Buffalo Sonnet: A Digital Comic

In a project commissioned by New York’s Lincoln Center, SADC produced an audio-described version of the digital comic, “Buffalo Sonnet.”

This artistic meditation on the Black experience tells the story of the historic San Juan Hill neighborhood in Manhattan, a vibrant cultural hub in the early 20th century that was eventually demolished to make way for Lincoln Center.

In close consultation with the comic’s creator, writer and illustrator Kamau Ware and Lincoln Center staff, SADC developed an innovative approach to making the work accessible for blind and low-vision audiences. We wrote detailed descriptions for the art and used a combination of sound design and voice acting to clearly distinguish the AD from the comic’s own narration, character dialogue, and thoughts. Our narrators, including native New Yorkers, were able to draw on authentic voices and personalities, bringing a unique flair to the script.

The described video adaptation of the “Buffalo Sonnet” comic is featured on the Lincoln Center’s Legacies of San Juan Hill page and you can watch the described version of Buffalo Sonnet on YouTube.

Credits

Audio Description Script writer and Scrolling Video Production: Kensuke Nakamura

Blind quality control: Robert Kingett

Audio Description Narration by [Project Lead Nefertiti Matos Olivares

Voice Actors: Barbara Faison and Thomas Reid

Audio Editing and Sound Design: Thomas Reid.

#BarbaraFaison #KensukeNakamura #NefertitiMatosOlivares #NefertitiNarrator #NefertitiProjectLead #RobertKingett #SADC #ThomasReid

The Last Jews of Guantánamo

Los Últimos Judíos de Guantánamo (The Last Jews of Guantánamo) provides a glimpse of a tiny community at a unique moment for Jews in Cuba. In the city of Guantánamo, following the liberalization of Cuban policies against religion, two women in their 80s are finally to be bat mitzvah; to ritually proclaim their faith and community with other Jews. Members of their historically Jewish family have come out and traveled from abroad for the occasion.

SADC produced audio description for the film, which premieres July 27, 2024 as part of a program on Jews of color, called “Peripheral Visions”, at the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival.

Project Lead: Cheryl Green. Writer: Oliver Baker. Blind QC and narrator: Nefertiti Matos Olivares. Audio editor: Kensuke Nakamura. Subtitles read by Oliver Baker, Barbara Faison, and Cheryl Green.

#BarbaraFaison #CherylGreen #CherylProjectLead #KensukeNakamura #NefertitiBlindQC #NefertitiMatosOlivares #NefertitiNarrator #OliverBaker #OliverWriter #SADC

SADC recently produced audio description for Samuel and Dan Habib’s documentary, The Ride Ahead. The Ride Ahead is a major expansion of their Emmy Award winning film My Disability Roadmap, which SADC also audio described.

Samuel Habib is a typical 21-year-old, itching to move out, start a career, and find love. But, as he says in the film, “no one tells you how to be an adult, let alone an adult with a disability.” Can a community of disability activists help him follow his dreams?

The Ride Ahead will have its world premiere at the 2024 Hot Docs Canadian International Documentary Festival as part of the Special Presentations Lineup. Tickets go on sale April 2nd. The festival runs from April 25th to May 5th, 2024 in Toronto.

Project Lead Cheryl Green wrote the AD. Robert Kingett did blind QC. Nefertiti Matos Olivares narrated. Audio was edited by Thomas Reid.

https://socialaudiodescription.com/2024/03/19/the-ride-ahead/

#CherylGreen #CherylGreenWriter #CherylProjectLead #NefertitiMatosOlivares #NefertitiNarrator #RobertKingett #SADC #ThomasReid

SADC produced AD for Emmy-winning writer and Broadway performer Ellen Gould, whose performance of Seeing Stars is part of a documentary currently in progress. SADC provided AD for a newly available preview of the film.

Seeing Stars is Gould’s most personal project in two decades of writing and solo musical performance, speaking about the influence and impact of vision loss in her life and lives of others with inherited, late childhood-onset macular degeneration—or Stargardt, from which the title, Seeing Stars, takes leap. 

Listen to the introductory or pre-show AD to learn about Ellen, the Seeing Stars show set, and more. You could also read the pre-show transcript.

AD written by Project Lead Cheryl Green. Blind QC and narration by Nefertiti Matos Olivares. Audio editing by Thomas Reid.

https://socialaudiodescription.com/2024/02/09/seeing-stars-a-film-with-vision/

#CherylGreen #CherylProjectLead #CherylWriter #EllenGould #NefertitiBlindQC #NefertitiMatosOlivares #NefertitiNarrator #SADC #ThomasReid

SADC wrote and produced description for the Guggenheim Museum exhibition Going Dark: The Contemporary Figure at the Edge of Visibility, which runs October 20, 2023 through April 7, 2024 in New York. The Guggenheim has made the audio also available on-demand on the Going Dark page of their website, and made Going Dark the focus of its Mind’s Eye virtual program 6:30-8:30 pm EST on November 13, 2023.

SADC produced 15 of the 29 tracks in their entirety: Writing, reviewing, narrating, recording and editing the sound. Guggenheim staff wrote 11, which SADC provided them notes on, and as with the others narrated and made into sound tracks.

Cheryl Green and Oliver Baker were the writers. Barbara Faison, Nefertiti Matos Olivares and Thomas Reid narrated. Thomas provided also the audio editing and with assistance from Cheryl, Nefertiti also served as Project Lead. All five members contributed to QC.

https://socialaudiodescription.com/2023/11/04/going-dark-the-guggenheim/

#BarbaraFaison #CherylGreen #CherylWriter #NefertitiBlindQC #NefertitiMatosOlivares #NefertitiNarrator #NefertitiProjectLead #OliverBaker #SADC #ThomasReid