Some examples of audio description

 I teamed up with my favourite UK TV channel, Talking Pictures TV, to audio describe the 1951 film 'Scrooge' for a screening on 28th December 2023, available on catch up here. This audio described screening is a first for TPTV (who are already doing amazing work subtitling 95% of their output). Aaron Chambers has done an excellent job mixing the descriptions into the film (not an easy feat with the soundscape and quality of older films).

‘Scrooge’ a pretty faithful adaptation of a literary classic, ‘A Christmas Carol’. Indeed the film starts with the opening of Dickens’ book. In response, I’ve tried to refer back to Dickens’ original words where possible to furnish an audio description track that reflects and respects the film’s origin. Unfortunately, in many respects, Alastair Sim does not conform overly closely to Dickens’ description of Scrooge:
“The cold within him froze his old features, nipped his pointed nose, shrivelled his cheek, stiffened his gait; made his eyes red, his thin lips blue; and spoke out shrewdly in his grating voice. A frosty rime was on his head, and on his eyebrows, and his wiry chin.”

The best I could do, given Alastair Sim’s less ‘pointy’ appearance was to steal the adjective ‘frosty’ to describe this Scrooge’s white hair. But the descriptive opportunities provided by Alastair’s glorious facial expressions more than made up for any physical dissimilarities.

[All quotes taken from Charles Dickens. A Christmas Carol: A Faithful Reproduction of the Original First Edition, Kindle Edition.] 

The loading page shows a hairy arm punching out of the games title, ‘Rampage’, a buxom brunette woman in skimpy red camisole in his grip. 

The player can select one of 3 creatures to operate via keyboard or joystick

· George - a brown gorilla with gritted teeth and arms that hang to the ground

· Lizzie – a giant green reptile with muscular arms and manic grin

· Ralph – a grey-furred werewolf with squinting eyes and sharp fangs

Gameplay takes place against a 2d city-scape – with silhouetted high rises acting as background for multiple, rectangular skyscrapers. A tram occasionally traverses the rails in the foreground. Inactive creatures stare gormlessly from the pavement. Creatures activated by players scale the sides of the rectangular skyscrapers and punch at the buildings with muscular arms. At each punch, a chunk of the building dissolves. When a building’s structural integrity is sufficiently compromised, a cloud of dust belches from the base of the building, before the building crumples to the ground. If the creature is high up the building when it collapses, they hold their nose as if plummeting underwater when falling to the ground. Creatures can also aim at passing helicopters, which fire hails of bullets at the creatures. People in khaki uniforms appear in windows to lob grenades at the creatures. 

Status bars at the top of the screen register the player’s score (acquired through taking out buildings and attackers), as well as the damage done to their creature by the defending army.

When each cityscape is cleared of buildings a new-alert style update flashes up connected with each creature (e.g. ‘Ever-growing concern over Mega-vitamin’ beside the mugshot of George). They may also contain hints (e.g. ‘jump when you see dust clouds!’)