Mr Kane Is Now Fondling A Snow Globe, Which Slips From His Grasp And Falls To The Floor As He Expires
Posted on | December 13, 2008 at 5:14 pm | 1 Comment
I could swear we’ve talked about Audio Description before, but I’ll be darned if I can find it in the archives. Maybe it was on another blog or in some private e-mails with a friend. Anyway, Audio Description is when the Secondary Audio Program (SAP) of a TV signal is used to describe the action on screen for visually impaired people. I remember running it across it once while watching The Simpsons and being fascinated by it.
Anyway, I got the BD of The Dark Knight yesterday. I haven’t watched it yet, though I did sample it. The picture and audio are gorgeous of course. When I was flipping manually through the audio tracks, I noticed one that sounded particularly strange – kind of like audio commentary but not quite. When I went to the menu and looked at the audio options, the track was designated as “Descriptive Narration”. So essentially it’s the same thing as Audio Description. It’s kinda funny to listen to. The movie is narrated in a female voice with a bit of a British accent. The voice is kind of sexy and spooky and bland all at the same time. The narration even dips into the slightly subjective at times. The establishing shot of the skyscrapers in the city at the beginning of the movie is described as “Tower blocks in Gotham City. A high window in one of the blocks is shot out from the inside by a man wearing a clown mask.” Tower blocks? Well, isn’t that an artsy-fartsy description for a building! But then, even the production logos at the very beginning are given a descriptive shout-out, so what the hey.
Do any visually impaired people actually use this feature? It seems like it’s lot of audio information thrown at you all at once, especially when you have the dialog, sound effects, and music mixed in. I think my brain would explode if I tried to process it all. But it might fun to listen to these tracks on other movies, although they could be somewhat repetitive. “Will Ferrell is running down the street naked again.” “Sharon Stone is attempting a facial expression.” “Jim Carrey is sticking something up his ass again.”
I have to say I’m disappointed with the special features on this special edition BR set. The narration track is not a good substitute for a director’s commentary. There’s the standard making-of documentary. There are also some “focus point” featurettes that you can branch off and view while watching the movie, but I’ve never liked interrupting a movie for that sort of thing. The second disc has a couple of 45 minute talking head documentaries, some “Gotham Tonight” TV shows, and a few other minor things. Really, it seems like they could’ve fit this all on one disc. I’m sure it won’t be long until the special special edition comes out. But y’know, I just had to have my DK right away!
Latre.
Pet Peeve of the Day: Couldn’t find Cuties at my local Safeway.
Videogame(s) Played Recently: Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia (DS)
Comments
One Response to “Mr Kane Is Now Fondling A Snow Globe, Which Slips From His Grasp And Falls To The Floor As He Expires”
December 13th, 2008 @ 11:45 pm
If the audio commentary is available on a separate channel, it could let blind people enjoy a movie with their friends/family.
But when I first ran across it – a videocassette of, as it happened, “Star Trek V” which had somehow made its way to the video production office at my job – it seemed pretty absurd. But some of the scene descriptions were darned amusing! (not intentionally so…)