In this interview, filmmakers James Edward Kilpatrick and Jack Morris, share their experiences of working with the EAD team to make their film 'Aspectum' accessible for visually impaired audiences, while also sharing their perspectives on accessibility and hopes for the future.
Transcript
Mariana: Welcome to the DARCI podcast, the podcast on Disability, Accessibility and Representation in the Creative Industries. My name is Mariana López and I’m a professor in sound production and post production at the University of York. Today I have the pleasure of welcoming documentary filmmakers, James Edward Kilpatrick and Jack Morris. Jack and Ed bring diverse backgrounds in fiction, television and documentary production to their collaborative filmmaking endeavours. From Bristol and London respectively, they’re united in their passion for crafting documentaries that they feel can make a difference. Their films challenge traditional documentary conventions and push the boundaries of the genre. As storytellers, they seek to present narratives in a way that resonates with viewers and inspires change. By prioritizing authenticity and compelling storytelling, they aim to give voice to those who might not otherwise be heard. Despite their different paths and locations, they share a commitment to crafting films that make a meaningful impact on the world. Together, they bring a wealth of experience, creativity and dedication to their work, which they hope will connect with audiences and spark meaningful conversations about important issues. James and Jack collaborated with a team of the Enhancing Audio Description Project to make their short documentary film, Aspectum, accessible for visually impaired people through the Enhanced Audio Description methods. For those of you who aren’t familiar with EAD, EAD is an alternative to audio description that uses sound design strategies to create accessible experiences for visually impaired film and television audiences. To do this, we work closely with film and television production and post-production teams. EAD is a combination of three main methods. The first one is the addition or rebalancing of sound effects. The second is the spatialisation of dialogue and sounding objects to match their position on screen. And the third is the use of first-person narration or description to explain those aspects in the visuals that we feel cannot be conveyed through sound effects or spatialization and that are key to the story. The aim of EAD is for it to fit seamlessly within a film or television production and for it to reduce the number of verbal descriptions, instead allowing other elements in the soundtrack to tell the story. To find out more about our project, please visit enhancingaudiodescription.com. Hello, James, Jack, thank you so much for joining us for today’s podcast episode. How are you doing?
Jack: Very well, thank you. Thank you for having us on.
James: Yeah, thank you so much for inviting us. Very exciting to be on a podcast.
Mariana: Thank you very much. So the first thing I thought we could do just to get us started with something easy is could you tell us a little bit about your film Aspectum for those who haven’t watched it so what is it about and what was the source of inspiration for the film?
Jack: Well Aspectum is a documentary created by James, Mike and myself exploring Charles Bonnet syndrome a condition that causes you to suffer from hallucinations. Some of these hallucinations can be sort of simple concentric shapes, lines, patterns, but they can manifest and become much more complicated and much more specific to the person suffering with them. So in our film we meet both Miles and Nina who were two lifelong sufferers with this condition, who both experience quite different hallucinations. Nina, who lost the sight when she was just a little girl, suffers from headless zombies, people sort of missing eye sockets, the very gory, graphic, sort of scary hallucinations that tend to come up when she’s suffering with anxiety or sort of stress. Whereas Miles, who lost his eyesight at about four, suffers from what we would probably describe as sort of childish looking monsters, hairy worms, snakes, sort of shark-headed people that sort of chase him around the house and again pop up and sort of scare him. So they both have quite different hallucinations that are quite tailored to them. And as I said, they’re lifelong sufferers. Some people get this condition and it lasts for a short period of time and then sort of settles down. Other people like Nina and Miles, unfortunately, suffer with this for the rest of their life.
Mariana: And what was your inspiration to do a documentary on this topic?
James: The inspiration was to make this film after a conversation over a Christmas dinner with my aunt, who’s a psychologist, Noel Irvin. And she told us about Charles Bonnet syndrome and this talk that she went to that said was very, very interesting have a look into it. I mean, myself, Jack and Mike had never heard of it before, nor had anyone else that we had spoken to either. And we were very intrigued by it because it was a syndrome that was in the medical book, but no one really knew about it. And just to add on Charles Bonnet syndrome and what Jack said as well, it’s when the sight starts to diminish, then the hallucinations start start creeping creeping in. And that was something very odd because hallucinations are thought of maybe when um when maybe someone’s taken something and then you start hallucinating or that maybe you’re going a little bit a little bit crazy and starting to hallucinate these things but that’s not the case with Charles Bonnet syndrome. It’s normal to a certain extent it’s the brain playing tricks on the eyesight. I think what’s also really interesting about this condition is something that we’ve known about for a few hundred years. Charles Bonnet actually suffered with them, you know, back in the sort of, I think it was early 1700s with them, you know. And so this is a condition that’s been around and medically diagnosable for a very long time. But there’s a lot of stigmatism with coming forward with the condition because people are worried about being labelled. as perhaps losing their mental capacity or, you know, perhaps worried that they might be slipping into some form of psychosis. So, yeah, it’s kind of flown underneath the radar and is sort of really being picked up by the WHO now.
Mariana: Thank you very much. And am I right in saying that you also kind of collaborated with an organisation specialising in this?
James: Yeah, we collaborated with Esme’s Umbrella, who is a charity that was started by Judith Potts. And Judith Potts’ mother had Charles Bonnet syndrome towards the last couple of years of her life. And they couldn’t quite work out what was going on for months and months and for a few years. And then they found out that she had Charles Bonnet syndrome, which I guess is quite a relief when you diagnose what is actually going on. But there was no information about it. There was no studies about it. And so she started up this charity to then kind of kickstart what is happening now in the UK, also in Australia. And there’s another branch that’s in the Caribbean as well.
Mariana: Perfect. Thank you so much. That’s really, really interesting to hear more about. And, of course, as kind of as filmmakers kind of making a film about kind of visually impaired people, you then engage in a process of thinking about the accessibility of the film. But before we get into that, I was wondering more generally in past productions about other topics. How how did you engage with accessibility for your films? And what do you feel is the role of accessibility in your role as filmmakers?
Jack: Yes, I’m rather ashamed to say that a lot of my past productions haven’t been very accessible. A lot of my corporate content that I’ve put out has been subtitled. But again, I think that’s mostly actually driven by market trend and actual sort of platform usage where people aren’t listening to the audio on videos to keep sort of messaging out. But a lot of the documentaries I’ve worked on in sort of fictions, unless stipulated by the sort of festival or the distributor, they would have had subtitling, but none of them have ever had audio description. And it’s not something that I had overly well had worked with at all, actually, before making this film. And I know that generally speaking, I think that’s the sort of unfortunately the nature of actually content, really. I think looking at I think, you know, a lot of UK broadcast, I think 80 percent have subtitling. But as little as 10 percent with audio description and even less with signing. And I’m hoping that that’s something that’s going to change now. And going forward, it’s something that I’ll always be conscious of when making content.
Mariana: Yeah, thank you so much, James. What about yourself?
James: Yeah, kind of exactly the same. I mean, Jack and I, we’ve worked on multiple productions in the past before, and it has been subtitling, you know, working for maybe short kind of social platforms as well, where no one or majority of people who actually are looking on social media don’t necessarily watch it with sound. So, of course, you need subtitles. But AD work, it was a new experience working with AD work and making sure that it was told, the story was still told in the same vision that we had for the images through dialogue.
Mariana: Thank you. Thank you very much. I was wondering, as you were both kind of explaining your experiences, what do you think we could do better as film and television industries, but also the accessibility sector to raise more awareness so that filmmakers engage, as you say, not just with subtitling, which many times I think you explained it really clearly is really pushed forward by other market needs, but how could we make sure they also engage with things like audio description? you have any thoughts?
Jack: It’s a really interesting question I think a big part of it is unless you you know somebody that might be visually or impaired or perhaps having a hearing impairment I think it’s something that just sort of passes the average day consumer by. And I think there needs to be especially now with with better integration into into streaming services where it is possible to have additional content added I think it just needs to be a part of the initial, I think I’m sure that I think that could be probably a lot more awareness actually publicly on TV. But I think actually it just needs to be baked into the initial rounds of the actual commission for TV now. And I think probably the best way to do that is actually through government to stop there being such a variation, such variation between sort of channel to channel sort of streaming service to streaming service. I think it needs to be standardised and just added in there. I think that’s one of the advantages that we saw immediately with the Enhanced Audio Description, is that we didn’t have to make two films, and that’s not something that we wanted to do anyway. But in the case for perhaps more commercial and wider streaming, having it baked in from the absolute start that there is going to be audio description and signing for all content, it just should be sort of mandated now.
Mariana: Yeah thank you what about you James?
James: I would agree with that because it’s three percent of the population are registered as blind in some shape or form so if we’re talking from like a you know a business savvy point of view for these streaming platforms where it’s very easy to have another kind of tick box to say you want audio description on them. I don’t know why it why it shouldn’t be on just about everything that is put online with this ease of choice. Say 20 years back when we didn’t really have choice and it was what was broadcasted at a certain time, maybe you’d get an AD film at very early hours in the morning that you’d have to remember to record. But now that’s not the case.
Mariana: Thank you. Thank you very much. And I completely agree. I think that there’s very little awareness and consideration as to how this forms of accessibility will fit within workflows. And also, I think also it’s important to encourage filmmakers to engage with the process and find creativity through them as well, hopefully. So this kind of brings me to a more specific question about EAD. So what attracted, and Jack, you kind of alluded to this a little bit earlier. But I was wondering, what attracted you to the of EAD, so enhanced audio description, as an integrated form of access through sound design?
Jack: When we set out started making this film, we knew we wanted to make one film. We didn’t want to make a film and then start sort of bolting pieces on it for accessibility needs. We wanted a film that was accessible for everyone from the outset. So we played with lots of sort of different ideas of how we could do that. Obviously having two visually impaired contributors about a visual impairment, with the subject matter of being about visual impairment, it was always a must to make it as accessible as possible. But that was the thing, we kind of really wanted to weave it into the film and not have it sort of bolted on over the top or sort of as an afterthought. When we were looking about it, we found a few possible other avenues that sort of just didn’t really fit the theme and style of the film. We thought that it would probably pull the viewers out or be distracted, or perhaps the sort of sighted audience. And that’s when we found you. And we loved the integration of the first person contributors sort of adding the dialogue in and the sort of time matching of sound effects as well as those lines just sort of neatly wove itself into the film. It didn’t feel like an afterthought. And that was the thing that we were most concerned with.
James: Yeah, I would like to add on that as well. It was super important from the very beginning that we wanted one film, not two, not Aspectrum and Aspectrum with AD work, which has been the case and is what’s happened on multiple documentaries and other things. Because in our research, when we were watching it with sighted people, we both wear glasses. We don’t have 20-20 vision, but it was very distracting from our perspective that we thought having this voice of God kind of speaking in between certain lines. And it didn’t really, we thought that there could be a better way. And that better way was right in front of us with EAD. So the email got sent within five minutes of finding out about the work that you guys do.
Mariana: Oh, thank you very much. That’s really, really kind. And it’s so important. We always think within this podcast, but also in other research, we do on accessibility, how important it is to have, if we want to make films accessible and television accessible, we really need to think about the perspectives of television makers and filmmakers and how it is that they encounter accessibility and how they feel about it is so, so important. So one of the things that, of course, we did for the EAD for Aspectum was thinking about that first person through the contributors, Nina and Miles. So making sure that anything that needed to be described through a verbal description rather than kind of indicated to other sound design was done through their voices. And I was wondering what was that process like for you and for your contributors, the process of thinking about it in a first person and then working with Nina and Miles in it?
Jack: This is one of the really important things that we really liked about the EAD experience is that by having Nina and Miles read these pieces, it sunk into the film really nicely. It didn’t sort of stick out at all. Working with them to actually get these lines was a really easy process. We’ve been working with them over a year, probably 16 months by this point. So really it was a case of just popping around to see them having a good catch up about where we were with the film. And then running through the lines of dialogue, we took multiple takes with them just to sort of get a different pacing and sort of tone. But actually, it was a really easy and seamless process working with them. I think by this point, they were very comfortable with waiting for us to set up what we needed to and patiently rereading and sort of getting different takes. So actually, yeah, from that point of view, it was it was very easy and seamless.
James: Yeah. Nina and Miles now are like lifelong friends. You know, we can, we’re asking about their family. They’re asking about ours, what we’ve been up to, where’s the next holiday, any recommendation for restaurants. So it was super easy. And they’ve put a lot of trust in us to make this film for one. And they are, well, I hope, we know that they’re very proud of this film as we are.
Mariana: Oh, thank you very much. And they did such an amazing job. Their lines, their lines of the EAD, they honestly, they are really, really good. And it was similarly to what you were saying that it was really easy to get those lines from them. We found it it was so easy to edit them in and for them to sound really seamless with the rest of their their contribution. So thank you so much for working on this. And thank you of course, to Nina and Miles. And of course, in addition to that first person, which is always the kind of the first thing I ask people about it, because as you indicated, it kind of requires kind of liaising with us as working on the accessibility side, but also with contributors and actors in some cases. But of course, in addition to that, we also looked into things like adding sound effects or rebalancing them if needed to clarify meaning. But also we spatialized sounds and voices to also tell visually impaired audiences where objects were and where voices were in the space of the screen. And I was wondering, was there anything, any changes that we made for the accessibility of the films for the EAD track. That surprised you in terms of how that could help provide access?
James: Yeah. So going back to first off, we recorded the lines that were put for the EAD work, and it’s a touch of genius what you guys do. We add a little bit of reverb onto what they’re saying. Now, the reason why you do that is so that then people can differentiate that this is a vocal from kind of outside of the situation that they’re in but it’s getting explained of what’s happening on screen and it really really works more so than than this voice of God that iIwas discussing about earlier. With the whole with Charles Bonnet Syndrome it’s a… It’s hallucinations are within their visual sites and not necessarily so we had one topic of conversation that we had via emails was there’s a hallucination of a snake that Miles has has. But with Charles Bonnet Dyndrome it’s not an audio hallucination so say someone’s seeing a
Jack: lion they’ll never hear that lion roar or the or the snake hiss it was mentioned beforehand but the worry was that potentially that it might get viewers confused that the snake.. that they… that when you’re hallucinating you have the audio as well we added that in and what you guys do which is incredible as well you have a focus group and that was one of the questions asked the focus group and it didn’t and no one no one flagged it up. So there was lots of other different sound effects that really just brought everything together and made it you know a nine out of ten film to an 11 out of ten film I must say.
Mariana: Thank you, thank you very much. Just to clarify for listeners so so I think that what you were referring is when we see on the screen kind of a kind of a representation of a snake for the accessible version we added the sound of a snake just to cue audiences in that there was a snake on the screen. So hence the kind of the wary and just just to clarify for listeners so we and we kind of didn’t ask focus groups the question directly what we generally do is we open up kind of comments and see what people respond and generally there is a problem with something someone will flag it up and that will initiated discussion. But yeah, it’s absolutely true. Nobody mentioned that. And it was a focus group that was very knowledgeable of Charles Boney syndrome as well. But yeah, that was a, we spent quite a lot of time discussing the snake.
James: Yeah, it was never mentioned. And that was like, okay, brilliant. And it really, really works for the story.
Mariana: And the kind of one of my next almost final question, I have another one after this one. But what is next for you? Do you have any plans for new productions, either together or separately, that you can tell us a little bit about?
James: Jack, would you like to take this one?
Jack: Yeah, absolutely. So at the moment, we are currently promoting this film. It’s now out in public. So we’re, you know, sort of pushing this film as much as possible at the moment. While we sort of have a couple of other productions in sort of pre-production looking for additional funding. So those films are one is about
James: noise pollution underwater. And the other film is actually about us losing music venues um and spaces for to sort of hold hold music at night. So that’s what we’re kind of in pre-production on at the moment. And we are working together with each other on those films actually so that’s that’s quite lovely.
Mariana: Oh, that’s great. Sounds great. And I have one final question that we like to ask this to everyone that comes on the podcast and is what are your hopes for the future of accessibility in the creative industries?
Jack: Oh, good question. I think personally, my hopes for the future of accessibility within within content is to build out again what i was saying earlier is I think that actually it should now just become a default part of commissions to make make more content accessible. When you’re making content if you know it’s going to be accessible in the end it’s so much easier to work that into the process from the start instead of it being an afterthought. That then in turn makes the actual process cheaper and easier to sort of program and plan. And there really is no excuse now. Pretty much all content is out on some form of streaming platform or online somewhere. So yeah, I really just don’t think there’s an excuse anymore. So that’s my hopes and dreams for accessibility within content.
Mariana: What about you, James?
James: I just hope it becomes the norm. I’ll be disappointed if it, you know, that it doesn’t within the next coming years.
Mariana: Well, thank you so much, both of you, for sharing your experiences in this film, but also your experiences in past productions and your hopes for the future. So thank you so much to both of you.
James: Oh, thank you. No, thank you so much.
Jack: Thank you for having us on!
Mariana: What an exciting episode. It’s really important for us, as part of Enhancing Audio Description team, to get an opportunity to reflect on the work we’ve completed with different filmmaking teams. It was a pleasure to work in this production and to get to evaluate it with a focus group of visually impaired people who found the film to be engaging, informative and accessible. The film Aspectum with its EAD soundtrack is now available online at enhancingaudiodescription.com. Thank you so much everyone for joining us for this wonderful episode. We will be back next month with more exciting guests and insightful discussions on disability, accessibility and representation in the creative industries.