The digital accessible cinema chain: Part 1 – The overall picture and stakeholders

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Friday, 9 May 2014 15:03pm

In this three-part series, Media Access Australia project manager Ally Woodford looks at the stakeholders and roles they play in making movies accessible.

The path a movie takes from its concept to delivery on screen can take many years, whether it is a Hollywood ‘blockbuster’ produced by a major movie studio or an independent movie produced on a limited budget. Filming and post-production alone may take18 months and accessibility of the end result will not be a consideration during this time.

The filming and post-production of a movie is the domain of the studio. Once this process ends, the movie is passed to a distributor to continue the path to exhibition. It is at this point that accessibility features of audio description and captions come into play, with the distributor being responsible for these additions.

Aside from access features, among the distributor’s responsibilities are licensing arrangements with the cinemas for exhibiting the movie. These licensing arrangements include start and end dates for the movie’s season, the minimum and maximum number of sessions and number of screens on which it can play, and box office arrangements.

Although audio description and captioning of the movie may have been produced, their use is not covered in licensing arrangements with exhibitors. The responsibility for programming and promoting accessible sessions lies solely with the cinemas, and there are no ramifications should audio description and captioning not be provided to audiences.

While there are many stakeholders involved in a feature movie’s production, the two key stakeholders in terms of its end-user accessibility are the distributor and exhibitor.

We will take a look at the distributor role and exhibitor role in the accessible cinema chain in parts two and three of this series.

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