'll start with you, Meg, and The Substance. And I know that you touched a little bit on this before. We talked that there is a lot of silence in this film, but there is also a lot of expression, body language and nuances. So how did you approach making sure you can captivate that in the performances?

Meg T. Ryan
Well, I guess given that Margaret Qualley and Demi Moore are representing two stages of different consciousness, it kind of wrote itself in a way because every time we're with Demi Moore after the iconic shrimp scene, she's going to be glowering and scowling, and she's not moving as confidently. Whereas when we see Sue, she's strutting and sashaying, and every shot of her is sexy and intentional to accentuate her body. Whereas the shots of Demi Moore's body are very... You're supposed to... I felt terrible doing it, but notice her sagging breasts or her stretch marks, whereas Sue is very taut and tight and everything is kind of in the right place. So I feel like... I think I just described myself objectifying these women, and I am not crazy about that. [laughing] But yeah, that was kind of, you know, the words I used were informed entirely by just the director's decision and how it was portrayed on screen. It did the work for me.

Alex Howard
One thing I really admire is when a rated R movie gives us rated R audio description. Because you should assume that we're the right age to watch this movie. And I think you captured a lot of, like you said, the nudity, the tightness, the looseness, the... You didn't really hold back with any of that. So it was good.

Meg T. Ryan
Yeah, it definitely... We work on such a wide variety of projects, and this has got to be on the extreme spectrum of R-rated for the type of things I'd worked on. So it was definitely like, I'm going to go as far as I can with this and see if I get any pushback from either the client or even just in QC. Luckily for me, it was all appropriate.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, it really gives us the sense of like, body horror, like what Alex and I always talk about is, whatever the tone of the movie is, we want to fully feel like we had that, like, lived-in experience in that journey to the fullest degree possible. And so when we have people like you or anyone else in the audio description field that just commits to that fully and just dives into that, holding nothing back, it's so welcomed and so thoroughly enjoyable to have that.

Meg T. Ryan
Yeah, it was nice also just to... There's definitely times where I'll I get feedback that it's like, I feel like as audio describers, we all have a pretty large vocabulary, and I maybe talk like an SAT proctor. So when I'm describing things, sometimes for maybe a YA audience, it's like, "Don't say coquettishly," or something like that. It was nice to be able to feel like I'm going to be talking to people who are going to understand what I'm saying. I should just assume a certain level of understanding in the audience and go from there. That was definitely very liberating.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, that's awesome. We'll go ahead and move over to you now, Anusha and Dune. How did you approach bringing to life the actor's performance in terms of the expressions, the nuances, and the body language? I know that, once again, in Dune, there's a lot of introspective character shots where a character is just thinking or they're just taking something in without a lot of dialog, but still capturing those performances there. What was that like for you and how did you approach it?

Anusha DeVagiri
Yeah. So, um, I think in this movie, there's a very clear arc, especially for Paul, our protagonist, who goes from this boy who sort of has the weight of the world on his shoulders. He's weighed down by this prophecy. Then by the end of the movie, he's somebody who's embraced that role, maybe even in a not so generous, benevolent way. He's maybe even edging into the role of a dictator slightly. A lot of that, like Meg said, is done by the actors for you, the way they deliver dialog, and just you can hear it in their voices. And the small, the kind of microexpressions, the way their body language shifts. You go from a lot of shuffling and trudging to striding and walking more confidently. You see a lot more... Jessica does a lot more smirking in this one than she did in the first movie, when she's just like this concerned mother. The eyes are colder, the faces are harder. So I think it's just about getting that stuff into the description just so you're able to follow along with that arc. I think also sometimes the reactions that other characters have to those changes. Chani is going through the opposite transformation. She's starting off as this supportive partner, and then she's getting into this place where she's wary of Paul. So the way she reacts to things. So I mean, sometimes it's hard to capture every single reaction shot because the scene might go fast, there might be dialog on top of that. But just to make sure you're getting that stuff in, the reaction shot is there for a reason. You're seeing how others in this story are reacting to the people, to the characters around them. And so trying to get that in, somebody just setting their jaw or glaring at somebody versus just looking at them. I think it's just finding little words that help convey those expressions and the body language that I tried to do with this one as well.

Alex Howard
That's awesome. I think one of my favorite things about Dune Part 2 is, you could call it the Mr. Chips to Scarface, the Walter White to Heisenberg kind of change that Paul Atreides goes through. And so I think you did a great job of changing his description from the beginning to the end as more menacing.

Anusha DeVagiri
Yeah. I mean, he does a lot of it himself. He talks louder and his voice gets more brusque. But yeah, just small changes that I could put in, I tried to when I could.

Lee Pugsley
And going back to the reaction shots as well, I think that says a lot, too, when you decide to describe a reaction shot about what the person that's reacting, what their character journey is, but also supporting the journey of the other character that they're reacting to. And I think that the Chani example is such a perfect example because I did get a very clear sense of how she was changing based on the ways that you described the glance that she was giving or the frowns or the glares or whatever it would be, especially at the very end as well. But throughout the whole movie, it was built really nicely. And so, even though I couldn't visually see those things, I definitely understood it and felt her kind of, I don't know, disdain might be too strong of a word, but her lack of support.

Anusha DeVagiri
Just wariness. Yeah.

Lee Pugsley
Exactly.

Anusha DeVagiri
In the end scene, when he's fighting Feyd-Rautha, she goes through such a range of emotions. She's worried for him because he's getting hurt in this fight. But then she didn't want this to happen in the first place. She's wary about where it's going to go. Then he asks for Florence Pugh's character's hand in marriage. So you get to see that entire spectrum of stuff play out on her face while she has zero dialog to convey that. So I think trying to capture those moments was important just to give you a sense of where she's coming from. She's still worried about him, but she's also in this place where she can no longer trust him, she's wary about his motives. And yeah, so I'm glad it was helpful.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, absolutely. Well done. And Roland, for you and Anora, I know that you talked a little bit earlier about Mikey and Sean, and just that they are very expressive actors. But how did you approach bringing those nuances and expressions and body language to life in the audio description so that we had a clear view of what the actors were doing in their performance?

Roland Bearne
I think unlike as what Anusha was just saying, there aren't that many... There's not the acting of micro expression in this film, particularly. Whereas in a slower-paced film, action films, a lot of the dialog is conveyed, as you say, by... And actors are incredibly adept now at micro-expression acting, which is just phenomenal. But I felt that Anora was more visceral in a way. I'm sorry to use your term, Meg, there, but in a very different way. In the sense that you got a very strong sense through the physicality of all the actors, from the main two young protagonists, right through from top dog dad through all the different levels of thuggery, from how they carried themselves. I seem to remember that I tried to sort of do that. So starting with Nora, obviously, when she's in performance mode, she's slick, she's slinky, she's sensual, she knows how to get the money flowing. Then when she's wronged, she becomes this feline, feral thing. And the transformation that she goes through physically is quite extraordinary. Given her story, it's like she's almost like the Anti-Cinderella. It's phenomenal. What I wanted to try and convey with Ivan, particularly, was that this boy is a boy. He moves like a child. Now, given that he's a grown guy, when he does not get in his own way, when he's ripped out of his mind, his physicality in those moments is quite extraordinary to describe. I hope that some of that came across. But also you've got this very strong social order within the social subset of the underworld. So you've got the Armenians, one of whom is quite clearly a nice guy, and he tries to be nice all the time. You got the other guy, he just wants to go home, and he's almost like a despairing sort. Then you've got those who throw their weight around, who think they've got it all made. I mean, that scene, which actually now I'm talking about, I'm going past audio description because the scene in the restaurant where he just starts shouting and announcing is just absolutely extraordinary. But I think as a general point, there wasn't much time to look at detail in expressions. There are a few glances across the room, few sharp looks, disapproval, that sort of thing. Not hugely detailed. But for me, and what I enjoyed trying to convey, was the physicality of all the characters within the context of their social stratum, within the fact that it's all in the underworld anyway. That's how it struck me anyway, whether that came across or not, we'll find out.

Alex Howard
Great. I remember the restaurant scene, and yeah. There was a lot of very subtle looks, and even from both the male leads, it was very different, and you did a great job of capturing that.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, you captured... When you talked about the immaturity of the boy, I definitely picked up on that pretty quickly, and that remained throughout the whole thing as well. But beyond that, I had a very clear idea of who each character was, both within the way that they were expressing themselves physically or otherwise. And I think that your work on that really supported those characterizations in a way that we could grasp on to.

Roland Bearne
Thank you. It is a very different thing. It strikes you when you're doing a film, when you've got a project on, very quickly, where you're going to be coming from as an audio describer. Like with The Substance, Demi's subtle shifts in expression when she's looking at herself in the mirror as you were saying, Meg, were just extraordinary. You've got to somehow convey those. It's amazing. When you've got something which is incredibly physical, like what I was describing with Anora, you're hit with the physicality first, both in the sheer, the fighting that goes on and the screaming and shouting and clawing. But also then you've got to find those moments where, "Okay, now we're quiet. Now people are looking at each other. What are they conveying to each other? What's the power play going on here?" Like within the kitchen in the restaurant, the back of the restaurant, "What's going on there?" And try and, try and do something with that and bring it forward so the audience can get it.

Lee Pugsley
That's a really good point and reminds me of an actor, how you approach a character from the physical, the external first and work their way inward, or they'll start from the emotional core of who that person is and work outwards. With these different films that we're talking about here, it sounds like there's, depending on what the film is, there could be a process like that in terms of the description to see, "Is this essence of this character physical first, and then we bring in the emotional details, or are they more emotional in their expressions, and then we bring in the physical after we get that emotional core figured out." That's really interesting. Glad you brought that up.

Roland Bearne
Yeah, no, I agree. I think it's absolutely right.

Alex Howard
I think all of the performance descriptions is really important, obviously, because Demi Moore is nominated, Mikey Madison -- well, they're actually competing for the two front runners right now, for best actor. So having those performances accurately described so that we can get the sense that this is an Oscar caliber performance is really important.

Roland Bearne
I'm glad we covered this guys, actually, because there was a phase, and I was-- slightly aside, I hope you don't mind -- when Netflix first really got into audio description, that they would call everything that we're now talking about and describing -- physical reactions, microexpressions, etc. -- their initial brief, I don't even know when they stopped it, but I've been getting away from it for a while, they said, "No, you can't describe these things. This is editorialization, and you can't do it. So you just have to say, he looks to his right, raises an eyebrow." And it was like, it was stifling. And people got tied in knots, just last thing, I will shut up. I got a script which had been written by somebody else. They said, "Can you adapt this?" I looked at it and there were some beautiful bits of writing in there. One was, "His eyebrows knitted together then fell into a frown." Okay. There's a piece of people trying to get around the brief that was just so stifling that they were trying any way they could to actually describe what the audience really needed to know.

Lee Pugsley
It's nice that things have shifted now and there is more freedom to do that because as blind or low vision viewer, it's like, we can go into a movie, obviously, you can capture a lot from a performance in terms of voice and tone, delivery and all of that. But sometimes within these Oscar nominated performances, it's like, we can hear it, but if we can't fully see it and fully get a picture of what else is this actor bringing to the table and how are they burying their performance from the last time we saw them, then we don't know if that's an worthy performance or not. Because to us, it's just like, "Well, we heard it, but we didn't really feel like we got to see it," whether that's through description or anything else. So it's nice that now we have more of an equal playing field to be able to really take in the full performance of an actor.

Alex Howard
I think, for example, when they have tears in their eyes, obviously, we can't see that and we can't hear that. And so describing when they're stifling back tears or something, I think that's really vital.

Roland Bearne
Yeah, I got told off for that once.

Alex Howard
Last year for the roundtable, Stoney told a really interesting story. He did Barbie about how he wrote all this description for the credits, and then they sent the finished credits, and there was a song in there. So he had to change his description. So my question for you guys is, were there any scenes where you had to change your description from how it was written the first time, either because of the final cut or because of QC, and what were the changes? We'll start with Roland with Anora.

Roland Bearne
Okay. I didn't have to change anything on Anora, to be absolutely honest. We got a good final cut, and everything seemed to be there. I think we got a basic dialog list, but there were no late moment, last minute, "Oh, wait a minute. We've got a new version. We got a new cut. God damn it." You know. So this one was there. But obviously, it happens all the time. It really does. Usually with the various softwares it's got, it's not huge. Quite often, as you actually mentioned there, it happens in the credits, which is more mechanical, and you can shift things around. You might have lose some credits, and then you have an argument with the client, but then you figure it out. But you're quite right. Sometimes they put in outtakes or a song or something, and then you just go, "I thought I was done with this. Anyway, let's do it again." But usually, it's not a major, major issue.

Alex Howard
With Barbie, we thought it was interesting because that was an Oscar-nominated song. So it was like, "Oh, we have to do this."

Lee Pugsley
Now, I'm glad for your sake that you didn't have to deal with that extra stress for Anora, Roland.

Roland Bearne
Oh, thank you.

Lee Pugsley
That's probably a relief. Like you said, it does happen from time to time. Probably nice when you don't have to go through that.

Roland Bearne
You actually do it and you go and you wait with baited breath for a few days, then a week, another week, and you go, I think we got it. I think we done that one. Excellent.

Alex Howard
For you, Roland, since you write and voice, when they QC'd it, had you voiced it all already? And then since it's all... They don't have to it to multiple people to redo it.

Roland Bearne
I can't remember which way around we did it. I think I submitted the script and they basically said... I don't remember very much pushback on it, to be honest. The attitude seemed to be like a few changes, names of people that I couldn't see who was doing what, so I got the wrong person, stuff like that. But fundamentally, it was like, "Okay." And with the voicing, "Good luck."

Alex Howard
Great. What about you, Anusha? Was there anything you had to change late in the process?

Anusha DeVagiri
No, luckily, I think for a film that was as... Well, a lot of it was practical effects, but there is VFX in it. But luckily, we got pre-final videos as well. And that's always a bonus because a lot of times we're working off of prelim videos and sometimes multiple prelim videos that you do updates to each single time. And then each time you're crying about the things you have to lose because they added a line of ADR in there, and now it goes over dialog and you have remove it and then figure out how to say that thing somewhere else. That happens very often because I just think the way postproduction works is that they're trying to do everything at the same time, and there's not always time to do it in a very linear way. And then I think that's just one of the downsides of the way, I guess, it works. But luckily with these, with I think both Dune 1 and 2, I got the production script, I got the pretty much final video, so I don't remember making many changes at all. Usually, you can tell when you're working on the project itself, whether something's going to have to be changed later. So you just inform somebody saying, "Okay, I don't think this part is totally final yet. We might need to come back and fill that in." Sometimes they'll put in placeholders and things like that. But luckily, this was all good to go. I think it was just... Sorry.

Alex Howard
How early did you get to see Dune Part 2? Because obviously, you've read the book, so you're probably a Dune fan. So how early did you get to see it?

Anusha DeVagiri
I think usually these are a couple of months. Sometimes they can cut it really close. But I think for these blockbuster tent-pole features, you usually get a little bit of leeway just because they want to make sure everything is working. You send it earlier than normal. Otherwise, sometimes you have clients coming in telling us, "The premiere is on this day, we need it by this date," and it's really close to the premiere. But with the bigger ones, I think you usually get leeway of a few months. So I think I was writing it in January last year, and then it came out, I think, in March, mid-March, so a couple of months ahead of time. But then people talk about it. When you tell people you do this job, they're like, "Oh, you get to watch everything early, and you get to watch it, you get spoilers and things like that." But then you're always watching it on a small screen. You're watching it with hundreds of watermarks over the screen, and it's terrible quality. So I've gotten to that point where it's like, if it's something I want to watch and I'm not working on it, I'm not going to watch it in the cut that we get. I'm going to wait until I can watch it on a bigger screen with everything final done to the final version. Because it takes some of that movie magic away when you see the green screens and stuff without VFX or the final sound and things like that. It's not always fun to have it beforehand, especially if it's uh, visually lush, like the Dune movies are.

Alex Howard
Yeah. Were the effects pretty much done when you saw it for the first time? Because I know they delayed it a couple of times.

Anusha DeVagiri
I think they gave it to us after they were done with the editing and the visual effects. So I got pretty much what we saw at the end.

Alex Howard
Okay. Then, Roland, how far can in advance did you get to watch Anora? Because I know, I think it was at Cannes.

Roland Bearne
Yeah, I think I don't remember it being... Because it's not a film that obviously relies on a great deal of effects or anything like that. The cut was obviously pretty efficient. They knew the story they wanted to tell. They got it to us in good time. And again, it was one of those that you got it. We were able to work straight away on the final, and it went quite well. No interesting stories to tell, I'm afraid. I think it was all pretty smooth, as I recall. I'll say, "One round of QC, come back, get it recorded. Thank you very much."

Alex Howard
What about you, Meg, with The Substance? Was there anything you needed to change after QC or any of that?

Meg T. Ryan
From the client, no. I want to give a shout out to Stoney, he gave me a pretty intensive proof on my first pass on The Substance. And so there were a few scenes that, how I initially had described them, because there's not always a protocol for if you're seeing from a character's perspective or if a monster sprouts out of somebody, what gendered pronouns you should use. So I think the first--

Alex Howard
Oh my God, that's hilarious.

Roland Bearne
[laughing]

Meg T. Ryan
Yes. So like, when Sue first emerges from Elizabeth, I had originally written it more like "the perspective is," like, "from the point of view of." Whereas Stoney updated that to be told as though we are the monster, we are Sue. So we're looking at our hand. And I definitely think now that I have that frame of reference going forward, that's the way to do it. And then yearh, when Sue injects herself with the activator fluid and monster ElizaSue comes out, I was like, "This is not a traditionally female... I wouldn't call this a 'she'," because it was just like a monster that was belching fully formed breasts. And there's no gender to that. And Stoney had updated it. I had written around kind of assigning it a gender, and Stoney had updated it, again, correctly so, given that it's a very feminist film, to use the pronouns she or her when describing the action. So yeah.

Alex Howard
That was a highlight of the roundtable for me for sure. The gender of the monster. That's amazing.

Roland Bearne
Brilliant. [all laugh]

Lee Pugsley
Yeah. This is a great note to end on, and we want to thank you so much for being here and participating with us in this conversation. This has been so insightful and enlightening to us, and hopefully for the listeners and viewers out there as well. We also just want you guys to know what significant work you're doing to make film accessible for all of us in the blind and low vision communities. What you do matters, and you're bringing cinema magic to all of us in a way that we would never be able to experience it without the excellent work that you guys have done. And we also celebrate your accomplishments and you being a part of these Oscar nominated films. Um, truly something to be very proud of. So thank you guys so much.

Roland Bearne
Thank you. Thank you very much.

Meg T. Ryan
Thank you. Yeah, thank you.

Anusha DeVagiri
I would just like to say that you guys doing this and just voicing your opinion of the audio description and calling us on to this podcast. It really is inspiring in terms of just when you go back to work and you do something else, it's so nice to know there's somebody on the other end to whom this is making a difference, to whom doing a good job makes a difference. It's a constant reminder not to half-ass it. But, yeah, thank you so much for doing this.

Roland Bearne
Absolutely agree. You work so much in a vacuum. In fact, I've been in this room, apart from the dog walk or right of lunch, since 07:30 AM this morning. You just work, you don't really get... You get QC. People say, "Well, that was wrong." And then it goes off the end of your world. And there it is. I've never been part of anything like this before. I think it's very, very special. I really, really appreciate it, guys. Thank you so much.

Alex Howard
Thank you. We really appreciate everything you guys said. It's funny because when we go to the movies, we're like, "Is anyone else using these devices?" We're legally blind, so we can't see when they're blind people around us anyway. But it's such a... Like, people go to all these different show times and get the devices. I'm sure people use them. We just don't know. That's part of the reason why we start this conversation on the podcast to try and bring more awareness to audio description. And honestly, writing audio description is an art form in itself.

Lee Pugsley
Yes.

Alex Howard
So we really wanted to highlight that, too.

Lee Pugsley
We understand, too, that you guys do so much work. Like you were saying, Roland, you've been there since 7:30 this morning over in the UK just working all day. It's like the amount of work that you guys put into making the audio description really quality and something that can be very accessible for all of us. We acknowledge and we see the efforts that you guys make and the labor that you guys put into that and just know that, you know, I'm sure there's times where that can feel very thankless, and just like, "What's the point of this?" But we validate the efforts that you guys put into this, and we're so grateful that you do.

Anusha DeVagiri
Thank you.

Meg T. Ryan
Yeah. Thank you very much.

Roland Bearne
Thank you. Thank you.

Alex Howard
Thank you all listening and tuning into our second annual Oscars audio description roundtable. We would definitely like to thank BlindCAN for funding for editing for the show, and All Senses Go and Matt Lauterbach for doing the transcriptions of the episode and making our promotion of accessibility accessible for a deaf audience as well.

Lee Pugsley
If you guys have any questions about anything that's been discussed today, feel free to reach out to me and Alex at DarkRoomFilmCast@gmail.com. Once again, that's DarkRoomFilmCast@gmail.com. And you can follow us on Instagram and YouTube @DarkRoomFilmCast. Thank you guys so much, and wishing you all a wonderful day.

Roland Bearne
And you.

Anusha DeVagiri
Thank you. 

Alex Howard
All right. Take care, guys.