So, I'm a sighted guy, and I
love audio-described film and television.
From way back I was a huge fan of audio-drama: from
The Story of Star Wars to
Earthsearch 2 and
The Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. Those were the days before we had a VHS player, and if you wanted something live-action that wasn't at the movies, or not showing on television, audio drama filled that gap.
Audio drama is not a
passive medium, you need lean on your imagination to do some heavy lifting, and that's one of the things that draws me to it.
Even during the days of VHS, the tapes were expensive, and I wound up
taping television and films onto casette tape.
Voilà, instant audio-drama!
I taped a lot of Doctor Who (and there is a long tradition of this among Doctor Who fans) and a few films.
Ghostbusters was one of the films I remember taping.
The Black Hole was another.
It's fair to say, if you asked me what my favourite film was in the late 80's or early 90's, I would have said
Aliens, and that recording was by far, my most frequently-played tape.
In the 2010s I discovered Audio Description and I loved it. It was what I was doing when I was 10, only with someone filling in the bits I couldn't see, and it fits on my iPod instead of my bulky Walkman!
So when I discovered this amazing medium, it wasn't long before I went looking for the audio described version of
Aliens.
I checked my DVDs and Blu-rays. I checked the internet. What I found is that
none of the current or historical releases of the film have an audio-description track. Further, to the best of my knowledge, it's not on any streaming services wither.
There's a place on the internet that hosts the audio tracks of audio-described movies and television. For some titles, this is the only place they're available.
They don't have
Aliens either.
Now, let's be clear about this: I enjoy audio-description because it gives my mind a movie to watch while I wash the dishes or shovel manure or drive to work, but it's a bonus feature for me. If I want to watch a film, I have the
option —
the privilage — of sitting down and actually
watching it.
But for blind and vision-impaired people, this is not a nice extra thing to have, it's
essential, it's
how they watch movies.
My curiosity about audio-description, and my love of writing, lead me to start writing audio-description scripts. I started with some Doctor Who episodes from the 60s and 70s.
Sometimes I'd think about doing
Aliens. It's a 2.5 hour film though with a lot of action: that's a big jump from 22 minute episodes of English actors talking to each other in space-ship corridors or on location in a quarry.
I don't think I consciously decided to start doing it. One day in May this year I just found myself 27 theatrical minutes into writing a script for it.
I finished the edit-pass script on July 12th.
So, here's a preview of a work in progress, courtesy of AD voice artist and friend Kyle Warwick-Mathieu.
https://twitter.com/Kyle_AD_Voice/status/1688866676085817345Before you click, think about closing your eyes and experiencing it as audio only.