Audio description enables blind people to watch movies in China

Editor's note: If you are blind, can you still enjoy movies? In Guangming Cinemas, instead of watching, moviegoers listen and open their hearts to sense the drama. Over the past six years, more than 600 audio-described movies have been provided to those who are visually impaired in China to enrich their cultural lives.

In a well-equipped studio with warm and dim lighting, a group of enthusiastic teachers and students from the Communication University of China (CUC) have recorded hundreds of hours of narrations for the Guangming Cinema project, which provides audio-described movies for visually impaired people.

The latest data from the National Bureau of Statistics shows that China has nearly 28.6 million people with vision loss. Among them, more than 8 million are completely sightless, according to the China Association of Persons with Visual Disabilities.

Since the Guangming Cinema project's establishment in 2017, more than 600 movies with audio descriptions have been made for theaters across China that serve the visually impaired.

Every year, the project produces more than 104 fully dubbed audio-described high-quality movie productions along with other visual audio products, which means that those in need can look forward to enjoying two new movies a week.

Under the Marrakesh Treaty, by teaming up with Beijing Gehua CATV Network, and Oriental Jiaying Media, the university project can use their licensed movie resources and facilitate access to published works for those who are blind and visually impaired.

What is an audio-described movie?

Descriptive movies are a way for people who have visual impairments to experience a movie as sighted people do.

The verbal descriptions taking place between conversations let them know what is being shown on the screen and provide context for what's going on in the movie. From the dubbed narrations cinemagoers can pick up on the smaller cues and tidbits about the settings that they can't see.

Content production: A labor of love for volunteers

According to Fu Haizheng, manager of the Guangming Cinema project, more than 800 volunteers are involved, taking on roles from scripting, dubbing and editing to distribution and liaison to bring movies to the visually impaired.

In this professionally managed and highly organized project, mainly composed of students and teachers from the Communication University of China, it's all hands on deck when it comes to the most laborious task of all: scripting.

Cai Yu is a PhD student who serves as the student head in this project. With her rich understanding of scripting, dubbing, and post-production for these kinds of movies, she says scripting a single movie could take between one and two months. "The script editor has to go back and forth on each scene change, hitting pause and play thousands of times, trying to write the most suitable narrations for the listeners, while being careful not to feed them too much or too little information," Cai told the CGTN reporter.

From the actors' poses and thrilling sequences found in action movies to the colorful scene changes in animated movies like "Avatar," the finer details are described between the passages of dialogue, filling the gaps and background details for visually impaired audiences in the full-length movie.

In recent years, hit movies like "The Wandering Earth" and "1921," along with foreign movies like "Fantastic Beasts: The Secrets of Dumbledore" and "Mulan" have been produced under the Guangming Cinema project, each featuring elaborately detailed descriptions.

Do blind people want to enjoy movies?

For many visually impaired people, a trip to the cinema like sighted moviegoers is often a more daunting task. But especially through multiple screen events, the volunteers have been showered with positive feedback.

Li Chaopeng, a PhD student who has been doing liaison work in this project, says that effort comes from both sides: "We offer help to bring the world of cinema to them, and they inspire us spiritually at the same time. The affection comes from both sides."

Cao Jun, a blind entrepreneur and head of the Association for the Visually Impaired in the Chaoyang District of Beijing says he loves to "watch" movies. "I enjoy hitting the theaters with my family and I want to be able to appreciate the art of movies on the same platform as them. The technology nowadays can enable this with just a pair of headphones and a soundtrack playing simultaneous narration. I believe this is the future and I have been very much looking forward to this day."

According to Zhao Xijing, a volunteer and teacher at the Communication University of China says they will call for more movies to be premiered and screened with an audio-described track so that people with vision loss do not fall behind other moviegoers.

Cao adds, "We have four barrier-free movie theaters in the Chaoyang District of Beijing that provide special screenings for visually impaired friends on selective dates. It’s a platform for us to gather and make friends. I hope there will be more high-quality productions from the Guangming Cinema project to enrich our cultural and entertainment lives."