Name: Audio Descriptions for Beginners
Start: 2025-02-04T23:30:00+00:00
End: 2025-02-05T01:30:00+00:00
Location: Acadiana Center for the Arts - Art House

Description

This workshop is an intro for filmmakers and producers interested in making their films accessible to visually impaired audience members by laying out the fundamentals of creating film audio description.

The festival world is beginning to wake up to the fact that there are more barriers to the filmic experience than can be accounted for with subtitles and closed captions alone. Netflix as well as many festivals are finally beginning to take the much-needed initiative towards requiring Audio Description for their content.

Hosted by filmmaker Abby Waters and composer Alan Kamen, the workshop will provide examples, tips, and best practices on how to not only create audio description for your film, but how to make the experience of listening as full of color, meaning, and nuance for a audio-only audience as it is for a viewing audience.

About the facilitators:

Abby Waters is a South Louisiana filmmaker raised in Lafayette. The recipient of the Artspark award for 2024, she was also nominated for the prestigious Princess Grace Award for emerging artists, and has received international accolades for her short film Chicken Bones. She is a coordinator for Patois Film Festival, the Human Rights film festival in New Orleans, and is currently commissioned to create a series of videos and podcasts in Haitian Kreyòl as educational resources on gender-based violence for CARE International. She is passionate about film as an educational tool and seeks to expand accessability to important media.

Alan's childhood piano teacher was the first to discover that he had perfect pitch. He started writing original music at the age of 10 and spent his teenage years performing with various jazz and rock bands across the Long Island, New York Metropolitan, and Brunswick, Maine area. After getting his MA in music at Bowdoin, Alan moved to New York City where he studied with Barry Harris and played in legendary clubs like Birdland, The West End Café, Cleopatra’s Needle, Smoke, and The Village Gate. In the 80's and 90's, he sat as musical coordinator for The Angry Squire in Chelsea and it was at this time that he took an interest in TV. He became the first totally blind person to produce and host a cable show (The Electric Loft Party) on the Manhattan Neighborhood Network. Years ago, he made New Orleans his home and has since been a regular performer on the city's music calendar.

Date & Time

Tue, Feb 4, 2025 5:30 PM - 7:30 PM

Venue Details

Acadiana Center for the Arts - Art House

101 West Vermilion Street
Lafayette, Louisiana 70501

Acadiana Center for the Arts

Our mission is fostering art and culture in Acadiana.

Founded in 1975, Acadiana Center for the Arts (“AcA”) is a community-supported nonprofit organization that fosters art and culture in Acadiana. Since its founding, AcA has developed as a major force, shaping the future of public education and community development in South Louisiana.

AcA supports the creation of new works of art, exhibits, festivals, performances, and public art across an eight-parish region that includes Acadia, Evangeline, Iberia, Lafayette, St. Landry, St. Martin, St. Mary, and Vermilion Parishes.

AcA aims to bring equitable access to the arts and supports fair compensation of artists. On average, AcA serves over 300,000 people annually and provides fair compensation to 2,700 artists.

In 2013, the AcA merged with the Performing Arts Society of Acadiana (“PASA”), whose mission was to educate, inspire, entertain, and culturally enrich the people of south Louisiana by providing local access to a diverse range of the performing arts. This merger supported the vision of both organizations and provided much-needed support to PASA’s programs. Founded in 1989, PASA served as a leading voice in the performing arts in South Louisiana for close to three decades.

Find more Acadiana Center for the Arts Events and Community & Culture events in Lafayette