What are audio described movies?

How do I know if a movie has an audio description?

A long time ago there was only one way to watch and hear a movie. And that was with the regular sound, that is, the audio of the movie itself. Then in the late '60s movie theaters began offering the option of headphones with music to accompany the movie. At first you were able to choose either music, sound effects or nothing. In the years following the advent of this new development in theaters many movies were given titles like "The Quiet One" or "The Music Lover's Movie."

In time the movie theaters evolved into multiplexes and the experience was even more appealing with the ability to hear the movie on several different languages and even on television. With all this information in hand how do you find out what movies have audio descriptions? To understand the answer to that question it's important to take into account that when a movie is released, it is generally done so with two versions, the "Theater" version and the "Home" or "Video" version. The home versions are for private viewing and as the name implies aren't in theaters.

While any audio recording or DVD disc can be played in a DVD player, most are designed for DVD player and not your local home theater setup. As mentioned earlier a major difference between the home or video version and theater version of the film is that theater version has an "audiobook" which explains what is going on in the scenes and the dialog. It is available both before the movie and after and is free of charge. There's a limit to how many times you can watch the "audiobook" but most likely will be well worth the money.

Theaters are in part dependent on the ability of theater to attract the audience and keep them interested. If a patron walks away from a movie because the dialogue or action were not interesting enough in the theater owners lose. By including the "audiobook" the movie owner is demonstrating a higher level of contentment to his customers. A theater owner loses nothing by having theater offer the "audiobook" as part of their movie watching experience.

If you are going to see a movie in theater make sure you look at the details before you enter theater. Look up and down the lobby and around theater to ensure that it is clean and that there are no distractions.

Is audio described the same as subtitles?

I know that there are lots of questions on this site about audio-described material, but I can't seem to find any discussion around the same question.

In other words, would an audio described reader add the same information as subtitles? Like, I know I can add subtitles to audio with the 'captions' tab in the video player; does the same thing happen with audio descriptions? Or is it more or less a totally different story? 8 answers. Welcome to Ask Different. When you search for a question on the site and do a search on a term containing your query, the first page will be a list of questions which contain that term in the title (or the description). You could for instance search for:

Or if you click on the icon beside: You'll see you get a box with a list of posts that contain the term audio description. If you want a specific question you could, instead, search for the phrase you wanted in the title/description to make sure it appears there; then you should get a single question in the search results and clicking on the post number should take you to that question and the answers at that point. It's more accurate to call "audio descriptions" a special type of AD for a film, rather than "subtitles." For instance, a movie has ADs for each major character - a child, a mother, a father, etc - as well as ADs for the other "non-speaking" objects in a scene. But there are NO ADs for the objects themselves as they don't have words associated with them. A movie with ADs is much the same as with subtitles.

That said, if you're looking for ADs for objects or characters, then yes, ADs are identical to subtitles. I think the answer depends very much on the source material you're considering. If you're viewing anime/cartoons, the standard practice is to provide ADs for the objects so you can hear what they're saying.

In the same way that I can hear the voice of the villain, and I can hear him speaking, it's a great tool to build empathy for the character by letting me hear a version of his/her voice. In the case of movies, where every one says the same words the audio is not used for anything.

What are audio described movies?

These are movies specially made for people with some hearing loss.

When we speak normally we tend to omit certain sounds. Audio Described Movies are the use of special audio descriptions that help when a character uses more than one word at a time. In the audio description they use the term "words" and in normal sentences it would be spelled out. Also, as mentioned these are usually played on a surround system in order to give the movie a "more realistic" environment. I love these films but do have a problem sometimes where I can't understand what they're saying. The first time my Mom told me about this I remember seeing the characters lip moving and thinking she's talking too loudly which causes me to turn away! As I said however I love these movies and there are a few really good examples in my collection. I will talk about all my picks at the end but here are just a couple of the more notable:

Farewell to the King - 1975 John Frankenheimer (USA). The plot is very straightforward; Richard Nixon has been elected President but just has been elected. While he goes on his first foreign trip abroad he becomes shot. This one could only be considered as two characters; The president and one other character who is his body double. In all there is only three words that he uses at a time like normal, the others are the same way. I was able to listen to this one at home on my home theatre system with a home made set of microphones. On the last episode the president gets the wrong speech he needs and gets into his car to leave. The whole scene takes place in the rear view mirror. On a side note this film won the Best Sound Mixing Oscar. This film is hard to describe. It's very cinematic with a lot of camera angles and shots from the sides. I know this is a bit dramatic but a lot happened in this film which makes it very compelling and easy to watch. The cinematography is great especially by having the president walking down a corridor and you just see what you don't see; the entire world was trying to save the president and this is the only thing visible to them in that moment. At no point did I have a problem understanding what was happening. At the ending of the president's speech at the closing ceremony the film goes into a fade-to-white, as the lights go out so does the entire room.