TV News: I didn’t even get a chance to dive into it, but I saw that Danielle Fishel (Boy Meets World) announced she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Boy Meets World was such a centerpiece of my childhood, and Topanga is a huge part of that. Even though her career has been limited following the show, I’m still a fan. I wish her a speedy and full recovery, and cancer sucks.
Real talk. I mentioned last week that because I work in education (shockingly, ranting on a blog does not pay the bills), the first couple weeks and the last few of the Fall/Spring terms are always a bit of a weird time for my watching of things. This might be the most depressing Small Screen Diaries I’ve ever written.
TV Shows Watched: Unstable: S2E8 (Netflix) with audio description, and Solar Opposites: S5E2 (Hulu) with audio description.
Podcasts: Choice Words With Samantha bee (Interview: Tony Goldwyn), The Weekly Show With Jon Stewart (Politics), and Nationly (Politics).
Youtube: None.
Movies: None.
For today’s feature, I really wanted to talk about the work Dave Wallace does on Solar Opposites. There’s a lot going on there. He almost feels like an integrated cast member. I remember a few seasons back, clearly the writers of the show were aware that audio description was a thing, because he had a little bit at the tail end of one of the programs where it was much more performative, and less like a functional tool. Almost how the cast of Station 19 recorded a thank you at the end of their run for their audience that watched regularly and used audio description. Dave is also a voice actor, and not just an audio description narrator, so he’s acutely aware of the tone of his voice, and how he’s saying each word. There’s several different flavors he brings to each episode, as the gang of Opposites always have interesting adventures. He knows how to extend a moment, like in the second episode of the fifth season, where two of our characters creep past a hotel desk clerk. He can bring the innuendo, as he does a few times. The episode centers around the adult aliens of this show finally going on a honeymoon, and Dave has a section where I would say he uses his “sexy voice”, not that he himself sounds sexy, but more like the voice you would use to indicate that sexy time is imminent. The scene with the “tentacles” has just the right amount of innuendo behind it. It all feels exactly as it should. It feels like really well crafted audio description for an adult animated show.
Dave is currently up for an Audio Description award as part of the narration team behind The Regime, a show where he also did a lot of the same things. He uses his natural instincts in being able to read a script, not just as a narrator, but as an actor, and looks at each scene, at the whole project, and figures out tonality, intention, and he can interpret from there what is probably the most complimentary performance in terms of audio description.
To be fair, I’m sure some people hate this. I’m sure there are some people who prefer their audio description to stay non-participatory. But, in a medium where it is always about the experience, the story, and frequently about bbeing immersed in the art form, Dave feels like he’s really trying to merge two things together. Keeping all of what we need from audio descritpion to be able to understand a project, but also complimenting the project in such a way that he doesn’t feel like a secondary audio track at all,but the primary audio track. Dave’s performance is so specific, that you could take an episode of Solar Opposites with audio description, to a sighted person who hadn’t seen the show before, and they might think it’s naturally a part of the show and it wouldn’t give them any pause.
Casting audio description narrators is so important. It is about matching the right voice to the right film, but it can be even more than that, and really looking at what the project is, and thinking about which voice actually compliments the project the best. This can be extended to all sorts of intentional casting choices, allowing for representation also through appropriate casting. If we want to always think of audio description as bridging the gap, then finding new and exciting ways to keep closing that gap and bringing us even closer to the experience is what we should do. I don’t think Dave would be right for every project. I think he would probably sound bizarre on something like Jane Campion’s Power Of The Dog, and I’m guessing he probably shouldn’t be the voice for Netflix’s upcoming adaptation of August Wilson’s The Piano Lesson. But, something like the upcoming Saturday Night film? I haven’t seen the cut, but it might be right up his alley.
