CONTENTS

• Introduction

• Film translation and media access – The essential points

  • Dubbing

  • Subtitling

  • Inclusive subtitling

  • Creative subtitles

  • Sign language interpreting

  • Audio description of the image

• Bringing translation and access to the forefront of filmmaking

  • Development and pre-production

  • Production

  • Post-production

  • Pre-distribution

• Accessible filmmaking – The workflow

  • Steps for pre-production stage

  • Steps for production

  • Steps for post-production prior to distribution

• Accessible filmmaking – You can afford it

  • Standard package

  • Additional extras

• Conclusions

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EVERYBODY BENEFITS FROM AN ACCESSIBLE APPROACH TO FILMMAKING

In an increasingly multilingual and accessible world, a monolingual and non-inclusive approach to filmmaking is certain to leave behind huge swathes of audience – not only foreign audiences and people with disabilities, who require the production of additional soundtracks or subtitles, but also the viewers of the growing number of films that include more than one language in their original versions.

Current distribution strategies and exhibition platforms severely underestimate the audience that exists for accessible cinema. Over 50% of the revenue obtained by most current films comes from translated (dubbing, subtitling) and accessible versions (subtitling of language and sound, audio description [AD] of the image), yet only 0.01%-0.1% of the budget is spent on these additional versions. To compound matters further, these additional versions are usually produced with limited time or money, for little remuneration, and traditionally involving zero contact with the creative team.

This can result in a version of the film that is artistically compromised: the filmmaker’s aesthetic and tonal vision may be ruined by the use of large, brightly lit subtitles over a dimly lit and subdued scene; an inaccurate AD track may give scant narrative details, leading to plot points not being effectively established; worse still, it can even affect the representation of characters. The result may be a vastly inferior product that betrays the filmmaker’s original artistic intentions.

Despite being joined by a common art and a shared objective, filmmaking and translation/accessibility have unfortunately remained two separate professions – but historically this was not always the case. During the silent film era, the intertitles were considered a vital part of the medium’s storytelling – and therefore were part of the standard post-production process, and budgeted for accordingly. It was only as the medium moved into the “talkies” era that subtitling and dubbing were relegated to the distribution process.

Research into audiovisual translation spanning over two decades has shown that this relegation has had a negative impact on the way foreign audiences and people with disabilities consume and respond to films. In an effort to avoid these audiences experiencing an inferior product, Accessible Filmmaking encourages close collaboration between filmmakers and translators/media access experts.

The following guide is intended for filmmakers and other professionals within the film industry who wish to become accessible filmmakers. The approach is supported by both the EU and the UN, and has been tried and tested successfully in research, training and professional practice.

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There are five main types of audiovisual translation and accessibility:

DUBBING

Dubbing is the process of replacing the original dialogue track. The dialogue is translated into the target language and recorded by a new cast of actors.

SUBTITLING

Subtitling is a translation process that is limited to text form. Traditionally, it involves presenting text at the bottom of the screen – although some films experiment with this placing. This text has the responsibility of conveying dialogue, on-screen text (insert shots such as letters, web pages, inscriptions, etc) and relaying selective information from the soundtrack (such as song lyrics, or identifying the voices of any off-screen characters). 

INCLUSIVE SUBTITLING

Conventionally referred to as subtitles for the deaf and hard hearing (SDH), this type of subtitling is often produced for people with hearing loss, but it is also targeted to anyone else who does not have access to sound, including hearing viewers who need subtitles for linguistic, cognitive, age-related or contextual reasons (i.e. watching TV with no volume in a pub, a hospital or public means of transport). These subtitles are normally in the same language as the film (although they can involve translation) and include descriptions of non-verbal diegetic sounds (doorbells, phones) that may be needed in order to understand the narrative.

SIGN LANGUAGE INTERPRETING

Sign language interpreting (SLI) is the transfer from an oral language into a sign language or vice versa, mostly simultaneously. Sign languages are full-fledged natural languages that allow communication through the visual and spatial channel (and tactile in the case of deafblind people). Sign languages make use of manual articulation to communicate, but also arm articulation, body positioning and facial expression. There is no universal sign language (although there is an international sign system, SI), each sign language emerges and develops naturally and is independent from the oral languages that are spoken in the same region.   

Although it is easy to assume that subtitles for the D/deaf and Hard of Hearing (SDH), also known as captioning, meet the need for accessibility to audiovisual content of all people with hearing impairment, this is not true. Firstly, sign languages are the first, native and preferred form of communication of many Deaf people. They are used naturally within Deaf communities and Deaf cultures but also by hearing friends, relatives and professionals who work with Deaf people. Sign languages are part of a culture and, as many oral languages, they are minority, minoritized and non-hegemonic languages that need strong linguistic actions and policies to promote their use and knowledge, as well as the knowledge of the culture they belong to. Secondly, not all D/deaf people are able to understand and enjoy SDH with the current conventions. Written language, and therefore SDH, is a graphical representation of an oral language. In this sense, people with less knowledge or access to oral languages, regardless of the reason why, will also have reduced access to written language and, therefore, to accessibility by means of SDH.

AUDIO DESCRIPTION OF THE IMAGE

Audio Description is an additional audio commentary that describes the images and on-screen action for users who may not have access to them, including blind and partially sighted audiences.

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Dubbing is invisible – while viewers of subtitled films have access to both the translation and the original dialogue, viewers of dubbed films have no access to the original. This makes dubbing an effective tool for censorship and manipulation (providing the new dialogue track and the images/on-screen action are synchronised). Content that may offend specific cultures can be removed, as in these two examples below:

Synchronies: In order to appear smooth and in synch with the images and on-screen action, the dubbing translation must be as long as the original one (with the leeway of one or two syllables). During close-ups it must contain as many bilabial and labio-dental consonants (m, p, b, f, v) as the original script. Therefore the more close-ups featured in a film, the more challenging it is to remain faithful to the original.

Three of the most difficult challenges for dubbing are accents (geographical, temporal or social), registers (formal, informal, colloquial, etc) and multiple languages, all of which are often standardised or eliminated in the dubbed film. Multilingualism can however be preserved with different strategies, such as combining dubbing and subtitles.

When a character sings this is not usually re-recorded for the dubbed version – instead it is subtitled, the original singing voice left intact – meaning viewers will hear two voices for the same character. This can potentially impact on the credibility of the film, or at least affect the suspension of disbelief.

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Subtitling is visible – both the original (in audio form) and the translation (in text form) live alongside one another. As such, if a viewer understands both languages they can compare both versions and they are often aware of the inaccuracies.

Subtitles are meant to be viewed alongside images, which means they must abide by certain time and space requirements – for the simple fact that they need to be on screen long enough for the viewer to comfortably read, and they must not cramp the image itself. Generally speaking, a line of dialogue must not exceed 40 characters, there must not be more than 2 rows of lines and a minimum of 1 second should be permitted for every 15 characters.

Regardless of the target language, there are linguistic commonalities across all subtitling – a ‘language’ often referred to as subtitlese. Subtitlese tends to omit oral features, clean up grammatical and lexical errors, and neutralise accents and registers – especially colloquialisms. Different strategies may be applied to maintain multilingualism in subtitling, which is easier than in dubbing.

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• When we watch a film without subtitles:

• When we watch a film with subtitles:

The moment a subtitle (or any other form of text) is displayed on screen, our eyes are immediately drawn to it – regardless of whether it is needed, or even understood. Once the subtitle is read, our attention turns to the image, then often to faces, which means viewers of subtitled films have less time to explore the screen than that of original viewers. 

The pace of a subtitled film is therefore not only determined by its editing, but by the way in which subtitles are displayed and read by the viewers. Reading subtitles increases the pace at which a film is seen (and felt).

On other occasions, reading the subtitles may prevent the audience from viewing the images properly – this is knows as ‘subtitling blindness‘. It usually happens:

• In shots featuring dialogue/narration over on-screen text.
• If a scene starts with dialogue, or contains fast dialogue throughout, but there is simultaneously an important visual element that needs to be conveyed.
• In shots where the subtitles cover important visual elements.
• In short duration shots that contain dialogue.

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Unlike standard subtitling, these subtitles include non-verbal diegetic sound information that may be required in order to understand the story, such as:

• Identifying the speaker, which is one of the key priorities for viewers with hearing loss, and is carried out by means of dashes/chevrons, colours (white, yellow, cyan and green, and normally in order of the character’s importance), name tags or displacement.
• Description of the tone and mood of the character’s dialogue, which can cover volume, intensity, emotions and accents.
• Description of sound effects.
• Description of music and/or transcription of lyrics.

Despite its attempt to describe sounds, SDH:

• Distil and reduce complex soundscapes to single descriptions.
• Formalise sounds (reading a description of an accent or difficult speech patterns tends to look more formal than its corresponding audio).
• Equalise sounds (as the descriptions do not normally include variations in volume).
• Linearise sounds (as the descriptions are read consecutively, even if the sounds are simultaneous).

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Instead of being constrained by standard conventions, these subtitles experiment with the following aspects:

• Font: instead of being bound by the usual subtitling fonts (Arial, Verdana, etc.), creative subtitlers (in collaboration with filmmakers) consider many other fonts on the basis of their legibility, how they contribute to the typographic identity of the film, and how they interact with other on-screen text.
• Size: it can be altered to indicate distance or volume.
• Placement: this is the most caracteristic feature of creative subtitles, which are often placed in different positions to improve legibility, character identification, or for aesthetic reasons – often allowing the viewers to explore the image fo much longer than they would be able to with standard sutbitles.
• Effects: creative subtitles can also play with movement, display mode, and interaction with the characters’ movements.

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Research shows that creative subtitles allow subtitling viewers to spend more time on the images, helping to bridge the gap between the experience of the original viewers and that of the viewers to translated/accessible versions, while at the same time providing an exciting opportunity for collaboration and innovation between filmmakers and translators.

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In live TV events, and taking into account the inherent fatigue to all types of interpreting, there are usually two (or more) interpreters that take turns. In pre-recorded events, on the contrary, it is usual to see just one interpret interpreting the utterances of all characters and changing his body position or doing the sign of each character to indicate who is talking.

In artistic performances, such as theatre or dancing, SLI moves away from the formality to which users are used to in the access to news, debates and conferences. This, along with the fact that artistic performances have more action than informative events, increases the use of classifiers over signs, which allows for more dynamism and easier visualization of the action. In sign languages classifiers are usually used to communicate movement, location or appearance or something or someone in a more visual way than spelling it sign by sign, which makes classifiers much more useful than signs to express actions or narratives. Once a concept (e.g., car) is referred to by its sign (hands on steering wheel) and its classifier (extended hand palm facing down), the signer can move that hand to communicate how fast the car is going, if it hits the brakes, how it takes the curves, how it was parked, etc. without referring sign by sign to those concepts (fast, hit the brakes, park, etc.), just moving the hand accordingly and complementing it with body positioning and facial expression. This is inherent to all sign languages and allows for a more dynamic narrative. One classifier can relate to different concepts —in the previous case, it can designate a car but also a book, a door, a bed, a foot, a shark… it will depend on the context. This is a strategy that is usually more useful to express dynamic actions than static ideas, but classifiers are also used to communicate about form, position or size of objects or people. They are, therefore, used in all types of messages, regardless of their communicative function or amount of action.

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SL as a communication language in audiovisual products, or SLI, can be incredibly creative or very standardized/normative, or can be situated in any point in the continuum between these two poles. There are various ways in which creativity can be implemented in SL(I) and they need to be considered for each case independently, both by the artistic team of the audiovisual product and by the interpreters and signing people involved in it.

It is worth mentioning that the huge majority of SL interpreters and people in charge of the decision making regarding SL(I) in audiovisual products are still hearing people. Nevertheless, actions that include signing and non-signing D/deaf people such as D/deaf accessibility consultants (as in the case of Movistar 5S), professional Deaf interpreters or D/deaf people in the cast crew and as part of the artistic or technical team are gaining a foothold in the industry. This might become the norm in the future but, as for now, it is still a way of incorporating creativity in SL(I) in audiovisual production. Such actions can lead to an improvement in the quality of access to content while allowing a significant progress in accessibility to creation.

Creativity can also be included in the sign language itself, as well as it can be incorporated to any oral language. In this sense, SL(I) can easily move away from a formal and standardized expression in favour of a communication style which is more in line with the artistic view of the product that is being signed or interpreted. This can be done by making the most of the space, body movement, facial expression, rhythm, non-standardized signs, and classifiers, among others. It goes without saying that communicative and artistic skills of the signer and the communication between him/her and the creative team are a key aspect to achieve this.

Taking this idea of inclusion of SL(I) not just for Deaf signing people, a new form of visual performance based on sign language and body movements emerged —Visual Vernacular. This type of performance is understood by signers and non-signers and it has been incorporated into new theatre companies and initiatives that combine Visual Vernacular with oral and signed languages to offer more inclusive performances.

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AD needs to identify the characters so the audience knows who is speaking. This can be avoided if the speakers identify themselves or are identified by another character. This means working with the script writer from the beginning.

In the same way, locations that are recognisable from the image can be identified in the script. Alternatively, an establishing shot can be created with no conflicting dialogue, such that the describer has time to add a suitable description.

The AD does not need to include self-explanatory sound effects (a doorbell or a gunshot), but others that can only be interpreted by the accompanying visuals.

While guidelines advise against the description of cinematic information (camera movements, editing transitions, etc), research shows that most viewers appreciate this additional content.

The information that has been left out of the AD can be included in an audio introduction – a standalone description that can be made available either before the film or online, and that details information about the film’s visual style, fuller descriptions of characters and settings, a brief synopsis, and even cast and production details.

In foreign or multilingual films featuring subtitles, the audio describer reads the subtitles aloud for the audience, further reducing the amount of time available for audio description. Alternatively, AD may be added to the dubbed version. The danger here is that all the foreign characters no longer “sound” foreign.

Humour is particularly challenging, and often lost in the process – the length of time it takes for the audio describer to fully detail the joke usually spoils the comic timing.

Although most guidelines advocate the use of objective and cold descriptions, an Accessible Filmmaking approach allows filmmakers to have a say in the process – ideally incorporating their creative vision so that the tone of the AD track’s language and the delivery captures the tone of the images seen by the original viewers.

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1. 1. 1. 1. 1. 1. Development and pre-production
               2. Production
               3. Post-production
               4. Pre-distribution

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Translation in the scriptwriting of multilingual films:

• When dealing with different languages, allowing for collaboration with native speakers – and even for co-creation of certain lines – can provide the dialogue with a degree of freshness and originality.
• If this co-creation is not possible, it would be advisable to involve a professional translator early on in the process. This person can be responsible for ensuring foreign dialogue sounds natural, and once the film moves into post-production they can oversee the dubbing or subtitling.
• Films seeking co-production funding – particularly co-productions across territories speaking different languages – will often require delivery of the script in the language native to the respective company. A professional translator should be used for this – if possible this person should be used for subsequent translations of the film (for dubbing or subtitling).

Provision of pre-production and funding materials (scripts, storyboards, pitch decks, etc):

• Translators don’t normally have access to pre-production material, which can be essential to finding the right tone and style needed when it comes to translations/audio descriptions.

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• • To remain true to the emotion of the scene
  • To advance the story
  • To make rhythmic sense
  • To guide the audience’s eye
  • To maintain continuity
  • To maintain spacial relationships

If any of those priorities is altered, so will the others. Editors should consider how the presence of subtitles changes the viewers’ eye trace and, as a result, changes the way in which they understand and experience the emotion of a scene. These same considerations should be taken into account when assessing the ad script and delivery.

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Creative subtitling

The following elements may be discussed at this stage:

• What font is going to be used in the subtitles? What meaning and connotations does this carry? How does it compare to the fonts used for the credits, or to any on-screen text in the film?
• Are all subtitles the same size, or are different sizes being used to indicate volume, distance, importance, etc?

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Here is a summary of the recommended 17 steps for an accessible filmmaking workflow:

Below are the minimum requirements – once again depending on whether translation and accessibility are considered in pre-production, production or in post-production/before distribution:

1. IN PRE-PRODUCTION

• Provision of pre-production material to the DAT and/or the translators.
• Initial meeting with the director and production of a translation/accessibility proposal.

  2. IN PRODUCTION

• (On-set or remote) discussions with the filmmaker about mise-en-scène and cinematography.

  3. IN POST-PRODUCTION OR BEFORE DISTRIBUTION

• Provision of film, script and further docs to the DAT or the dubbing translator/subtitler/audio describer.
• Meeting between the filmmaker/creative team and the DAT or the dubbing translator/subtitler/audio describer.
• Preparation (and recording) of accessible dubbing script/subtitles/audio description.
• Meeting between the filmmaker/creative team and the DAT or the dubbing translator/subtitler/audio describer.
• Final dubbing, subtitles, audio description and preparation of translation and accessibility guide for the film.

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The budgetary implications of accessible filmmaking:

Standard package

TOTAL (approx costs): £5000 (min)

Additional extras

TOTAL (basic + extras; aprox costs): £11,000 (min)

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If you require more information on these figures for your budget, please contact:

JO-JO ELLISON

jojo@archersmark.co.uk 

DR. PABLO ROMERO-FRESCO

promero@uvigo.es

DR. LOUISE FRYER

louise@utopians.co.uk

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For an average film, these viewers bring around 50% of the total revenue, and yet only 0.01%-0.1% of the budget is usually spent on translation/accessibility. Rather than a production expenditure, the process is relegated to the distribution stage, produced in a matter of days, for very little remuneration without any involvement from the creative team.

As a consequence, a second-rate experience is being provided to the viewers of the translated and accessible versions. Without understanding the original artistic intent of the filmmakers, numerous decisions may have been made that negatively affect the way the film is seen, understood or felt.

Filmmakers are often unaware of this problem, which explains why they are happy to let translators and distributors make decisions that work against their original intent. This clearly has a significant impact on the way films are received – even though the notion of a director allowing the standard version of their films to be screened without first approving the cut is unheard of.

As an alaternative to the industrialised model that merely considers translation and accessibility as an afterthought, simply relegating it to the distribution stage, Accessible Filmmaking integrates it as a key part of the filmmaking process (and, ideally, from the pre-production stage). By considering the viewing experience of foreign and sensory-impaired audiences, this allows filmmakers to regain full control of how their films are received.

This process has been implemented worldwide in training, research and professional practice, and has been endorsed by both Ofcom and the United Nations’ ITU agency on accessibility.

Accessible filmmaking…

… makes financial sense – it helps reach a wider and more diverse audience.

… is more collaborative – it provides better working conditions for translators and media accessibility experts, whose remuneration can be built into the main budget of the film and who, for the first time, find the oppotunity to be part of a team with which to consult and share decisions.

… is neither time-consuming nor costly, particularly if it’s built into the film’s schedule (and any discussions) from the beginning. It may also help filmmakers access accessibility funding streams and it is a requirement in some countries.

… does not force filmmakers to change their films, but instead reveals how their films change in translation and accessibility, and what options are available to them so as to ensure that their vision is maintained when it reaches foreign and sensory-impaired audiences.

… enables filmmakers to see and understand their films differently, as well as discovering exciting new ways of telling stories.

… simply makes sense! If we were architects, we would never scoff at the idea of including a disabled toilet in the initial design of a building – rather than added at the end, as an afterthought – and it should be the same with filmmaking. There will come a time when it’s commonly accepted that all films should be produced with accessibility in mind – after all, shouldn’t cinema be for everybody?