Welcome back, to another column of the Audio Description Essentials, which is less interested in every single show I watch each day, and more uses the opportunity to highlight certain programs, and what we should and should not expect from audio description. Certainly, there is a very basic level of audio description, like the trust we put in the team to deliver things like the correct and accurate name of characters on screen. Example: Don’t tell me Sarah is doing something if the character is actually Jennifer. That’s just like unnecessary misinformation. but, when we talk about any sense of quality and excellence, that goes into being aware of the show you are trying to narrate, and that his what this is about.

Sweet Tooth (Netflix) S3E8

the Series Finale of Sweet Tooth! After three seasons, Gus’s story wraps up, and we find out if he can cure the sick, if this is the end for hybrids, or the end of humanity. Will our lead cast survive this final quest, or are we bound to lose a member? And, will anyone conveniently and easily find the location they need without any maps in the middle of a place they’ve never been? Important questions that must be answered.

What I Look For in The Audio Description: For this show? Hybrids reign supreme. it’s basically the entire point of the series, are these hybrids, so understanding every one, and describing what they look like in as much detail is paramount. How exactly are they hybrid? Beyond that, the show is fairly action oriented, so keeping track of those scenes. It’s one of those apocalyptic shows, where we don’t have standard anything anymore, so how does that shape this world? What are they doing to show that we now have limited resources, and are working off of what was already made and left behind, while having to relearn how to work with the environment? That’s sort of the little details that pull us in, is the repurposing of the world around Sweet Tooth and his friends, like in Season 2 how a Zoo became a refuge, or earlier in Season 3, their trip to a casino. Now, with regard to the human description, in my opinion, it should not surpass the hybrid description. While there are humans, and a character like Jephyr is featured in damn near every episode, we should not know more about him than we do Sweet Tooth, so however descriptive you can be with the hybrids allows you to bring more depth to the humans. Simply writing a character off as a fox/human hybrid, without more detail of how those elements co-exist really feels like a weaker description, even if you went into full depth of the humans, including race/ethicity/skin tones. The choice of narrator here is important, because while the show feels bleak, it is not gratuitous, and Gus is often optimistic about the future, which leads to that trait bleeding into those around him as he inspires people to be better than they are.

What It Actually Does: The action here is really well tracked, and i felt like I was able to follow a sprawling show through three seasons. the show relies heavily on recurring characters, so I’m not always familiar with every single name that pops up, especially with regards to the extra members of the Alaskan settlement, but most characters who have been given any screentime were well shaped. Gus often has these ear twitches, like a deer would, and those are mentioned quite a bit. There’s been fairly good tracking of his broken antler, especially through the final episode. The finger twitching reveals have been good, and the narrator here is exciting. Just some incredible work. It felt like I was watching a show with someone who was as invested in the show, and she finds the right balance, allowing for softer moments but also giving the sense of danger in those that require it. Where this audio description has lacked is in the description of the hybrids. there are a lot of them, and we don’t always get a great idea of what they look like. the show isn’t one that does racial representation well, but it oddly seems to avoid that even with hybrids, which is odd. Case in point, in the final episode, we have a hybrid seal we meet for the first time. Seals are typically always a certain color or two, whereas humans have different skin tones. So, did this hybrid maintain a human skin tone of some kind while taking on physical features like flippers, or what? It’s something they’ve avoided for other hybrids too. Wendy being a pig hybrid might have the skin tone of a pig, and there was a turtle hybrid that could have had the color of a turtle. Knowing where the hybrid nature begins and ends, how far it goes, helps us get into the one unique element about this show. Otherwise, it is just a PG-13 version of The Stand. As far as the set/settings/costumes, all hinting at a dystopian landscape, this is pretty solid. the track is good at pulling emotion out of character reactions, and overall this has been a pleasurable three season experience, with a terrific narrator (Toni Gannon) we just don’t get to hear enough from.

Final Thoughts: The finale really played it nice and sweet for the most part, wrapping things up with a best case scenario ending, reminding us that the reason we are here is for the hybrids, while doing a have your cake and eat it too approach. I’m sad to see this series go, but I’m hoping International Digital Center finds more work for Gannon, because as a narrator, i found her incredibly engaging. I do wish the narration had taken more liberties in letting us know how these characters look as hybrids, because that is the hook fo the show.

Presumed innocent (Apple Plus): S1E7

the case rages on as we find out whether or not Raymond survives the events of Episode 6, while Rusty continues to make questionable life choices as our unreliable narrator, but is matched almost equally by having a prosecutor opposite him who feels slimy and driven by an ulterior motive. Revelations abound, especially one critical one in the final moments.

What I Look For In The Audio Description: I think it’s interesting that this audio description track has avoided race altogether. the show isn’t about race, but the show is very diverse. Normally, I would say we need to do better, but this is more of i wish we would do better here. At its core, Presumed Innocent is a murder mystery, with an unreliable leading man. It does a fairly strong job of highlighting how unhinged he is becoming as the series progresses, and writer David E Kelly and Star Jake Gyllenhaal have done an excellent job of putting doubt in different directions. Did Rusty do it? Maybe. So the clues along the way are so important, sometimes a little reaction to something, whether or not someone is taken aback or surprised, or neutral in any given moment. Really, capturing these actors reactions and their choices becomes almost more important than the character descriptions themselves. While it is always good to know and have a point of reference, there are so many moments here, especially driven by gyllenhaal’s performance, that focusing on his facial expressions has been far more important than anything he’s wearing a that time. that’s the thing about a modern whodunit, is that you benefit from everyone living in situations similar to our own, wearing clothes we might wear, and driving cars we might run into on the street. The devil is in the details, the choices that the writers are making to both throw the audience a bone, and also throw us off, so that way when we do get a killer reveal, even if it feels totally out of the blue, there are moments you can look back on and wonder “how did I miss that?” it actually sounds easy, but it is really fucking complicated in audio description, because a sighted person has the ability to see an entire room. So we can see if an object is missing, or if an item of clothing is distressed in some manner, without the shows director necessarily drawing attention to it, or characters referencing it. In the audio description, the nuance is everything, because when you mention something that you know will be important, and is something we typically don’t get in audio description, you end up telegraphing to us its importance, almost giving things away which a sighted audience has access too, but does not have someone saying ‘look at the open window”, essentially. The only way to really do this well, is to be as descriptive as possible, on as many things as possible. to avoid feeling like you’re spoiling things, you almost have to list three things to list just one. Or, you are drawing attention to something that we don’t know will be significant until the end, when the reveal flashes back to show us all the things that make us feel stupid for not having noticed this left-field killer reveal after all. it all shows do this, but speaking from near the end, during the process, I know the ending could be as simple as Rusty or Tommy did it, or it could swing back around and suddenly it was Rusty’s son, and all of the stuff we had to pay attention to with him along the way mattered. You don’t know, until you know. A good writer of this type of sho would have seen all available episodes in order to try and make the best decisions about what to include, and what not, and try to leave some mystery for a blind/visually impaired audience, without making it too obvious for just us because we have this accessibility feature.

What It Does: For the most part? Sure. I’m saying this preemptively without knowing how this ends, but I would say that the show, and the audio description, have worked in tandem to give us all these random facts about a number of characters, so we can look at rusty, or we could look at ten other people and potentially see a route to them being a killer. It does this by following those little breadcrumbs so if there is a reveal, we won’t feel cheated because the surprise is so out of the blue. I can’t say with an absolute certainty until that reveal if I felt like this show had done enough in terms of the audio description, but it certainly feels like it is in the moment. That final reveal at the end of Episode 7 is very intentional, and meant to stand out so that the audience sees it. What I loved about that, was we didn’t just get the reveal of the object, but we also got Tommy’s reaction to it, which was very interesting. In itself, even his reaction isn’t definitive, as he could have just as easily placed that item there, and left the window open forgetting it was raining, and it is all misdirection, and his reaction is him thinking “how do I get rid of this?” And the note could be his own note as a vindictive response. Or, it could be the opposite, and be planted, with him thinking what do I do now? That contemplative look is a nice reaction that doesn’t say definitively either way, and furrowed eyebrows was a great way to end that scene.

Final Thoughts: I’ve been fairly impressed with the show, though in a weird way, I almost need it to not be Rusty. A lot of people have watched Harrison Ford’s movie, which isn’t the same thing, but feels like it prepares the audience for a certain ending based on how that same-name film ended. With a second season ordered, I’m interested to see how they manage that. This better not become like The Killing, where we don’t get an answer to this murder, and have to sit through another season. That show interestingly also featured Peter Sarsgaard.