(2019 SOVAS nomination for Narration category) Glass Parking Lot Fight Scene with Audio Description
Glass Parking Lot Fight Scene with Audio Description from roy on Vimeo.
Audio Description
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MPAA “The Credits” interview
Voice over artist Roy Samuelson has been heard by millions of blind and low vision audiences in some of this year’s biggest films. Samuelson’s job is to narrate a special audio track in which he voices the visuals that are relevant to the plot. There are currently 26 million adults in America who are blind or low vision, so the work folks like Samuelson is doing is crucial. Streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Hulu currently include audio description, and Apple and the upcoming Disney+ will likely include it, too.
“It’s almost like a sports announcer on the radio giving the play by play,” Samuelson says. “We provide the essential elements of what’s happening on a screen.”
Samuelson’s work requires a form of visual analysis on the part of the folks who write the audio scripts. They need to figure out what visual elements are necessary for Samuelson to describe to the audience, and, just as crucially, what parts to leave out.
“It’s usually in between lines of dialogue when I’m doing most of my narrating,” he says. “Little inserts of what’s happening on screen. The way people move, when they’re saying one thing but doing something different, or if there’s a visual joke I need to explain. I’m usually just adding brush strokes because there’s not a lot of time to give specifics of everything. The scriptwriters are incredibly crafty. They’re able to take the filmmakers intentions and create an entirely new script.”
Samuelson says that his goal is to describe what’s essential and then get out of the way.
“The spotlight is on the story,” he says. “I try to go along with the tone, with a touch of emotion. I don’t want audience members taken out of a scene when they hear my voice. There’s a way to do it where it isn’t jarring. The narration takes the audience member on the ride. If it’s a sad scene and someone’s dying, I’m not going to read it like it’s just words.”
Here’s an example of how this works, taken from Quentin Tarantino’s iconic Pulp Fiction. The first is simply the audio of the scene when Samuel L. Jackson’s Jules and John Travolta’s Vince pay a visit to some bumbling would-be two-timers. The second includes Samuelson’s narration:Audio Player
Samuelson has worked on some of the year’s biggest films. For Jodan Peele‘s sensational Us, he was blown away by the writer/director’s visual brilliance, and he wanted to make sure his listeners would be able to live inside Peele’s meticulously crafted world.
“Us feels like a radio play,” Samuelson says. “I’d worked on Get Out, so I already knew Peele’s got a lot of humor, a lot of surprises, and he’s unique. Going through the script, there are definitely moments where the ride changes from something incredibly creepy and spooky to action, and then again to levity and humor,” he says. “Being able to track that, without screaming into the mic during a jump scare, is important. There’s a way to do it to allow the audience to experience the scares without going overboard. There’s an audio cue, and we find the best fit for that particular scene.”
How Samuelson actually does his work sounds like a masterclass in multitasking. He’s watching the film, listening to it on a headset, and reading the script while he’s performing his narration. It’s a bit of a hire wire act, especially for a film as visually rich and action-packed as Us. Take the scene in which the Wilson family’s vacation home is broken into by their creepy doppelgangers. Not the easiest thing in the world to narrate.
“What happens for the audience is they’re hearing things timed out to what’s happening on screen,” he says. “So [Shahadi Wright Joseph]’s character kicks someone in the face, runs to the end of the room and locks the door. You’d hear the impact of the foot to the face, hear her footsteps, then the lock of the door. The script itself has audio cues, timing cues, and visual cues.”
Samuelson has done enough narration to get into a kind of zone where he’s not overwhelmed by everything that’s going on. This was especially true for Us, considering the moment the doppelganger family arrives there’s essentially nonstop action for more or less the remainder of the film’s runtime.
“I’m not necessarily consciously thinking of what’s happening. I’m reading the words and feeling the film’s flow, at the same time watching the timing cues,” he says. “So if the script says that at 4:30:15, I say this sentence, I have to do it briskly because I’ve only got three seconds before a line of dialogue. I do try to time it out to make it as easy as possible for the editor. If I’m chasing the action, I try to be consistently one second behind, or, if I can, I do my best to stay right on track. The excitement isn’t just the technical reading and writing, but also knowing that blind and low vision audiences are able to experience this film the way the sighted person would watch it.”
[Listen to Samuelson narrate a scene from Us here.]
For Spider-Man: Far From Home, Samuelson found that the action was so heavy and nonstop, he wasn’t able to look at the film while he was narrating parts of it.
“There were some points where I only had time to read the script and see what was happening with the next cue,” he says. “Everything that I needed was in the script. It was literally a page-turner.”
One of the most important aspects of Samuelson’s job is allowing blind and low vision audiences to experience the same jolts and joyous “ah-ha!” moments as everyone else.
“When we do get granular, it can often be something that gets reincorporated later on the story, something a sighted audience member would casually notice and then remembers it when it comes back to pay off,” he says. “The blind and low vision audiences get to have that same experience. I’ll drop a little nugget of something that seems kind of random, and in most cases, it’ll pay off. There’s something incredibly satisfying about that. It feels like I’m part of the film, and literally, I am for blind and low-vision audiences.”
Soap Opera News article
https://www.soapoperanews.net/2019/08/voice-over-artist-roy-samuelson-talks.html
We spoke to voice-over extraordinaire Roy Samuelson. We were intrigued to talk to Roy about his career in voice-over and about the emerging service in the entertainment industry, Audio Description. When we learned how this game-changing service was enhancing the entertainment experience for blind and low vision audiences, we had to learn more. But then we also discovered it was positively impacting the experiences for all audiences and we were even more excited to talk to Roy.
Without seeing facial expressions (smile, scowl, arch of an eyebrow), no body language, no use of your hands just hearing your voice and the inflection of the same. Voice-over performers; “live and die” by their voice. The ability to captivate and stimulate the imagination and to tell a story solely based on your voice, now that is talent. Roy has that voice. Roy has that talent. Trust us we spoke to him. His voice is smooth, melodious, enticing and versatile. Roy told us right off the bat more than anything when he is working he wants the audience, “Fully immersed in the story and going along for the ride.” Interviewing Roy was a fun ride all its own! We discussed Roy’s background, his career and then he enlightened us on this still relatively unknown yet important service so now we can enlighten you.
The average child is talking by the age of two. We all have a voice. But how does one recognize they have the voice? How does one know they have a voice for voice overwork? Roy is like me, old-school. We reminisced about the days of a voice recorder machine. He loved to play around with his. It was this old school machine that first introduced Roy to his own voice. Roy had cousins who were from New York. And Roy loved their “cool” New York accents. Roy would have what he described as, “A kind of Mister Rogers Neighborhood Show. I’d record myself sounding like them. I called it the New York Ghost. It was a rambling mess if you listen to it now. But it was so much fun to record. I guess that was my first show. It had an audience of zero.” Laughter.
Roy’s audience first increased when he got, what he called his start in the voice-over industry when he worked at Disney World in Orlando, Florida. He was a narrator on a scene park ride. How many of us have been on a theme park ride with a narrator? A lot of us for sure. Well this routine experience for us was anything but for Roy. His job as a narrator for Walt Disney World catapulted a twenty-something and counting year career as one of the most sought after voice-over artists. “Everybody’s got a different way of getting into voice over, mine came from a scene park ride in Orlando. I was the narrator at the Great Movie Ride in Walt Disney World. It’s no longer there. Maybe 60 different guests would get inside these theater cars and go to the movies with all sorts of animatronic robots. The ride had certain timing queues, audio cues, and visual cues. As the host, I would point out the different things that we were going through. I also played the gangster which was really fun. I took over the ride, shot the bad guys and got blown up over and over again. To do the show over and over again was great practice. It was also a benefit to be able to watch how the audience reacted based on what I said or how I said it and how to use the microphone to tell a story.”
Roy has been telling stories ever since. Roy has narrated in blockbuster movies such as; Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, Spiderman: Far From Home, Jordan Peele’s US, Get Out, Jason Bourne, Pacific Rim. His television Audio Description includes Criminal Minds, Lethal Weapon, Blue Bloods. This upcoming fall we will hear Roy on NCIS as he has been heard for the past four seasons. And he will also work on Criminal Minds‘ final season. He has been the voice-over in commercials for Intel, Toyota and McDonald’s. Roy’s credits are extensive and impressive.
By speaking to so many actors we have learned that some things essential to the craft of acting are; know your mark, watch your lighting, timing and of course know your lines. What is one of the most important things for a voice over artist to learn? We wanted to know. “This is my favorite example because it hit me so personally when I first discovered this. You know how the first time you record a voice mail greeting and then you listen back; you are like, who is that? That’s not me. We all hear ourselves from our own bodies. But everybody else hears that same voice from outside the body obviously. Everybody is used to hearing your voice but you. So I think it’s really important when it comes to voice over to learn what you really sound like.” So true! I distinctly remember the first time I heard my own voice on tape. I thought that’s not me. I don’t sound like that! It is amazing the difference of the sound of your voice when you hear it on tape versus out of your own mouth!”
Roy is also an actor. He has done film and live theater. But without question, “Voice over is the thing that makes me the happiest.” Roy’s love for what he does has contributed to his excitement and investment in the industry’s move to provide this entertainment enhancing service to the blind and low vision audience. We are the new of the newbies in learning about this groundbreaking service, Audio Description; so, we will let Roy and only Roy tell you all about it. “This is so exciting what is happening in the entertainment industry. What we do is called audio description. It is a special audio track that goes on top of a movie or TV show. It is specifically for blind or low version audiences to experience what the film or TV is without having to see it. The audio script is a special script that is written based on what most people see.”
Roy provided this practical example to further explain. “It’s like when you’re listening to a game on the radio like a baseball game. There is an announcer that might mention the weather or say something about the city where the game is being played but for the most part, they are there to give you a play by play of the game. They are giving you a vision of what is happening. And that is what I do as an Audio Descriptionist narrator. I give a listener a sense of what’s happening visually.”
This concept would appear to be so “simple” we wondered why this wasn’t done many years ago. The ability has been around for 10-20 years. But it is the technology that has made it much more accessible. Only now people are beginning to talk about it. And not just audiences but the networks, streaming services, and Hollywood. There is a special headset to see a first-run movie. This headset isn’t for the hearing impaired (to make the movie louder). It is for blind and low vision people so they can experience the show or movie without the visuals. It works for streaming services as well. The audio is merely a few taps away.
Things were starkly different before the dawn of this technology. Before, Roy would work in a pretty isolated environment. Basically, Roy would get hired, go into a small area, read a script and that was pretty much it. Roy did his job and did it well but still felt disconnected. But he wanted to be and feel connected to his audience. What was the best way to start? Roy started talking to people. And when he did a whole new world opened up. As he started learning about accessibility, disability, and how others dealt with things; his eyes were opened. It gave him insight into how he could literally use his voice to help others.
Blind and low vision audiences now have access to movies and TV shows where they can watch it with their families and have an equally entertaining experience. These audiences can now also engage in conversations at work or anywhere outside the home, sharing their own full experience of a TV show or movie. This concept has also uncovered an untapped market for producers, creators, directors, and showrunners to increase their market share. And able-bodied audiences can enjoy it too. Roy gave us a few suggestions on how. “It’s not just for blind people or low vision people. You can listen to these stories or shows while you are stuck in traffic, when you are cooking or maybe you have spent the whole day staring at your computer or iPhone and just want to relax, you can turn on the Audio Description. Also, the more able-bodied people that use it will help blind and low vision people. The more demand will improve the quality and will increase the accessibility as more people use it.” Roy also encouraged us if we find a show without Audio Description to take a moment to contact the network or the streaming service and ask for audio vision services.
The more Roy talked about this subject the more excited he became and for good reason. If you want to learn more, you can Google “The Audio Description Project.” It will give you all the shows, networks, streaming services and movies that have it. You can also learn more about it and about its history. If you want to, there is a lively and engaging Facebook group with a wide range of people, blind, low vision, narrators, producers called “Audio Description Discussion.”
Even twenty years in, Roy says there is always something new for him to learn. He continues to learn, research and work with coaches and plans to never stop learning. In addition, he is at the forefront of this description narration revolution leading the charge.
We learned so much and thank Roy for taking the time to teach us about this valuable, life-changing service!
see updated article link here