Audio Description (part 3) - Edwina Gustafson

Program theme  0:00

New Horizons... It's up to you and me to shine a guiding light and lead the way... United by our cause, we have power to pursue what we believe... We'll achieve the realisation of our dreams...

John Simpson  0:30

Hello and welcome to another edition of New Horizons Summer Series. I'm John Simpson. This year's New Horizons summer series, of course, is concentrating on audio description. And my guest in this week's program is Edwina Gustafson, who prepares audio description scripts for SBS television programs, particularly those that are commissioned by the network itself. Edwina, welcome to New Horizons. We're going to talk a little bit about your work shortly, but a little bit about your own background and how you got to be working for SBS first. 

Edwina Gustafson
Hi, John, thank you so much for having me. Yes, I how I got to be working for SBS is I actually stumbled on a notice in a newsletter from BCA, and I felt a bit intimidated by the script writing. Just having low vision. I thought that that could be quite tricky. So I thought I would give it a go anyway. And I just started off plotting away on a test that they send out, like a test script that they send out. You know, there are some media and to write a script. And yeah, so here I am. 

John
Had you done other writing before, rather script writing or in other forms? 

Edwina
No. I mean, no, not at all. I love words. I'm a lover of words and of language, and I have been doing for for quite a few years now, English tutoring to speakers of other languages. So, very interested in language, very interested in in in words like that's just always been, you know, what some friends of mine say is, like, this is, you know, I was born for this because the low vision and the love of words and the need for descriptions, which, as you know, like, it starts way before you turn on the telly. 

You need descriptions. You need, you need, you need clues. So, yeah, no, so tutoring is, is my recent background, tutoring, and, yeah, an innate love of words and language. And, you know, with 50 plus years of low vision, I feel I have a good understanding of what is needed when you can't see and and we'll come to that, because I know that you have some particular theories and some practices that you use in determining how a description should go. 

John
But what sort of programs have you been involved with for SBS? 

Edwina
So I've been very fortunate to have worked on drama and documentaries and film as well. I started off through straight into a film. I was actually trained by Fran Matthew like I think everybody around, and we went straight into working on a film. So I've worked on some documentaries on SBS. And you mentioned the SBS commission. Everything I work on is SBS commissioned. So the documentary - I'm going to name names - Meet The Neighbours, which is a three part documentary... and Matchmakers series, documentary series... and most recently, a documentary that's just come out about pain on SBS, A World of Pain. And, yeah, that came out last week. 

So, yeah, no, I've been really lucky to have crossed the genres... and also an eight part drama series, crime drama, Swift Street. So, and it's quite different writing audio description for documentaries and drama and film. It's quite it's quite a different procreate process in documentaries, there's a lot of talking, there's, you know, generally, a presenter or a narrator, and then the people involved in the documentary. And so the gaps tend to be fewer for the audio description, and a lot of the information that is necessary to be able to follow the documentary is actually spoken by the the participants in the documentary, and the narrator and Narrator or presenter, so it's a different, it's a bit of a different process tends to be just less audio description in a documentary.

John 4:49

Now, I recently heard you speaking at the audio description symposium that Curtin University sponsored towards the end of the year, and I was most impressed with. Your explanation of the differences in the way that sighted people perceive visual information, and those of us with low vision or who are totally blind do, can you give us a little nutshell on your thinking there? 

Edwina
Yes, I feel like this is, this is something I'm very passionate about, obviously, and it's such... to me, it's such a significant factor to consider when creating something for people who are blind or have low vision. I am not a scientist. This is just purely personal interest, professional interest. Person, personal interest. So, yeah, if anybody ever wants to contact me and clarify this in any other way, they're welcome to. But what I've observed in my life is that if a sighted person describes something you know assists me, that they will tell me what they see, right?

But just to go, to be direct. That's not enough. It's not bespoke enough for somebody who has no vision, because we're not used to processing visual information, right? And our brains work in different ways, as you would have heard me speak about in this symposium, and I can touch on that. So a description of what a sighted person sees doesn't... it's not a match for somebody who can't see or can't see, well, it's not a match. So I became very interested in this, and I looked into it, and what I've come to understand is that the visual cortex, which is right at the back of the head, is very, very complex, like the human, you know, part of the human brain, very complex. 

And what that does in a sighted person is it receives direct information from the eyes, so the information comes in through the eyes straight to the visual cortex, where the visual cortex instantly sorts it and sends it out to the brain for analysis, i.e. understanding. So all a sighted person has to do is look at the screen, and their brain just automatically does the work. And with people with low or no vision, our brains are rewired because we can't do that. We can't do that. In my particular case, with my vision, my brain tries to do that, but it really messes it up and gives me a lot of inaccurate information.

So our brains, people with low vision or no vision, our visual cortex has been repurposed, and it find it which it's my understanding is that's part of the reason why some of us have hearing or sense of smell, or, you know, other senses are heightened because the visual cortex is the brain is going to find a way to use all that magic that's up there in our brains. And so when a sighted person looks at something, sends it, you know, go straight into their visual cortex, and then it's all sorted out and sent out without them doing anything. It's very different process to what goes on with us, and I hope I'm explaining this clearly. 

I mean, it's a complex thing, but it's also quite simple, like we can't do that. We don't receive any any visual information or clear visual information to our visual cortex. So our visual cortex, we're all different, right? Obviously, we're all different, and our brains just do different things, and it depends on factors like whether a person is born with or without vision, and if they've lost their vision, which many people do during life, the visual cortex has already developed. Is that as a basis for your thinking. 

John
How does that play out in terms of your approach to writing a description for, let's say, an episode of a drama series? 

Edwina
Okay. So also, the way I see it is that we're running... people, people in the blind and low vision community, whether we've lost vision, had vision and lost it, or all the different variants there are of that... we're running different software, is how I see it. Yeah. So I don't write audio description for people who have a perfectly functioning visual cortex. Let's say which means people who whose brains take care of it. The purpose of audio description is so we can follow the program, right? We can understand the documentary. We can follow the drama. So that's hearing what a sighted person sees is helpful, but it doesn't necessarily meet that objective, because a sighted person will describe extra things. They might describe things in a different order. 

The bad audio description would start from the action. So the first thing I want to know in audio description is, where am I? Who is it? You know, Is this our protagonist? Is she in her kitchen, or is it someone completely different we've never seen before, and they're in... an office block. But the first thing I want to know is who and where. Of course, the setting for someone with low vision, the setting is so important because, yes, lighting effects, those sorts of things can give you a completely false impression of where the scene is actually taking. 

John
Yes, yes. And so you start, so you're starting with with the who and where, and then moving to the action. Is that... how you do it?

Edwina  10:15

Yes, The when is such an afterthought for me, unless it's a flashback or it's 20 years later. Yes, it could be later in the day or the next day, but I find that that's not as important for me, because generally, that can be understood, and it's it's certainly not one of the primary things I need to know, unless it's a really significant 10 years earlier or 10 years later. If you're watching a crime show, right? And there's a couple of people on the screen... I want to know who it is. 

So, okay, so it's the plaintiff and it's the barrister. Now, when they're about to speak, you want to know, Are they in the courtroom, or are they in the barristers chambers? Because the conversation they have, like, the context that changes everything, like, are they out in public or not? Okay. 

John
So with that in mind, how do you as a person with, I think you said around 20% sight capture all of the details and so forth about scene, place, clothing, if it's relevant, all those sorts of things, to put your description together? 

Edwina
So I work in tandem with a sighted person, and the sighted person assists - so we watch the... media together. The sighted person assists me with things like identifying characters in darker scenes. That's a big one for me. I'm also colourblind, so that can be a problem. But specifically that's a problem with skin tone and identifying colours. But sometimes it's relevant in other in other things, and just identifying, Oh, that's the same car or something like that. So colours, identifying characters and finer detail, I can see a scene change, I can say, Okay, here's the mother and the daughter in the kitchen. What are they doing? 

And the sighted person might point out, oh, they're just wondering toast. Or they might point out, oh, she's actually signing a contract, whereas, you know, I might not, depending on a whole lot of factors, I might not see the difference. So the sighted person is there to help me with that. And, you know, sometimes we workshop things together, but that's what that's what the sighted person I work with is doing. So we work in tandem. 

John
How do you decide what must go in and what to leave out? 

Edwina
I'm becoming more and more clear on that with each piece of description that I write. So you've got to work within the constraints. Sometimes there's two seconds, so sometimes there's nothing, so you've got to work within the constraints. And, you know, sometimes you're lucky and you've got six seconds. So I will always try and get in location and who's on screen, so John is in the studio, would be, you know, the first thing, if I've got two seconds, that's what I'm going, in the studio. John in the studio. After that, well, it depends. Is something that we say in audio description - It depends.

But it's about helping the person with low or no vision follow the program. So that's how I decide they don't usually need to know that the person's wearing a red t-shirt, they don't usually need today to know she puts on her glasses and she's wearing a barrel, they don't usually know. And yes, that's important, but it's more important that they follow the show. Equal Access is what I'm all about. So my objective is to give the information that is required. So at the end of the film, or at the end of the documentary, the person with low or no vision has the same access as the sighted person, and that may or may not mean that we get in a description about the tailored suit and whatever the clothes. 

John
Edwina, thank you so much for what's been a fantastic insight into how you as a person with low vision contribute to the availability of audio description, at least on SBS, and hopefully in the future, on other networks as well. But thank you for joining us for this edition of New Horizons summer series. 

And just a reminder to our listeners, before I go, that of course, if you want to contact Blind Citizens Australia, you can phone them on 1 800 033 660 - one, 800, zero, double 3, double 6, zero... or email bca@bca.org.au ...

I'm John Simpson. I'll be back with another edition of New Horizons next week.

Program theme  14:39

We'll achieve the realisation of our dreams... of our dreams.