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London landmarks audio described
Transcript
23 June 2013
Roberta: With us today is Chris Mikul, Project Manager of Media Access Australia. Chris is going to talk to us about a new audio description project called London Beyond Sight. Welcome, Chris.
Chris: Hello, Roberta.
Roberta: Now, what is London Beyond Sight?
Chris: It’s a really nice little project, I think, that’s been put together by a British audio description company called VocalEyes. It’s based on an earlier project that was called New York Beyond Sight and what they’ve done is they’ve got together 40 celebrities, so actors, writers, sports people, politicians and so on, who have a particular interest in various London landmarks, and they’ve got them to record audio descriptions of them, each one lasting for about eight minutes.
So, for example, you’ve got Derek Jacobi, who is the patron of the project, talking about the Old Vic Theatre. And what makes them really good, as well as giving a really good physical description of the places, so a bit of their history and so on, people tell their own sort of stories about them.
So Derek Jacobi talks about the first time he went to this theatre was in 1963 and he was a young actor and he was about to be in Hamlet for the first time. So it gives a really good feel for the places, as well as just the sort of basic description.
Roberta: It sounds wonderful. So what are some of the other places that are described, Chris?
Chris: Well, there’s the, I suppose, obvious sort of touristy sort of places when you go into London you see the first time you’re there. So there’s the Tower of London and Big Ben and so on. And Big Ben, incidentally, has been just renamed the Elizabeth Tower, as I found out from the description.
Roberta: Really?
Chris: Yeah, it happened this year in honour of the Queen’s Jubilee or whatever. But there’s also some more quirky things. So one of my favourites is Tony Robinson, who people might remember played Baldrick in Blackadder and he does the Time Team program now. And he chose to describe the big red pillar box, old post box, near his house.
You might think, how do you spend eight minutes describing a post box but he does it really well. He goes into all the history and it’s fascinating. He talks about how they became red post boxes. They actually say “pillar box red” and of course they used to be originally a sort of browny-green colour and people bumped into them, so they made them red. He goes into all this fascinating detail about it, so it is actually quite easy to talk for eight minutes about a post box.
Roberta: And how can people get to hear the descriptions?
Chris: Okay, well, you can download them all, or you can listen to them all, on the VocalEyes website. You can also download the recordings from iTunes, so you can have them on your SmartPhone or whatever. So I suppose the main reason for this is for people actually going to London. They can go to the spots and play the recordings as they’re there. But, as I say, they’re all just really fascinating recordings. They are just worth listening to as wonderful informative pieces of entertainment. They’re all really good. There’s 40 of them and I’d advise people to check them out.
Roberta: I think I might too. Chris, is there anything like this in Australia?
Chris: There’s nothing exactly like this. There’s a few museums that are now starting to do audio described tours, which you generally have to book ahead for. It’s becoming more common. If people go to our Media Access Australia website and they go the Cinema and the Arts section, we do have a page there that lists the museums that do offer these sort of services. So it’s obviously not happening enough but it’s slowly becoming more common.
Roberta: I think that should be a project. I think I might like to do that actually. Wouldn’t that be interesting to do it?
Chris: Go for it, yeah. I mean, I’ve been involved in describing a museum exhibition and it’s fascinating doing it.
Roberta: Well, if you want to know more about audio description, Media Access Australia has a website that Chris mentioned, and you can also contact them at info@mediaaccess.org.au or phone 02 9212 6242. Thanks for all of that, Chris.
Chris: Thanks, Roberta.
Roberta: Today has been Chris Mikul, Project Manager of Media Access Australia. Media Access Australia are supporters of this program.