[blindkid] Summer Movies

[Richard Holloway]

Summer break is here! In our school district, tomorrow is the last day of the school year. I know we all like to get our kids out and doing things, but I think it is nice to relax and enjoy a family film now and then as well.

If you want to find out what sort of films are available with audio description (or "DVS", Descriptive Video Service, or one of several other names) there are some great web sites to help you learn what is available.

If you want to find DVS in a local theater, even if you couldn't find anything nearby recently, check out CaptionFish at: http://www.captionfish.com/

Be certain to select "Descriptive Video" in the filter (top right of the screen for sighted users). If you don't you will see a list with DVS as well as adaptive options for the deaf and hearing impaired (different kinds of captioning). Metropolitan Atlanta has about 5.5 million residents. Little more than a year ago, we didn't have a decent theater in the entire Metro area which routinely offered movies with usable DVS. (A few showed occasional screenings but usually there were so many problems as to render the service entirely unreliable and unusable.)

I just checked our local listings on captionfish tonight. Within a 30 minute drive from our home, I found 10 theaters, listing 103 movies, and well over 1000 start times, all with DVS. Many theaters with the new DVS system screen every showing of every film with available DVS.

If you're wondering what changed, these "films" are no longer shown from film. Many non-Regal theaters changed over to digital as well, but the ones I find supporting DVS in our area seem to be Regal cinemas (or United Artists, owned by Regal) and they are all using a Sony presentation system, which is basically a super-high res digital playback process. Digital presentation is so popular now, it is estimated that, all major theaters will have gone totally digital (no film at all; no film projectors even available) by roughly 2015.

Think of a DVD or Blu-Ray disc. They are both similar, but Blu-Ray offers more video information and a sharper picture than DVD. To make a digital picture sharp enough for a theater movie screen, these digital movies generally take up on the order of 200 to 300 Gigabytes. That means 20 or more times the data on a Blu-Ray, and perhaps as much data as 50 conventional DVD's.

An audio track is only a tiny fraction of such a giant data package (any full movie sound track would usually be far less than 1 Gigabyte) so it requires very little effort to add the needed data to transmit DVS for personal receivers to listen to this now.

Note that if you are sighted and look to the back of the theater, you will still see a projector glowing. The screens are still movie screens, not huge TV sets, but the projectors are like huge projection TV units from recent years. What goes away is the film, the projection noise, and the film jitter, as well as the hassle of broken film, etc.

Speaking of DVD's there are more and more DVD's and Blu-Rays coming out with DVS as well. I am aware of at least 28 films released on DVD this year so far with descriptive video. Do be aware that just because it shows in the theater with audio description, there is no guarantee it will show up on DVD with that option. You should be able to learn (in most cases) if DVS is included on a home video by carefully checking the language options on the back of the package. (The print is usually tiny.)

There is also a great web source which seems to track movies released with audio description very well. Here is the address: http://www.acb.org/adp/dvds.html

You can find some programming on TV with Audio Description as well in most cases. The same site mentioned above lists some details on that here: http://www.acb.org/adp/tv.html 

NFB newsline users can also find program information about many current TV broadcasts (and cablecasts) with DVS available through the newsline service.

I hope this helps some who have not yet explored DVS to give it a try. I have a lot of great memories of enjoying movies with my family as a child. I would hate for lack of vision to prevent my daughter from having the same when she looks back at her childhood from around my current age.

	-Richard