So, after a week off, we’re back. The format is going to change to reflect more of what I was doing in the audio description essentials, and I will acknowledge any program I watched, with or without audio description, because I want to continue to engage shows that need audio description. Generally, I’ll kick it off with any film/TV news I want to tackle, move into the list of what I watched (including some extras now) and then focus hard on one title for the day.
So, the only news I want to talk about is that the Robert Downey Jr casting is so very sad. It is like Marvel doesn’t know they have a terminal illness, so they just made big plans for a future they won’t have.Stunt casting can be useful, but that’s the wrong kind of stunt casting. As much as I love Robert Downey Jr, and he might even make a great Victor Von Doom, he’s bad for the MCU.
TV Shows I Watched: Fantasmas (MAX)- S1E4 (with audio description), Jurassic World: Chaos Theory (S1:E10) with audio description, King Of The Hill: S1E3 (Hulu) No Audio description (I started rewatching because this is getting revived), The Golden Girls- S7E? (Hulu) with Audio Description, and the two programs I’ll discuss below.
Also, shoutouts to some podcasts: (I listen to all podcasts with a speed modification on Apple Podcasts, and I’m including ones I listened to most of, but not necessarily all)- Literally with Rob Lowe (an interview with Fred Armisen), Black Men Can’t Jump In Hollywood (a review of Love Lies Bleeding), The Al Franken Podcast (politics), Matter Of Opinion (politics), and The Weekly Show With Jon Stewart (politics).
No Youtube videos.
Movies You Can Expect A Review Of When I Catch up: Ezra (Apple Store, audio description), Knox Goes Away (MAX, no audio description), Blank Check (Disney plus/Audio description), and South Park: Bigger Longer and Uncut (Paramount Plus/No Audio Description)
And now, your feature presentation on audio description!
The Show: The Decameron (Netflix)- eps 7 and 8
This is more like a bonus edition. This show already got good coverage on my Friday edition of The Audio Description Essentials, where I broke down the program. However, now that I’m done, I do want to give proper credit to Diffuse, writer Bryn Potty, and narrator Vito de Felipe. While this is not my favorite track of the year, and I have broader thoughts, most of which I tackled in that earlier post and never changed, I did forget to bring up something that this crack team did well, which Apple Plus seems chronically adverse to in their programs. While writer Bryn Potty can’t describe a period dress to save their life, they wrote a title card sequence for The Decameron that does achieve what Apple keeps trying to do but really always pisses me off. Every single Apple Plus show (seemingly) has a title card intro sequence where we only get the images, and no cast. None. So it almost forces the audience to have to look up who is in the show, since they also (typically) are not in the end credits. So no one ever knows who is in the show unless they do external research. The Decameron has a visual title card sequence with rats, since the show is about the black plague, and this team that can’t describe any of the characters of the show in substantial detail, managed to describe the rats AND include cast names. You actually can have it both ways. Someone cut the title sequence off this show and ship it to Apple with the image of a middle finger. Before Diffuse gets too excited, the title card sequence is the best detailed audio description for the series, so it’s a bit of a backhanded compliment. But, a compliment of some kind.
Bonus Edition!
The Olympics (Peacock) Seasonn: Paris
Now, I didn’t really watch the Olympics. Not in depth. There’s a story here. I was watching TV with my mom, who got a text from a friend of hers that Simone Biles was on TV *right now*, and I basically broke from what we were watching, loaded Peacock, and went to the main livestream (because her friend is definitely watching on NBC). I got essentially a Simone Biles retrospective, a little interview with her, not actually her competition. But, I did have audio description on. I’m sure it was live, so I’ll be delicate. What I liked, was that the description of clips of Simone from other competitions were narrated really well. What was a mess, was this was also an interview portion. There was some kind of reporter narrating this segment, and Simone talked a lot. The narrator for the audio description just blazed over all of that. It was a bit of a mess. this is not what would necessarily happen in competition, but having two people talking about two different things on top of each other at times made it hard for me to understand either the person on screen or the narration. It was a bit of a jumbled mess. I know the team doing this audio description, and they typically do some terrific work, and segments like this aren’t usual. Like, if she was really competing, she’s not also going to do an interview while doing it. But, it bares mentioning that even though I really only watched 15 minutes, the 15 minutes I watched was a bit jumbled. Still, live audio description. But, persistently willing to talk on top of other people, without really thinking about the possibility it may not be fully understood.
