Audio Description (part 1) - Fran Mathey

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John Simpson  0:29

Hello and welcome to New Horizons and to the first program in our summer series for 2024 25 I'm John Simpson. Thanks for joining us. You know, it's almost 20 years since we first saw Australian produced audio description on cinemas and home use DVDs. And since then, of course, we've seen trials and then the formal introduction of audio description of both the ABC and SBS networks, my guest today has been an integral part of that development over that nearly 20 years. Welcome to New Horizons, Fran Mathey.

Fran Mathey

Thanks for having me, John. It's lovely to be here. 

John Simpson 1:09

Fran, we might talk a little bit about that history, and firstly, how you got involved with providing audio description as both a scripter and narrator. 

Fran Mathey 1:19

Yeah, sure. I mean, in some ways it's hard to believe it's been 20 years. But then when I think back to some of the early titles, it really seems a very long time ago, some of those, as you say, home use DVDs that were the initial part of the project, a pilot project that I was lucky enough to get in on. It felt like being in on the ground floor of audio description for film and TV in Australia, because prior to that, there was audio description around but it was mostly for theater, mostly done by volunteers through organisations like Vision Australia. And also there'd been some radio trials of TV description, like neighbors episodes being simulcast, or the audio description being single cast on radio. 

So people had been having a go at it in various formats, but it hadn't been formalised. The fact that this was called a pilot project, was a government initiative to try and get some of these things happening in Australia. So the initial pilot project was just for 10 Home Use DVD titles. And a few of us, well, a lot of us applied. Actually, a few of us were selected, based on a testing process, to have some initial training by one of the gurus of audio description globally, a wonderful woman called Louise Friar. So we were effectively trained in a UK style of audio description, which I think still stands, really, as a broad category, a broad approach that can differ quite significantly from other approaches. 

John Simpson 2:47

Yeah, from there, you've gone on and done additional training, and you've worked in all aspects of audio description, I think.

Fran Mathey 2:55

So a mixture of on the spot, live description, so off-the-cuff description, I would say, as in the New Year's Eve fireworks, or there's a wonderful show at the end of every year on International Day of People with disability called elevate the stage in Sydney. And that's a variety of Acts. So it's really flexing all the different descriptive muscles, because there's dance and there's stand up, and there might be some aerial acrobatics, there's some music numbers, and then there's live events that have a sort of pre description element, where it might be a photography exhibition, or the lunar lanterns in Sydney's Lunar Festival, where I get to view the works ahead of time and prepare a bit of a description, but then deliver it live by taking a tour around those events.

John Simpson 3:43

So how do you see that Australian audio description has developed over the years? 

Fran Mathey 3:50

Oh, so many developments, both in the delivery and also the production of audio description. So the delivery of it has changed big time from just being an extra feature on a DVD that people had to select, or headsets that were notionally available in cinemas, or for cinema titles that had audio description, but so often, and for so many years, actually, it worked out to be the case, as I'm sure you know, that many of the cinemas that offered audio description didn't have working headsets, didn't know how to provide them, didn't know how to use them, so it was really awkward finding them.

John Simpson 4:27

Yes. Yes, exactly.

Fran Mathey 4:31

So yes. So I think the awareness of of how to deliver audio description in venues that offer it has come a long way, and also the methods of delivery so that people can be listening accessing the audio description through their own devices or earbuds, through Bluetooth settings, or through new technology like smart glasses. But then also for TV, we, as you mentioned, there's the ABC and SBS trials that turned into regular off. Rings that can be accessed through the streaming platforms, the catch up services, like I view and SBS on demand. 

And then the huge one, really, the big game changer for Australian TV audience has been streaming services, so many of which have come with a lot of audio described titles, which are growing every year, and that's making a lot more international audio description available to Australian audiences as well as local audio description. And that, of course, influences the way we produce our own as well, and broadens people's tastes, I think, for different different kinds of audio description, different flavors coming from different parts of the world. 

John Simpson 5:38

So I heard you recently speaking at the audio description symposium that Curtin University hosted. And you spoke there about difference in styles between what we might call the UK style and the US style of audio description. And you had some thoughts about where Australian description might fit within that sort of well, I guess those two are almost opposing positions. 

Fran Mathey 6:03

Yeah, I was theorising that Australia, being quite late to the party in terms of audio description, might be really well placed to borrow or use some of the better aspects of both the UK and the US traditions, which have many variations within them. And there are also obviously other approaches from other parts of the world. But having had an introduction to audio description here, that was chiefly sort of in the UK style, I think a lot of Australian audiences are going to be more used to that style, which is a lot more neutral, perhaps, than the US style, so more of a neutral, unintrusive style of both audio description, writing and narration, whereas the US tends to read more like a screenplay and often be voiced by actors, so it can be more dramatic, more participatory in the action, perhaps. 

And I really think that there are great elements of both of those schools of thought. I know opinion is really divided when I get feedback from AD users, and it really depends who you speaking to at the time, which way they go, but I did have some really interesting feedback in a recent survey from one user who said they preferred the UK style. Partly they thought because that's what they were used to, having had mostly that on their screen so far from ABC and SBS in particular, where a lot of the early content came directly from the UK, or was created by people like myself who were trained in the UK style. So it could be a matter of customising people to other styles from around the world, and that's definitely happening with streaming. And a lot of the offerings that come with audio description from the US or things that are available online. 

And when I'm training new describers, I encourage them to try a bit of both, to push the envelope a bit in terms of neutrality when it's applicable. Obviously, this is very genre specific. So dramatic genres are going to lend themselves more to a bit of dramatic audio description and a documentary, not so much. I think everyone who works in audio description knows that hard and fast rules just don't work, and the words never or always don't come into training, because there are just so many scenarios which mean having to contravene things that you thought were set in stone.

John Simpson 8:16

So Fran, can you sort of put that into the context of the sorts of things that may or may not be included in each style. I mean, one of the things that I'm conscious of is whether you divulge the information at the time or for expedience or other reasons, you might have to pre describe something or give someone a name ahead of that person being identified in the actual production?

Fran Mathey 8:43

Yeah, well, I think you're right on the money with expedience, and that could be something that's within the in house rules of a particular media access company that may say, Never name a character until they've been named in the dialog. But I think there's one of those gray areas where, in practice, you may have to contravene that rule in order to get ahead with the audio description at all. So the reason why some audio describers will name a character long before they're named within the dialog is in order to be able to refer to them later without having a huge collection of the dark haired man, the blonde-haired woman, the woman with long blonde hair, the woman with short blonde hair.

So it's a kind of shorthand, also, because in feedback from audio description, QC specialists who have said more and more just put in a name before somebody speaks, even if the time is so tight that you almost have to crash what they're saying just to locate us in the scene with who's speaking off the bat before anything else. So to be able to name someone with one word using their name can be really, really useful and actually vital to make sense of a scene. 

John Simpson 9:48

Let's now turn to current events. We're speaking right in the Christmas holiday season, and for many of our listeners, they'll be hearing you before New Year's Eve. Where you have one of your annual commitments, tell us about describing the Sydney fireworks for a national radio audience that includes both ABC and radio reading services, including Vision Australia Radio, 2RPH and others.

Fran Mathey 10:16

Yeah, I feel so lucky that I can you can say now that it's become an annual event. I really thought it was a one off the first time I did it, and I was very over awed by this opportunity, because it's such a big audience, it's such a big responsibility, it's such a big palette to work with. And yes, as you know, there is so much going on in any given moment in the sky during the fireworks display, but even more so now, I think, more every year since I've done it, but even more so now that there are LED lights and lighting displays and drones and all kinds of new technology involved new firing points, so it's become kind of even more impossible than it already was. 

And I think that's encouraging me to change tack a little this year and focus more on some of the special effects, the really amazing firework effects to give them a bit more time and describe them in more detail, rather than trying to get across the whole sky. Otherwise, I think it can end up being a bit like just a word salad, lots of information pouring out without necessarily any anything to to hang an experience or an emotion on.

John Simpson 11:19

So have you had to do a course in pyrotechnics? Or how do you prepare for something like this? 

Fran Mathey 11:25

I feel like I did a bit of a course in pyrotechnics last year by speaking with a wonderful interviewee that Tim Bruner and I were lucky enough to have on our show, a man called Colin Van Uchelen from Canada, who is a pyrotechnician who also happens to be blind, he's got retinitis pigmentosa, and so he was able to give us a really great perspective, both on how fireworks feel as a blind person experiencing them, but also how they're made, and how he, in particular, creates them, with that in mind. So and off air, he gave me a very long lesson in the construction of a firework, which was amazing. 

And I wish I could play the whole thing for everybody about how the different parts are packed in in what order, and how that makes them explode and how the different shells break. It was wonderful. He also for his own Pyro displays that he creates in Canada. He creates small models, scale models, of the fireworks in in a 3d form, so that people with slow vision or people who are blind have a tactile to have the opportunity to have a tactile tour beforehand and feel what kind of shapes these works are going to make. 

John Simpson 12:34

We're about to have to wind this up, but just before we do... physically, how do you manage this? Are you watching the event live or via a number of television screens? Or how do you do it?

Fran Mathey 12:44

I do get a bit of a heads up in the form of an animation of how the fireworks are designed to look - but that's always very different, I have to say, from how they actually do look on the night, whether that's because of weather conditions or shells not exploding quite at the height or the colour that they were intended to or it's also just because sometimes things in reality don't look quite the same as they would in an animation or in the design stage. I guess that gives you at least the heads up as to where to focus, whether it's going to be something centred on the Harbour Bridge or overhead, exactly where else on that immense piece of water. Yeah. 

And a really big help in the last couple of years has been that the bespoke soundtrack created for both the 9pm and the midnight fireworks is what plays on air as well alongside the audio described broadcast. Because for the first few years that I did it, there would be the soundtrack that was happening at the harbour that I could hear outside, and often the fireworks were designed to match that soundtrack - particular songs like Purple Rain from the Harbour Bridge, when they were playing Purple Rain, for example, but that track wouldn't make it to the radio broadcast because of copyright issues and and other things. So it was not... it wasn't nice knowing that what was going to the listeners on radio wasn't quite what was happening there in the harbour. And we've got that sorted now, so that's really reassuring.

John Simpson 14:07

Fran, it's been fantastic to have this opportunity to talk to you, both about your career and your observations on the development of audio description, and particularly to hear about the Sydney fireworks display. Thank you for joining us for this week's edition of New Horizons. I'm John Simpson. Thanks for joining us for this week's program.

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