Ep. 60: Close Up with Anna Capezzera, Director of Accessibility At Deluxe

Alex and Lee are joined by special guest Anna Capezzera, who is the director of accessibility at Deluxe. This global media and entertainment services company provides audio description, captions, and other accessible options. In our discussion, Anna chronicles her journey into accessibility, talks about her current role at Deluxe, and touches on raising puppies for guide dog training.

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Transcript

Lee Pugsley
Happy April and welcome back to another episode of 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 hosted by two legally blind guys for film lovers of all abilities. And today we are so excited to have a very special guest with us. And Alex, I will go ahead and let you introduce her.

Alex Howard
Yeah. So today we have Anna Capezzera. She is the Accessibility Director at Deluxe. Deluxe is one of our favorite audio description companies. She is a friend of the show. She has been so great in helping us plan our audio description roundtables. Whenever we know Deluxe did a movie, we send her an email and ask who wrote and narrated the tracks. And she always sends back their names and their contact email and all that. So she has been integral in helping us do the roundtables and we thought it'd be great to have her on and hear more about what she does. So welcome, Anna.

Anna Capezzera
Thank you. It's great to be here.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, me and Alex always talk about how we've had so many Deluxe employees and writers and narrators on the show, and we were thinking it's about time that we get Anna on the show because you're the head of it all. So a pleasure to have you on the show today.

Anna Capezzera
Yeah, I'm very excited. I've been listening to the roundtables and I heard your Blind Film Critics Awards recently as well, so that was exciting. Great to be here.

Lee Pugsley
And yeah, thank you so much for being here today. We're so excited to be able to dive into your journey, talking about what inspired you to get into accessibility, your current role at Deluxe, and then ending with a little section about your experience with guide dogs.

Alex Howard
Yeah, thank you so much. And I guess to start off, if you want to go more into what you do as the Director of Accessibility at Deluxe, I mean, we're really curious to know all the ins and outs about that.

Anna Capezzera
Sure. So I oversee audio description operations and sign language. In sign language, primarily I'm focused on American Sign Language, but I also help organize— excuse me— other sign languages, Indian Sign Language, British Sign Language. On the AD operations side, I help schedule all the orders that come through, talk with the clients, answer their questions. Figure out what writers are going to write, what titles are coming in, and just oversee, you know, project managers and coordinators and making sure everything gets through on time and done as well as we can.

Alex Howard
So are you kind of the, I guess, ringleader for the AD department? I guess you could say.

Anna Capezzera
Yeah, I guess you could call me that.

Lee Pugsley
And there's a few more questions that I have about that. But first, I'm curious to know what inspired you to get into the field of audio description and accessibility? And how has your journey led you to where you are now?

Anna Capezzera
So it's sort of interesting. I started in audio description in 2008, and back then there really wasn't a lot of information about what audio description even was. So like many, many people who live in LA, I moved here to try to get into screenwriting, writing for film and television. Just, you know, had a huge passion for writing in general. And when I moved here, I needed a job, so I, I sort of thought like, what am I really good at? I'm really good at typing fast. I'll look for jobs where, you know, I maybe can use that to my advantage. And I found a job posting for captioning and audio description at WGBH. And I had no idea what audio description was. I tried to look it up. I got a little bit of information, but unlike now, you know, there really weren't any samples that I could find online. So I really had to go off of, you know, what made sense to me about what audio description would be for people who are blind and have low vision. And I went in and I took a test, which was on Microsoft Word, so pretty old school, using a 3/4-inch tape deck as well. And yeah, and that went well, luckily.

And part of why I was really interested in audio description specifically when I saw that posting was I do have a little bit of a service background. I did AmeriCorps for 2 years after I graduated from college. So, traveled around the Southeast doing public service projects. And I also am from Boston, which is where WGBH is based. So I listened to a lot of their radio and watched a lot of their shows growing up. So it just seemed like a really great fit to be able to sort of keep on my writing hat and be in film and television in a certain way and then also contribute, you know, in sort of a service element. So that's really what compelled me to apply for that position and why I was really interested in that and what's, what's kept me there. It's just been a great service to be a part of. I love writing AD. I of course don't really do it that much anymore running the department, but I felt like I learned a lot about writing and film and how movies are broken down and so much about that.

So it's just been— it was great to start with, and then I've just sort of, as I stayed in the field longer, helped train more writers, and just slowly became somebody who oversaw more and more until now I'm here. Then we started doing sign language a couple of years ago. Since we were already involved in our department with the community, and we were definitely seen as really being advocates for accessibility and wanting to be more involved, it just sort of was a natural fit to have me sort of start overseeing those projects and figure out standards and best practices. And I'm learning American Sign Language now, so it's been really great.

Alex Howard
A couple follow-up questions. For WGBH, I know that was— I think your LinkedIn said 2008, you were a writer at WGBH. Do you have any audio description tracks that you're especially proud of from back when you were writing AD?

Anna Capezzera
I really loved— I mean, this is sort of more of a fan thing, but I really loved being able to write the Harry Potters when they came out. Partially just getting to see them ahead of time, but also having read the books, you know, having that in-depth knowledge and being able to use it in description was really amazing. I also helped to describe the Tree of Life, and I think I'm just proud of that because it was super complicated.

Alex Howard
That is a visual movie for sure.

Anna Capezzera
Yeah. So it felt like it had, I don't know, 10 lines of dialog. So there's a lot of space to fill and some very abstract things to describe. And so that was something when we got through, we were like, all right, we really did it.

Alex Howard
Wow. Which Harry Potter movies did you describe? And was the AD track available in theaters back then?

Anna Capezzera
I think it was available in theaters at that point. I did 6 and then 7 Part 1 and 7 Part 2. That's all right. Everything after starting with 6. Interestingly, I actually hadn't been a Harry Potter fan until I heard that we were going to have to work on the 6th movie. I was just like, I better watch all those movies ahead of time and make sure I know what's going on. And I watched them in one weekend. And then I was like, ah, these were great. I'm going to read the books now. And so I finished the 6th book at like 3:00 in the morning the day before we received the tapes for the movie to work on. So—

Alex Howard
Oh, that's amazing. The 6th book is my favorite. So that's— 

Anna Capezzera
Yeah, it's great.

Alex Howard
That's awesome. For the American Sign Language that Deluxe is working on, where does that appear? Is that only with streaming services, or does it appear on the actual— devices that they give you at AMC and stuff?

Anna Capezzera
So right now it's only been streaming. It's been on HBO Max. So there's a big— there's a big one with Barbie where we did actually release it, or not release it, but we had a special screening of it in a theater. And so for now it hasn't made it theatrically yet, but we're really hoping to get that going, you know, this year, next year, as soon as we can.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, that would be great. Um, you know, any way that we can further accessibility for all. I love to see those changes happening and things advancing in those ways. A question about the work that you do. I know that you juggle a lot of moving parts with organizing different people, and I can only imagine all the details that you have to work out. So what challenges do you encounter within the work that you do at Deluxe?

Anna Capezzera
I think the biggest challenge is really having good writers available, you know, when you need them, when projects drop. A lot of times you don't know, you know, what timeline you're going to be working on for different projects. Or let's say, you know, this movie is coming out in the fall, so potentially you'll be working on it a month, a month and a half ahead of time. But sometimes maybe it's going to have foreign language audio description that's going to be translated off of the English script, so now they want it 3 months earlier than you expect. And I used to kind of track out when I knew movies were coming and when I would guess that things would be dropping in so that I could save time for writers. But it's become kind of unpredictable enough that I sort of play it by ear as they come through. And I think just making sure you have enough people— and when the deadlines are tight, we also will maybe put multiple writers on, as you know, having interviewed some folks who have worked on the same movie together. And so having the continuity for that and just making sure everything still is as good as it can be when you have such a tight deadline and, and things like that. But people are really great at stepping up and working on the weekend if they need to, to get something through. And so it's a great team to work with.

Lee Pugsley
What's the shortest turnaround time that you've had on a project where a studio says, "Hey, we have this movie for you. We need it done in X amount of time," and it gives the writers such a small window of time to get it completed?

Anna Capezzera
I think, you know, hopefully no one will ever ask for this again, but I think it was maybe 3 or 4 days or something like that. A week is already very tight. And so we basically had every writer on staff plus myself taking a reel and writing it over the weekend. We all wrote it together in one day and then it got recorded overnight and then QC'd the next day with pickups in the morning. It was really quite a project. If it doesn't happen that often, it's kind of a little fun because everybody was together doing it. We talked a lot to get the continuity right. You know, you really feel like you put in a team effort. So that was sort of a positive of it, but it was pretty tough.

Alex Howard
And it sounds like for that track, I mean, for all tracks, Deluxe has a really high bar for quality of AD, but even when it has a fast turnaround, it sounds like you were like, okay, we still need to keep that quality. So we need time to do the QC and we need time to do, you know, all the steps as, you know.

Anna Capezzera
We definitely wanna fit in, you know, everything that we can to keep the quality up.

Alex Howard
When you get a request for a track, if it's like for a franchise, do you typically ask people if they would like to do it if they're a fan first, or do you assign people and just, they go with it?

Anna Capezzera
If I don't know who is the biggest fan, because some of them I will know, or who has the greatest depth of knowledge, then I will ask, you know. Or even if it's something that it seems like maybe someone's really excited about, you know, who's really into this? Do you want to work on this title? And then it'll sort of be if it can fit into your schedule, if I can rearrange your reschedule a little bit so you can do it, I will, especially if it's a knowledge-based thing. Christina Stevens writes a ton of Marvel because she and I had been writing— we wrote Avengers: Infinity War and Endgame together, and we watched all the movies leading up to it to make sure we hadn't forgotten anything. And after that, when I stopped writing, she just kept up with everything. So you kind of know this is the person to ask for Marvel stuff. And we're trying to have her kind of pass down all that knowledge and spread it out. But you can always ask her if you need like the encyclopedia.

Alex Howard
That's really cool. So you're, I mean, I guess more than the ringleader, you're kind of like, I mean, I'm a big baseball fan. So like the baseball manager picking the lineup, you're kind of like, okay, you're the, you're good at horror, you're good at Star Wars for Justin, you're good at this. So like, you know, and it seems like Meg is becoming the horror person a little bit, right? She did Final Destination and Substance. I'm catching on to your trends. I like them. I like them, but, um, seems like a really fun job to be able to cherry-pick, like, okay, who do I think would be best with this project? And then see it come to fruition, being like, I made the right choice.

Anna Capezzera
Yeah, it's really great to just know there are people who it's kind of like their specialty, and you have that person who can do it. It's funny because sometimes it ends up being by accident. So it'll be like, oh, we— and sometimes it's not relevant, like, oh, we just noticed that this person seems to describe every Anne Hathaway movie. This was by accident, but now we're going to joke and make you like the Anne Hathaway person. So, you know, and I know that Meg doesn't mind describing horror and...

Alex Howard
She's really good at it, too.

Anna Capezzera
We do have some people who would prefer not to. And yeah, since she's good at it and she isn't bothered by it, you know, we know, oh yeah, definitely we can give this to Meg and that'll be great.

Lee Pugsley
Out of curiosity, just because I'm a big musical fan, is there anyone from your team that's the go-to person for describing musicals?

Anna Capezzera
Stoney Emschwiler, he really loves musicals, and Drew Mazzarella on our team as well. They both enjoy musicals, and so we kind of know they're the people, you know, because some people really don't like musicals, um, and we know the two guys who love them, they can be counted on to, to really enjoy what they're doing and, and have some knowledge to draw from of what they've already seen. So that's, that's usually the ultimate goal. It's the same thing with sports. Matthew Christofferson watched a ton of sports. And so it's just like, he's the guy. If we can get it for him or if we can have him QC it to make sure nobody used any funny, incorrect terminology, that would be better.

Alex Howard
Yeah, because it seems like with AD too, you kind of need— not all the time do you need prior knowledge, but it does help with, you know, sports, horror, Star Wars, these IPs. It helps to know who the people are, what the, you know, ships are, all that kind of stuff. The sports terms. So it does help to have a fan. So that's really great that you take that into account.

Anna Capezzera
Yeah, I mean, it's, you know, otherwise everyone's doing the research and it takes a lot of time, but we do really try to do the research and have it be correct. So, you know, we always know it'll be faster with someone who already knows.

Alex Howard
Yeah. And I noticed, I don't know why I have a brain for this, for movie stuff, but I noticed Deluxe gets a lot of credits for Disney movies and theaters, mostly theatrical Disney. Warner Brothers titles, a lot of them. I noticed this year Amazon MGM is usually Deluxe. And what's interesting is for those who don't know, if you stay after the credits in theaters, it gives credit to the company that did the AD and the narrator in the, in the AD headphones, not on the screen. But -- if you listen to the AD after the credits. But for Amazon specifically, I noticed this year for Crime 101 and Project Hail Mary, and I'm assuming Mercy, they did it too. They named the company Deluxe, the writer, and the narrator. And they're the first company I've noticed that named the writer. Was that something that you're aware of? Was that something in the contract with them?

Anna Capezzera
Um, it's more sort of what the client would like for the credit. So, you know, we had— it started out with sort of a standard, "This film has been described by Deluxe with funding by Walt Disney Studios, voiced by whomever." And as AD has become more prominent and people have had a better understanding of how AD works and who works on it, it's changed with how the credit is. And some people don't want the funder. I mean, on Netflix, you kind of don't need to say funded by Netflix because you know it's on Netflix.

Alex Howard
Yeah.

Anna Capezzera
But so, so that's kind of an old school carryover that still exists sometimes. And then the writer is very new. And it's, I think, really only Amazon and Netflix that do it. And it's great. I mean, we're super happy to be able to give writers the credit for those. And it was Amazon's choice.

Alex Howard
I think it's really important. And like, I love it especially because, you know, we know a lot of the people now after doing the Roundtable for 3 years and everything. So I can message a new show about Project Hail Mary or message Justin about Crime 101 and be like, oh, you guys did a great job. So yeah, no, it's, it's really fantastic that the writers are starting to get more credit.

Anna Capezzera
Yeah, I'm, I'm very happy about that because it's also— writing an AD script well is hard and takes a lot of time. So to be able to, to give them the credit for that is great.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, it's very nice to be able to recognize the sources from where the AD scripts, both the narration and the writing, came from now.

Anna Capezzera
Right.

Lee Pugsley
And it's just fun, like Alex was saying, because we know some of these people now, to kind of put a— we have a name and a face to attach it to as well. So it's not just a generic name anymore, but the person behind it. So that makes it really enjoyable too.

Anna Capezzera
I remember when I started in AD, I would hear about voice actors who would receive fan letters. And so, you know, they were sort of the only known people behind audio description. I think for some things at WGBH, we did include the writers, mostly for television, interestingly, on CBS. But yeah, but it's been really great to see Netflix and Amazon include the writers in the credits, and hopefully more will follow suit.

Lee Pugsley
One of the other things that came to mind as we've been talking is, it seems like Deluxe has a lot of longtime employees that have been there for a while, and I can imagine that, knowing those people and knowing their skills in different areas and just even the camaraderie that you guys have amongst each other probably helps a lot, too, in getting a script done, especially one where you have a tight turnaround and you're dividing it up amongst many people. Just knowing that there's going to be good workflow and there's a team effort to get it done.

Anna Capezzera
Yeah, I feel really lucky that we've, we've managed to build this team of of people who are like that. Um, I was actually Deluxe's first freelance AD writer in 2014, and then Justin started shortly after, and Christina. We all started in the same year, uh, and Justin and I also worked together at WGBH, and Matthew Christofferson, who's at Deluxe now, he worked at WGBH as well. And so it was sort of pulling in people you knew. We have some freelancers who are very old school before even our time at WGBH writing AD. And you've actually had them, Samantha and Carol, you've had them on your podcast. And so making those connections and just— and then, you know, training, helping to train Christina and Sony and everybody else. And so it's sort of been a great foundation with these people who've been around for a long time. Carrie Canning on our team, I think, has been doing AD the longest of us, like maybe over 20 years or something. And it's been really great to have these people continue to do this. And help, you know, bring other people up to the level and learn more about AD.

Lee Pugsley
When someone new joins the team, are you the one that's responsible for training them or does everyone kind of step up, the people that have been there a long time, to be like, Here, I'll help guide you and show you the ropes?

Anna Capezzera
We usually have a few people help out. So... Also just because you don't want only one person's opinion on that, on the new person's skill. But so, Christina tends to at this point sort of oversee the recruitment and training and get all of that set up. And then she'll say, you know, like, hey Justin, can you look at this person's project? Or Anna, can you look at this test? Things like that. And so we do spread it out because we know, we also know the, you know, each other so well in our writing styles. So what one person might be nitpicky about, another person may not be. So we want to make sure we get a variety of people's eyes on it and helping out a new writer.

Alex Howard
And I also know that, I mean, I have a couple friends that have applied for writing at Deluxe, and I mean, since the bar is so high for quality, it's not always the easiest thing to get a job writing for Deluxe AD. So what's the process of, if someone wants to be a writer at "Deluxe," what are the steps that you go through when you're trying to get the job?

Anna Capezzera
We have a multiple-choice test that we start with, and we give people a sheet of guidelines that sort of explain, you know, the basics of audio description. Audio description needs to be accurate. It needs to describe the visuals in the order that they appear. You shouldn't provide information that the sighted audience wouldn't have. Unless it's necessary, sort of, you know, not putting any spoilers, things like that, and not going over dialog. And so they can use that as a reference while they take this multiple choice test. But the idea of the test is they're going to look at a picture and they're going to choose the best line of audio description out of 4 choices. And so some of it is interesting because it is tough, and some of it people say, well, this sounded the nicest. And you're like, yeah, but it also had an error in it, or it went against the guideline. And this one, you know, maybe they'll say, well, this one described the most. And you're like, yeah, but it, it was grammatically incorrect in 3 places. And so we really, a lot of it is we want to see how well they can just follow the instructions of what we've given them. And then can they break down, you know, a scene visually and an image and know what to describe?

So after that, then the top scorers get to do a writing test. We have them watch a whole seminar. It takes like 2 hours. It has all these clips, and it goes into more of the details and the nuances of writing AD. And then they have a reel of a movie where then they write the script for 2 hours. And we tell them, you know, it doesn't matter how far you get, make it the best that you can. And we give them all these resources to reference while they're doing it as well. So then we'll look at the test and decide, does this person seem to understand what audio description is? Are they generally an okay writer? You know, do we think we can help them improve with notes and training? And we used to only do the writing test. We didn't do this multiple choice test first. But we really found that surprisingly, it would seem like some people never watched a movie before. They just wouldn't know what to describe at all. And they didn't know— we still to this day have people who will transcribe the dialog or they'll write all of their AD straight over the dialog. And they would've done a 2-hour— watched a 2-hour video and listened to tons of clips where this is not at all what happened. And that's still what they do.

Alex Howard
Do you find that people that have taken Colleen Connor's class or Joel Snyder's class, does that give them a little bump up when you're looking at resumes?

Anna Capezzera
Yeah, I'm not sure how many people we've run into who have done Joel's class, but I know we've had people, some people from Colleen's training, and it really is refreshing to have people who know what AD is and having someone know how to time something out. I mean, it sounds very simple, but we run into so many new people who just don't, they don't have that concept down. So to have been able to get this base training and some practice in, you can definitely see the difference.

Alex Howard
Yeah, we're trying to book an interview with Colleen as well at some point.

Anna Capezzera
Cool, yeah.

Lee Pugsley
So I'm curious to know, after your time at WGBH and as long as you've been at Deluxe, how have you seen the landscape of accessibility change from the time that you first started working in the field until now?

Anna Capezzera
I think more people are aware of accessibility and the services that, you know, that term encompasses. Like I said, when I started out and I applied to this AD job, I couldn't find any examples of audio description. And actually, when I trained at WGBH, they had me watch things on VHS with AD. So that's like how back in the old days they used to get AD to people once it came out on video. Is you'd actually have to buy the specific VHS with it, and then it's just open audio description for everyone. So it was very different back then and just less knowledge of what it was. And seeing it grow and, you know, just more theatrical releases, and then with the streaming boom, getting AD on there, I think that's really, really helped push it to the forefront where people are aware of what it is. There are so many more people who are interested in it. Even folks who are sighted listening to it for Easter eggs. And I think that's been a really great way to just expose more people to it because it is important and you still come across people who don't know what it is and don't know why you need it.

And that's really been an amazing change that I've seen over that time period. And another thing that's been great, with many thanks to the two of you and John Stark and other folks, you know, getting to see reviews of AD or hearing about blind film critics going and seeing movies and being able to talk about the audio description and the Audio Description Facebook page. There's just so much more involvement and it's been really great to be able to see what the community is saying. I think that's so important. And all of you out there talking about it, I think, have made it just be even more, you know, out there in people's minds and in their world, and that's helped increase the accessibility itself. So that's been really great.

Alex Howard
That's awesome. And as someone who collects physical media, I did not know that there were VHS tapes with audio description. What were some of the ones that you remember that had it? That would be really cool to have.

Anna Capezzera
I watched the— during my training, I watched the first Harry Potter with it. I watched Ray. And Erin Brockovich. So a lot of the things around that time period would have had it on VHS.

Alex Howard
That's so funny. Yeah, I have Ray back there on DVD with it. I have Moulin Rouge on DVD. DVDs are rare with AD. I'm sure VHS tapes are even more rare, but that's really cool.

Anna Capezzera
Well, and when I started too, AD wasn't on DVD that much either. I think it's gotten a little bit better, but I, to be honest, I haven't tracked it as well now with streaming. But in between WGBH and Deluxe, some of us actually started our own audio description company. I don't know if anyone has talked about it before, but it was called Hollywood Access Services, and it was just 4 of us, and we were all AD writers, and it was sort of when that mandate was coming out for television, and so we thought this would be a big explosion in work. And one of the things that we did notice was that we would describe something for a theatrical release, it wouldn't make it onto the DVD, even if the movie is really, really big. So one of our bids to try to get more work for ourselves was like, what if we make an AD track for something that had it in the theater but not on DVD? That's a big movie that would help bring access to people for something like Catching Fire. And so we made a recording that you could sync, you know, we would say like, when you hear this sound effect in the movie, press play.

And so, you know, that's sort of how we didn't need the program audio or anything like that. And then we eventually paired up with movie reading so that we could actually get like that auto-sync function where it would listen to the program audio and sync it together. But that was something that we did for a while as sort of a passion project was all these tracks that were just recordings for things that didn't have it on the DVD or, you know, shows that never had it. We did the first season of Breaking Bad and Star Trek: Next Generation, just some random things that we had folks from the blind community say we'd really love AD for this.

Alex Howard
Are those tracks still out there or have they kind of disappeared?

Anna Capezzera
That's a great question. I still have them. They may still be on iTunes. We sold them on like iTunes and maybe Google Music or something. But we did, when our company folded, we did sell the tracks and the rights to those tracks to another accessibility company who was interested because they said they would kind of carry that on. But I'm not sure. I haven't actually been able to find that company in a while.

Lee Pugsley
One of the things that we talk about a lot on here that I'm sure you've heard about multiple times is the frustration of when a film gets released on a certain platform and the audio description track doesn't travel with it, or it's a film where there was an audio description track in the theater, but then it's nowhere to be seen on any streaming service. And hopefully there can be a solution to that. I don't know what that is, 'cause I know there's a lot of like licensing and other things involved in that. But I applaud you guys for just getting together and doing tracks just for the passion of it and making accessibility more accessible for everyone.

Anna Capezzera
Yeah, thank you. It was a lot of fun because for us too, there were some movies we were like, "Oh, wouldn't it be great to have AD for The Princess Bride? Let's do that," you know? And so it was a lot of fun for us, too, to get to do projects that we just kind of picked because we love them.

Lee Pugsley
Now, looking ahead to the future as well, whether it's at Deluxe or just within the audio description world in general, where do you see room for growth and what growth would you hope to see?

Anna Capezzera
Well, there's still plenty out there without audio description, so I do hope that it continues to become, you know, as prevalent as captions. I think that's still like the fight we're all still fighting is to get it out there, even though there's so much more than there was. It's still not everything. So I hope that that's growth that will happen. And then I'm definitely seeing sort of two different branches of how things are evolving. And one is bringing more blind and low vision people into the workflow. So whether that's QC or voice, I definitely see that happening. And I hope that that continues to be something, you know, that grows and more people do it. And then on the other side, we have, of course, AI. That's going to happen no matter what. And I think we just sort of have to think about how we can keep the audio description good, what we can do to make sure that this is still the accessibility service that serves the community best. And so, and I do think there are a lot of benefits to it because if you can have a script in English and machine translate it and then have a human, you know, go through and make sure the translations are correct, now you have audio description potentially in languages where they just never had AD before. And seeing it spread that way, I think, has been I think that's one of the really great things where it really does feel like, yes, this is a good place for AI and this is a great way to just expand accessibility around the world.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, well said. I mean, like you said, AI is going to be here to stay in pretty much every field, whether we like it or not. And I think it's just a matter of how do we adapt to it and use it as a tool that's not taking away jobs from people, but can also enhance things in a positive way, and I respect anyone's opinion on that. I know that we all have different feelings towards that, but I'm in agreement with you on just, let's find a way to make it work to our advantage while still giving the writers and narrators their jobs and opportunity to make it as excellent as possible.

Alex Howard
Yeah, I really love the positive spin on AI that you gave because I know there's a lot of negativity out there, and I think you're right. I think that's one positive thing that could possibly come from it.

Lee Pugsley
And going off of something else that you had mentioned about all these movies that still don't have AD, does Deluxe ever get commissioned or contracted to do back catalog movies for any studio?

Anna Capezzera
Uh, yes, we have. Usually they come in these big batches, but we have had a couple catalog batches before, um, from Disney, from Universal. And so I think we will hopefully always keep seeing these come up. I don't know how the titles get chosen for which are going to get AD, so it's sort of an interesting— you know, I know there are some that I wrote the descriptions for and I can't find what platform the AD is actually on. So it's a little bit of a puzzle, a mystery to me about, you know, how they choose what will get it and where it's going. Like, if we, if we do this batch for this Studio? Is it because it's going to Netflix? Because it's going to Amazon? Is it, you know, so I think, yeah, we just see these ebb and flow batches come in of back catalog. Hopefully they'll keep doing that.

Alex Howard
Obviously the 4K, the physical media format, 4K Blu-ray, they've been going through their back catalog, and Disney has slowly but surely been kind of releasing some of the Fox titles and some of their other more adult branded studios, they've kind of slowly been going through and releasing those and doing steelbooks. And I noticed every one they release, like they did Tombstone, they did Rocky Horror Picture Show, they did, I think, Sky Captain. They've done a bunch of movies and every time it has audio description and I'm always so impressed. And I think you guys do a lot of those. So I think they end up on physical media, but a lot of them also get like one-night theatrical re-release kind of thing. And I always try and go to those. I think there are some like Alien that you guys did that I saw in the theater that had already been released on 4K from Fox before Disney bought it and before they were doing this AD thing. And so since it's already out on physical media, there's no AD track and that AD track is kind of like, where is it? But I think, yeah, if it's not out on physical media yet, usually you can find them on the Disney 4Ks, which is really great. Like, I have Speed back there. I have a bunch of— I have Tombstone, a bunch of the ones that Disney did. And I think they usually hire you guys to do them.

Anna Capezzera
Yeah, all of those titles are very familiar from us working on them. And it's been interesting because with Disney, you know, they're doing the research to figure out if the audio description already exists, if they can track it down. You know, some stuff is so old, and by so old I mean 2009 at this point, and so they can't find it in, you know, any vendor's archive. And it's been interesting to say, "Oh, you know, I actually described this at this other vendor when I worked there," and it's like, "No, well, we couldn't find it." So you can describe it, and then it becomes, you know, from the people that I worked with before we were at Deluxe. It's like, "Hey, does one of you want to describe this again?"

Alex Howard
Oh, that's so funny that, yeah, you're like describing them for the second time.

Anna Capezzera
Right.

Alex Howard
I think also the AD guidelines have kind of changed since then too, right? So it's almost like an updated— there's like the unsaid rules of audio description, right? Have you found that those have changed?

Anna Capezzera
Yeah. And I mean, you know, even since I-- Personally, I think when I started, WGBH was sort of on this track already in comparison to other vendors. But, you know, the idea that AG is storytelling, it's not just informational.

Alex Howard
Yeah.

Anna Capezzera
And so that's sort of a thing. And, you know, because so many of us there were writers and, and that was important to us, and movie lovers and everything. And so that's a thing that was very important to carry over to Deluxe. And, you know, we really always talk about like the magic of the movies and what kind of an experience you want to hope somebody using audio description gets. And as there have been more vendors doing it and it's just become more prevalent and people have been talking about it, whether it's movie reviews or podcasts, I think that we've seen this great evolution of more people seeing it as storytelling and, you know, the writing being such a big part of what's important and how you phrase something. And it's not just explaining how someone is feeling or why they did something. It's using vivid description and, you know, word choice is important to try to convey all of this. And I've seen that change a lot since I started. And I think that's been really great because it feels way more aligned with, you know, why you go to the movies in the first place.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, I feel like with where we're at now with audio description, it's really enhancing the movie viewing experience, not just giving you facts, but really being a part of the story as well. And I always tell writers too, even if you're not an AD writer, but if you're just a screenplay writer or just a writer in general, watch some content with AD because what it does is it teaches you how to use the economy of language to create vivid pictures in the most efficient and effective ways possible. And for any reader that you're passing a script onto, you want them to be able to get that vivid picture without overwriting and overexplaining. And I think that AD can be a really good model for some takeaways that any writer can glean from watching it.

Anna Capezzera
Yeah, it was really interesting to, you know, still be learning about screenwriting and writing audio description at the same time. And I remember I wrote for a class, I wrote a spec script and had a description of like how a hand was traveling along the clothes hanging in a closet. And I think it probably got a little too detailed than it needed to be in a teleplay script. But the teacher was like, "Wow, this is really vivid. This is really nicely written, and I can picture everything." And so that was only because of writing audio description that I really included that in the first place.

Alex Howard
Do you remember where you found out about audio description? Because 2008 was pretty early, in the early days of AD. Um, do you remember where you first heard of it?

Anna Capezzera
It really was just applying to this job. It was, it was the job posting. I saw it and it said, uh, Descriptive Video Service. That's what they call it at GBH. And, and I was just like, oh, what's this? And I gave a little blurb and I Googled it a lot and really couldn't find a ton of information. But that job posting was where I first heard of it, which a lot of our writers who have been around for a long time, that's kind of how they heard of it too. They were looking for a writing job and they were like, "Audio description, what's this?" And so it's so funny to hear, you know, those stories and then really great to talk to people now who are applying for jobs and they're like, "I heard about it on this podcast," or, "I heard it on my TV," or, you know, "I took Colleen's class." And it's such a different experience of people who are looking for this job for what this job is itself instead of, "I stumbled upon this and it sounded really interesting." Yeah, people seeking out audio description. I've heard about that and that's become really great.

Alex Howard
That's awesome.

Lee Pugsley
Well, this has been a really good dialog, Anna, about your work at Deluxe. And me and Alex both appreciate what you do to make accessibility possible for us as the moviegoing blind audience. And I know that there are so many other people that are benefiting from the work that you and the whole team at Deluxe does. So we want to thank you very much for that.

Anna Capezzera
Yeah, thank you. It's always great to come and talk about audio description with audio description lovers. So I'm really grateful and it's always fun, you know?

Alex Howard
Oh yeah, we really appreciate everything you guys do at Deluxe. We wanted to end our conversation though with— I know you're also involved in another way with the blind community. You are a puppy raiser for guide dogs, correct?

Anna Capezzera
Yes. My husband and I watched Pick of the Litter a couple, maybe 3 years ago or something, and realized there was Guide Dogs of America about 15 minutes from our house. So I started volunteering in the nursery, doing housekeeping, just like laundry and cleaning up kennels. And I met a ton of people who puppy raise. And the big thing for me was I have a full-time job. And most of the people who puppy raise, or not most of them, but a lot of the people I met were retired. So I was kind of like, I don't, I don't really know if I have the time for this, but they convinced me that I had the time, I could make it. And so in January 2024, we got our little 9-week-old puppy and we puppy raised her with help training from Guide Dogs of America. We went to puppy kindergarten every week and learned all the basic training we had to do with her and teaching her house manners. House training, all of that good stuff. So yeah, it's been a really great experience.

Lee Pugsley
What was something that you learned about the guide dog training process that maybe you didn't know before while training the puppy?

Anna Capezzera
I think I didn't realize how far just 5 minutes of training every couple hours would go when they're really young. And just setting up sort of the boundaries of, you know, they talk about introducing the puppy to your home room by room. And if they chew on something they shouldn't, give them a toy that they want instead and really making it clear to them what they're allowed to do and what they're not. And when you're doing it when they're that early, I hadn't considered that it really does make a difference. And so we were just like, even if we got our own puppy one day, this is, we would start early and we would follow all of these things and be really consistent because she has great house manners and and is very smart and remembers all of the cues that we taught her. You know, 5 minutes every couple hours would really make a difference.

Alex Howard
I'm on the list to get a guide dog from Guide Dogs for the Blind. I think I'm about 4 months away. So a couple questions for you. First one being, is it hard to— how long do you raise the puppy for? And then is it hard to like say goodbye once it's when it's time to, you know, give it to the person that's gonna be helping?

Anna Capezzera
We raise them till they're about a year and a half or a little bit older. I'm very lucky that our puppy was chosen to be in the breeding colony instead of going to puppy college. So she did all of the service puppy training that she needed while we were puppy raising. And it was a little bit complicated because for us, we actually didn't— they said she might be a breeder or she might go to puppy college. You know, we won't find out until like 2 days before she's gonna go to puppy college. So we kind of had this time where we weren't sure if we would be sending her off and it was very sad. And so once we heard we were gonna be able to host her because she's a breeder, that was, you know, crying and just super excited. So we haven't yet experienced having to turn a dog in, which we know will be really hard. And we are planning to puppy raise, hopefully, one of our puppy's puppies when she has one. So we will do it again. And we feel like we owe at least one guide or service dog out to the world because we got to host the first one and we can adopt her when she retires. But we know it'll be hard. But I've also met so many people who have done like, they're on their 15th puppy, they're on their 20th puppy. So I think that once people see, you get to go to the graduation and meet the people they get paired up with. And I think when people have that experience, it's very rewarding and they, you know, they're still really sad, but they, they feel like the sacrifice is worth it.

Alex Howard
Yeah, I'm so excited to get my dog. It's like the thing pushing me forward. I think I was like number 197 out of 400 at the end of February, but I'm beyond excited. When you got your puppy, did you have to get the puppy from a certain place to have it be raised as a guide dog, or was it just kind of like, "We got this puppy at Petco. We're gonna see if we can do it.

Anna Capezzera
[laughs] Guide Dogs of America chooses the puppy for you. So they have their own breeding program and, you know, because there's a lot, they breed for temperament and then a lot of it is health. So that's something I think people don't think about that often with when your dog doesn't make it all the way through training, which they call career change instead of flunking out. But it could be because maybe they just, they have hip dysplasia. And you know, I met somebody who one of his dog's toes had to come off and she got career changed. So they really wanna try to make them as healthy as possible. So they do have a very specific breeding program and they do sometimes work with other schools too, where they'll give each other their puppies so that they can spread them out and not have as much inbreeding. So yeah, so Guide Dogs chooses the puppy you are going to raise. You get to choose their name though.

Alex Howard
What is the name of your puppy?

Anna Capezzera
Her name is Rylo. There is an LA-based band, Rylo Kiley, and that is what, that is who she is named after. We actually, essentially every litter has a letter. And so they'll tell you, you know, like you're gonna have a puppy from the T litter, send us 5 boy names and 5 girl names that start with T that you like. And so for us, our first choice was actually Ripley because of Alien.

Alex Howard
Love it.

Anna Capezzera
But there was already a working dog out there named Ripley. So the second one was Rylo. And we actually think it fits her very well because she has a lot of energy. And then we say she got Rylo'd up. So.

Alex Howard
Love that.

Lee Pugsley
With the names then, do they try to make sure there's no duplicates in any letter?

Anna Capezzera
Yeah, they definitely, it helps them keep track of, you know, their working dogs and their puppies in training and everything to not have any duplicate names. It can get tough though. What happens if you're the X letter?

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, that'd be tough. Like I feel like X and Z would be really challenging to figure out how many names you can come up with that aren't duplicates.

Anna Capezzera
Yeah. And complicated because you know, they just assign them in sequence. So you could have a dog that you know is gonna be the Z litter and then they have 14 puppies and you didn't expect it. So then you need 14 names.

Alex Howard
Yeah, I'm really curious to see what my guide dog's name is. I'm having just seen Project Hail Mary, I'm hoping for Rocky, but you know, I'll take whatever I can get. So yeah.

Anna Capezzera
Yeah, that would be great. I can't wait to hear about it. It'd be fun.

Alex Howard
Yeah, well, thank you so much, Anna. This has been so much fun and it's so great to have you on, especially since you've been helping us for so long with the roundtables and stuff. So thanks for talking with us.

Anna Capezzera
Yeah, thanks for having me. I've been a fan of The Dark Room for a while and it's fun to be here speaking with you after hearing your voices in the podcast.

Lee Pugsley
Well, we definitely appreciate your support in so many ways for our podcast specifically, but also just for cinema and accessibility in general.

Anna Capezzera
Thank you. Yeah, AD and movie lover.

Lee Pugsley
And, uh, for those of you out there, we also want to thank you for listening. If you have any questions for me or Alex, you can email us at DarkRoomFilmCast@gmail.com. Once again, that's DarkRoomFilmCast@gmail.com. And be sure to follow us on Instagram and YouTube @DarkRoomFilmcast.

Alex Howard
Yeah, and feel free to reach out also if you have any questions about being an AD writer, if you are, you know, would like to work at Deluxe, or if you are interested in any of the resources we talked about this episode, send us an email and we can point you in the right direction.

Lee Pugsley
And we'd like to thank Matt Lauterbach and All Senses Go for making transcripts of this episode possible, as well as BlindCAN, our editing sponsor.

Alex Howard
And Anna, um, if you wanted to plug anything, or is there anywhere people can keep an eye out for Deluxe audio description jobs, if they're going to be listed, where, where would they watch?

Anna Capezzera
Um, Deluxe often posts jobs on the Deluxe website itself, so I think there's like a careers section and you can look for that. And we do every once in a while do these big recruitment pushes, so, you know, keeping an eye out for those posts at that time. Yeah, and you can always get in touch on LinkedIn as well, so... Happy to hear from people who are interested.

Alex Howard
Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for listening, and we will see you next time on The Dark Room.

Lee Pugsley
Take care.