For 1st time: Movies for blind, deaf now showing

MANILA, Philippines–For the first time, the visually impaired and the deaf or hard-of-hearing will experience a full-length feature film.

Pm Friday at 9 a.m., the 2011 historical drama “Hugo” and three other movies with audio description and subtitle features will be shown simultaneously in four cities across the country.

The films not only inspire. They also show the power of human communication.

The Martin Scorsese film “Hugo” will be screened at Cinema 3 of SM City North Edsa, in Quezon City, while Ang Lee’s “Life of Pi” will be shown at SM City Baguio.

Tom Hooper’s “Les Misérables” will be shown at SM City Davao, and Olivier Megaton’s “Taken 2” at SM City Iloilo.

Audio descriptions in the movies are short verbal descriptions of action, while key visual scenes are provided to add context without disturbing the flow of the films.

Descriptions are inserted during pauses between dialogues, said event organizer Edgardo F. Garcia, president of DeafBlind Support Philippines Inc. (DBSP).

The event is a partnership with the CALL Foundation of the Blind, SM Cares and the Movie and Television Review and Classification Board (MTRCB). The groups will sign a memorandum of understanding (MOU) prior to the screening at SM North on Friday.

MTRCB Chair Eugenio Villareal said the plan “is to eventually have regular screenings for the disabled.” He added: “Through the MOU, we hope to explore further ways of cooperating with them.”

Garcia said the groups’ inspiration came from the Communication and Video Accessibility Act in the United States, which required products of communications services to be accessible to Americans with disabilities.

“Productions in movie, television and theater are now required to include audio description. This can be played for select members of the audience,” he said.

Wireless headsets

To accomplish this, Garcia said wireless headsets were provided in certain cinemas. Special screens with closed caption or subtitle features were also mounted on some seats.

A report posted on the website of the US-based National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders (NIDCD) said: “Captions (subtitles) are created from a film’s transcript. A captioner separates the dialogue into captions and makes sure the words appear in sync with the audio being described.”

Garcia said SM Group was willing to retrofit some of its cinemas.

“The plan is to initially provide a few seats with wired headsets. This is just to show that audio description is already in the market,” he said.

“Hugo” tells the story of an orphan boy who lives alone in a railway station in Paris in the 1930s. He is wrapped up in a mystery involving his late father and an automaton.

“It is a perfect movie to introduce audio-described films as the magnificent visual imagery and the suspenseful action that are not part of the movie dialogues are effectively captured in the audio description,” Garcia said in a statement.

“Sighted persons”—those with normal vision—“may also benefit from the concise, objective translation of media’s key visual components,” he said.

Garcia added that “specialized learners,” like students with autism and learning difficulties, as well as English language learners, could benefit from this technology.

Rizal movie

In December 2013, DBSP organized a screening of an audio-described version of the “Life of Pi.” It was attended mainly by blind individuals and a small group of academicians and members of different production outfits.

“After the screening (there) was a discussion on how we could start creating audio descriptions for local movies,” Garcia said. “There were comments on possibly starting with the classics, like the biopic on our national hero Jose Rizal. Hopefully, we can tie up with other producers of movie or TV programs.”

The technology needed is rather cheap, said Garcia.

“We went to the United States for research and discovered that it would cost only some $8,000 to retrofit regular cinemas and $10,000 to $15,000 for multiplexes,” Garcia said. “Companies there are willing to train us. This means we can do this for local films. We can probably teach mass communication students to do it.”

Villareal said the MTRCB had long been actively engaged in activities for persons with disabilities (PWD) as part of its “Matalinong Panonood nina Juan at Juana” campaign.

“We received a letter from SM asking how we could help them in the screening of disabled-friendly content. We asked them to be our partner.”

‘My jaw dropped’

Villareal recalled his experience of watching the audio-described version of the musical film “Les Misérables.”

“My jaw dropped,” he said. “The board members and I were pleasantly surprised to discover that audio description does not get in the way of the dialogue or the songs. They blend well.”

Villareal said he was part of a technical working group under the Senate that studied closed captioning. “However, I felt that I had to do more. I wanted more movies to have both closed captioning and descriptive audio.”