Ep. 28: Up Close with Tristan Snyder, Blind Audio Describer And Sound Engineer

Alex and Lee chat with Tristan Snyder, blind audio describer and sound engineer. In our discussion, Tristan talks about his journey into the world of audio description and sound engineering and the way he navigates this being blind.

Tristan’s website:
https://ear2earsound.com 

Find video versions of Tristan’s audiobooks here:
https://dcmp.org 

Be sure to follow us on Instagram and YouTube at @darkroomfilmcast and feel free to e-mail us at darkroomfilmcast@gmail.com 

Transcript

Lee Pugsley
What's up, everyone? Welcome back to Episode 28 of The Dark Room, where two blind cinephiles illuminate the sighted. I'm Lee Pugsley.

Alex Howard
I'm Alex Howard.

Lee Pugsley
And this is a podcast for film lovers of all abilities, hosted by two legally blind guys. Today, we have a really fun episode for you. We got a special guest, which we will introduce in just a moment. But before we do that, we just wanted to circle back to our last episode with Kensuke, regarding movie trailers, and Alex, I'll pass it on to you to talk about that.

Alex Howard
After our interview, Kensuke wrote an audio description track for the Alien: Romulus trailer. He wrote the description, and then I did some QC, and then he voiced the description. Now that is up on his YouTube channel. We will link that trailer directly down in the description if you guys want to check that out. It's really, really great.

Lee Pugsley
Absolutely. I encourage everyone to check it out. He did a lot of really nice work on it, and it's definitely very helpful for the blind and low vision communities to fully grasp everything that's going on. Moving on, we will go ahead and introduce our special guest for this episode. We have Tristan Snyder with us today. Tristan, thank you so much for being here.

Tristan Snyder
Well, thanks for having me.

Lee Pugsley
Some of you may remember Tristan from our Oscars Audio Description Roundtable episode. It is great that you're here, Tristan, because a lot of people that watched or listened to that episode specifically mentioned you and just mentioned how it was so fascinating everything that you do because you do a lot. You do audio description narration. I know you've done some stuff with audiobook sound engineering, and audio description narration for live events. So everyone was like, "Get Tristan back on here. We would love to hear more from him."

Tristan Snyder
I'm happy to be here.

Alex Howard
And Tristan, I know you and I have been on a couple of panels and things together. So yeah, it's great to finally get you on the podcast.

Lee Pugsley
So to start out with Tristan, why don't you just go ahead and give the listeners a little bit of background on you and just what your journey with vision and/or blindness has been for you?

Tristan Snyder
I was born totally blind. Weirdly, they thought that I had light perception for a while. I was born with one eye, my other eye socket was empty. My parents, this was 1979, and my parents were told by the pediatrician, "Don't expect much from your kid. He's going to be developmentally delayed. There's going to be all kinds of problems. He won't be able to walk very fast." All of this negative stuff they tend to pile on, and especially back then when they had no idea the capabilities of blind children. My mom and my siblings, they all said, "No, we're not going to buy that." And so they started working with me as a baby, teaching me what sounds were, what smells were, what textures, and all these different things. And then I was my mom's youngest walker at months. There was a lot of dispelling of those myths. From 10 months on, I went to the preschool at the Foundation for Blind Children in Phoenix. Their program that my mom also helped to pilot and design, prepared blind children with all kinds of stimuli, all kinds of different smells, sounds, textures, and for the low vision kids, these different color patterns, and all these different stimuli to prepare them and get their brains rewired to prioritize that sort of thing.

Tristan Snyder
And I was reading braille, along with my peers, a lot of my peers, at three and four years old. So there was just a lot of advanced preparation and pre-training. I was using a cane when I was four. I grew up in an era where people were thinking outside the box and designing new programs. Everybody was feeling their way, for a lack of a better term, through all of this. And of course, sound was a huge influence as a kid. I fell in love with the shows 'Bewitched' and 'I Dream of Jeannie' and then eventually 'Star Trek' because of all of the amazing sound effects they had and all the different ways that they used those sound effects. So I started collecting them on cassette tape, and I just fell into the world of sound design and audio and mixing and all that stuff, to the point where my dad eventually became a sales representative for a bicycle company, and he would go on the road throughout the Southwest of the United States. And I would take NLS books, National Library Service books, that were narrated, of Star Trek, and I would then take that narration, mix it with sound effects, so that he would have a fully-produced audiobook with all the sounds and everything with it to listen to on his trips.

Tristan Snyder
And it just spiraled from there. I eventually figured out that audio production is really where I wanted to go, and I really enjoyed voicing and stuff like that. But voicing was a different thing. I really fell into that in a different way, but it was clear that I was destined for audio, for sure.

Alex Howard
That's really, really cool. I was actually going to ask you about your Star Trek shirt because we forgot to describe ourselves, but Tristan's wearing a Star Trek shirt, I'm wearing a Terminator shirt, and Lee is wearing a bright blue shirt. But I was going to ask Tristan about Star Trek because I know that the older ones aren't audio-described, I don't think, right? And so I was going to ask you how you became a fan, and that really explains that.

Tristan Snyder
[Laughs] There are versions, and you have to hunt for them. Some of them have been audio-described in the UK, some in Canada, and the original series, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise—they've had some description done. I don't know if any of them are truly complete, but they have been. The thing about those shows, and what really was spellbinding for me was because of the detail, particularly in the next generation era, meaning Next Gen, DS9, Voyager, Enterprise. Those particular shows had a sound team that was so detail-oriented that if you listened closely to the sound effects, you knew basically what was happening because they did sounds for everything. Drawing a phaser, throwing clothes on the bed. All of that stuff ended up with detailed sound effects. And it's not the same now. I think there's less of that. And I think that there was more dialog in those days. I think the shows were far more dialogue-driven. And so description wasn't as necessary as I feel it is for today's television in a way. But eventually, getting to see it with description, even if in some cases the description was far more subjective than I would like, it was nice to have that extra. But it was an extra to me. It wasn't a fundamental necessity for those shows because they had such great sound effects.

Alex Howard
That's really cool that you used to do that for your dad when he would go on road trips. I was reading a Star Wars book, I think it was Captain Phasma, and they had sound effects implemented into the book, and it really felt like you were listening to a movie. And then I started reading a different one, I think the Thrawn trilogy I started last night, and it's from the '90s, and they didn't have any of the sound effects. And I was like, "Oh, I missed that."

Tristan Snyder
Yeah. The original... It's funny because I also follow Star Wars. I haven't—let me put it this way. I've followed Star Wars all the way through all the movies. I haven't really gone into the TV shows that have come out. But I was a big fan of what they called the Expanded Universe from the '80s all the way through the early 2000s, I think, where they covered essentially 20 years, 25, 30 years after the first Death Star. And it's interesting to see the way the books evolved, because back in the '90s, when they started putting out audiobooks, they were abridged, and they were usually read by a celebrity of some kind. I think Henry Thomas, who played Elliot on E. T, did several of the books. And Anthony Heald did a bunch of books, and then Anthony Daniels did the '90s Abridged Thrawn Trilogy. So what was interesting was the first few of them didn't have sounds. And then as time went on, they started incorporating more sounds into the abridged books, and even to the point of where eventually it got to be a cinematic experience. That was really great. And then when they started doing unabridged books on CD, this was early 2000s, it was even better because they were doing all the sounds and it was unabridged. And it was like, "Wow, this is great stuff." And now they're doing Star Trek books. And where their abridged versions did have sound effects, now their unabridged ones don't. So it's an interesting set of decisions made by the publishers.

Lee Pugsley
Tristan, it's interesting how audiobook production has changed over time, because I remember getting audiobooks from the library when I was a kid, and it was just someone narrating. There were no sound effects. There was no music. There was nothing. Maybe there'd be intro music at the beginning, and it was saying the title and when it was over, but that was all. And it's been really great to see audiobooks actually becoming more of a production and something that can actually be an experience, not just someone reading words on a page. And especially for people like us, it is so much more fulfilling and enriching to have that experience. And on that note, too, I know that you have done some audiobooks as well that you've produced or engineered. Is that correct?

Tristan Snyder
So I worked for a nonprofit called Imagination Storybooks. They're still doing some work. It's now under the auspices of DCMP, the Described and Captioned Media program. We produced children's illustrated books for young readers with audio description of the pictures. So we had two narrators, generally, or sometimes three, if there were a need for that with the different characters in the book. And we would put audio descriptions in of the pictures on the page so that kids could follow the entire book and get the full experience and not just what I got as a kid, which was just reading me the story. That's great and all. But it would have been even more interesting to have the pictures described. So that's something we did. And we put music with them. And then the DCMP folks put sign language and closed captioning with them as well. And they also made a transcript that includes both the story and the descriptions so that deaf-blind kids with a braille display could enjoy them as well. From another point of view, I was going to say, tying in with the Star Wars talk, the NPR did audio-dramas of the first trilogy. And it's really remarkable remarkable. The first two actually star Mark Hamill, and they got Billy D. Williams, for Lando Calrissian. They're extraordinary productions. I mean, they are extraordinary productions, beautifully done. The third one, they couldn't get Mark Hamill. I think he was probably doing Batman. Batman: The Animated Series or something. So they got this fellow named Josh Fardon, I think is his name. And I think Arye Gross played Lando in that one. Anthony Daniels was C-3PO in all three of them. And it was just— it was beautiful. They were such great productions. That inspired me to go into, in the early 2000s— doing audio drama for a group called Darker Projects and a group called Colonial Radio Theater. I did the production on full cast audio dramas, sometimes writing the script, sometimes— Well, most of the time, doing the audio engineering and directing on occasion. I had a whole science fiction series called The Falcon Banner. I was coproducer on a series called Night Terrors. Lots of fun.

Alex Howard
Which trilogy? Is that the Thrawn trilogy? Which one is that? 

Tristan Snyder
No, no. The original movie trilogy.

Alex Howard
Oh, gotcha gotcha.

Tristan Snyder
A New Hope, Empire Strikes Back, Return of the Jedi. They did these beautiful audio dramas. Oh, they are just gorgeous. You get so much more in the drama because they're stretched out into a far longer production. A New Hope is 13 episodes long, I think. You have all this extra material approved by George Lucas. It's not just made up by the folks at NPR. It's all the stuff that they didn't include in the movie. So these things are extended, and they're beautiful. I believe Audible may have them. I bought them on CD years and years ago, so I'm not sure, but I think I've seen them on Audible or maybe Books, the Apple thing. But I do believe they're out there.

Alex Howard
My first exposure to audio-dramas was, there was a Batman one done by Spotify in 2021.

Tristan Snyder
Oh, yes.

Alex Howard
Was it Winston Duke did Batman, I think?

Tristan Snyder
The audio-drama was the Bane comic book series with Bane and Batman dying or his spine being crushed, and then he had to go through rehab, and people pretending to be Batman and all this. It was great. It was a great audio drama. That group, which I believe was under the auspices of Warner Brothers Publishing or something like that, I want to say, they did Batman. They actually did a Superman. BBC did Spider-Man. And then they also did a Star Wars comic series called Empire Trilogy. It was post-Thrawn. And Coruscont had fallen to a bunch of warring factions, and the New Republic was trying to take it back. The Emperor had been resurrected via some clones. It was really well-produced also. Another really well-produced audio drama.

Alex Howard
I think the one I had listened to was a Spotify original. It wasn't based on a comic. It was just a completely original Batman idea. I think it was Batman Uncaged, something like that. Winston Duke did the voice, and they had all these really obscure Batman villains in it. I think it's 10 episodes on Spotify if you want to look it up. It's really, really great. That was my first exposure to audio dramas. It was when I had my work injury and I was getting migraines from screens, so I couldn't really watch anything. For me, audio description helps me understand what I'm looking at. I'm not really used to just listening to the audio description itself and taking it only from there. I'm still getting used to that. So when I couldn't look at the screen, I was reading a lot, and I was reading a lot of audiobooks and things, and I found out about this Batman drama, and I was like, "Oh, maybe I'll sit out by the pool and listen to this and heal my brain, but also be entertained." And it was so good. And every week, I think it was on Wednesdays, it would release. I'd be looking forward to the next episode.

Tristan Snyder
Yeah. Audio traumas are great, and it's one of those things, it, in a way, audio description is integrated because in some cases, they have to use the dialog to tell you what's going on, but in other cases, they're able to use very detailed sound effects to help you know what's going on. The combination thereof, to me, is very much what a good integrated audio description would be like for a film or a TV show.

Alex Howard
Yes, I can see that. So in the audio books that your company helps to describe, are they well-known, like Shel Silverstein books, or is there a company that you work with exclusively?

Tristan Snyder
So we generally produce books by independent authors because for whatever reason, we have had the devil of a time trying to get larger publishers on board with the idea that these books not only can serve the blind and low vision community, but also the community of children at large. We've had a very difficult time getting larger publishers on board with the idea of these audio-described children's books. For whatever reason, they do not see how something that benefits the blind and low vision community can also benefit the larger community of children. My contention is that a kid who sits in the car and is on a long car trip, maybe they can't look at a picture book because looking at something like that can make some kids car sick, or they just have too much pent-up energy, or they're trying to take a nap, whatever it is. There are all kinds of reasons why perfectly-sighted people don't need to look at a screen, or can't look at a screen, or can't look at a book, a page. And I think a book that has description of the pictures serves multiple purposes and serves multiple communities. But unfortunately, we haven't been able to convince the publishers to get on board with that. So we mainly do independent books or those books where the copyright has expired. For example, last year, we did Winnie the Pooh.

Alex Howard
I definitely need to tell my friend Tessa about that because she is a big Winnie the Pooh fan.

Lee Pugsley
I love Winnie the Pooh as well. I'm a huge fan, as Alex knows.

Tristan Snyder
We did a full cast production, so every character had its own voice, but we also included the original illustrations by E. H. Shepard, I believe?

Lee Pugsley
That's right. Yeah, correct.

Alex Howard
When you do the description, so I'm assuming you read the text, but then do you have another voice do the image description, or how do you -

Alex Howard
yes, that's how you do it. Yeah, we have a person, a narrator, reading the text, or in the case of Pooh, we had a full cast. And then we have a different narrator doing the descriptions. Usually, we alternate so that one of them is a male and one of them is a female, depending on the book, really. That's how we do it. I have done quite a of the description narration. I've done a couple of narrations of the story, and we have a lot of other narrators involved as well. We do prioritize blind narrators, people who are professionals in the industry, who are blind or low vision and who want to do more narration. We did do that. As I said, the nonprofit itself is defunct now, but we still produce some audiobooks at this point. We're doing a few of them. Unfortunately, we just couldn't find the funding to continue.

Lee Pugsley
It would be great if you could find another organization to give you guys funding so that way you could continue to do more books, because like you were saying, I do think it does matter and it is so important for listeners and readers of all kinds, whether or not you're blind, low vision, or fully sighted. Like you said, there is definitely a benefit to that. Shifting gears a little bit, though, and let's go ahead and get into a little bit of the audio description territory here. I'm curious to know how you got into audio description, because I know back in the '80s and '90s, there was very little audio description description available. And then what was your path to getting into audio description narration? I realized that a lot of other things you've done naturally segue themselves into that. Specifically on audio description, what was that path like?

Tristan Snyder
The first audio described movie that I ever saw was Star Trek 4, done by WGBH. And eventually, I got hold of my local public library catalog. So I got a hold of the other Star Trek movies with description. And that was so cool to me. As I said, even with the sound effects there and everything, there are still little things you're going to miss, descriptions of aliens or things that the characters do that don't have sound effects. So it was really very neat to hear that. And WGBH from Boston did such a beautiful job with the descriptions and keeping it objective and not patronizing. It was just a joy. And I realized, this should be everywhere. Even as a kid, I figured that out. I was like, why aren't there more television shows and movies with this? So fast forward a little bit where I took an internship with Rick Boggs because he was the only blind guy that I was aware of who was working with ProTools. At first, I tried to apply to the Conservatory of Recording Arts and Sciences in Tempe, Arizona, and they flat out discriminated against me. They flat out said, "We're not going to take you because we can't teach a blind person." And the head of the Admissions Department, who was the sole objection to denying my entry, in other words, he was FOR letting me in, decided to take it upon himself to use their curriculum, offer me a private apprenticeship, and teach me the entire Conservatory's curriculum, all of the stuff that they taught their other students. So while I didn't get the degree, I got the education. And then I reached out to Rick, who had put me in touch with ALVA Access Group, who was at that time, I believe, who put me in touch with the folks who made a screen reader called Outspoken. And he had worked with them and with Digidesign, who owned ProTools at the time, to make ProTools accessible to blind audio engineers. And he said, "Well, I have a little music studio here in California. And if you want to intern, you can come down here and we can we can work together." And I said, "Well, I wouldn't say no to that." So I did. Packed up all my stuff, moved to LA. And in the end of 2001, there was news that the FCC was going to mandate a certain amount of broadcast television have audio description.

Tristan Snyder
And one of Rick's longtime colleagues said, "You should get into this. Who better to do this than a blind person?" And so he found a person who, in my estimation, is still the finest audio description writer on the planet. Her name is Terry Grossman. Unfortunately, she's retired now, but I learned so much from her, and her scripts are just always... And brought her on board. Another fellow, Jack Patterson, who was instrumental in the visual QC of the description. And between Rick and I and Jack and Terry, we made the core of what was at that time WeCTV. And we started producing audio description. We got a contract with ABC to do The Wonderful World of Disney. And one of the first things that came to us was Toy Story for The Wonderful World of Disney. And Rick said to me, "You know, this is such a great animated movie. It's such a kid movie, and you have such a young-sounding voice. You should narrate it." I never narrated description before, but I knew what it sounded like from WGBH, and I took it, and I did it, and it was my first audio description narration job. I think it was actually April of 2002. So it was 22 years ago.

Alex Howard
That's really amazing. And Toy Story will always have a special place in my heart. I mean, that's the first movie I remember seeing in theaters. So that aired on TV on the SAP channel, right?

Tristan Snyder
Yes.

Alex Howard
First, you said you saw Star Trek 4. Was that also on TV on the SAP channel?

Tristan Snyder
No, that I got the public library. So WGBH, back in the '90s, they released their catalog of described titles on VHS. I eventually bought my own copies of the Star Trek series with description on VHS from them. It was actually not in mono. It was in stereo. Imagine that. It was just so beautifully done, but it was on VHS. And they had several other movies. I mean, they had a pretty vast selection of different audio-described movies.

Alex Howard
But it was a separate tape.

Tristan Snyder
Yes.

Alex Howard
You bought the audio-described version, and you didn't get the regular version with it, right?

Tristan Snyder
Correct. Yeah.

Alex Howard
Okay.

Tristan Snyder
Although I did have that. Of course, I'm a Trekkie. I had the original.

Alex Howard
Oh yeah.

Tristan Snyder
But yeah, no, it was a separate tape.

Alex Howard
Go for it, Lee.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, now, that's all, oh, that's so cool that Toy Story was your first audio description, narration project. I mean, it can't get much better than that.

Alex Howard
For background, Rick Boggs, who Tristan was talking about at AudioEyes. We did an interview with Rein Brooks last year, and he was working for Rick Boggs. So Rick Boggs is still working on audio description. They do things like Anatomy of a Fall, which Tristan was a narrator on, and things like that. And then ProTools, for people who don't know, is a sound mixing software, which is very highly regarded in the industry. So that's really great that even back then, they were saying they should make that accessible.

Tristan Snyder
Yeah, Digidesign and now Avid have committed to keeping ProTools as accessible as they can, which is great. There's a new fellow who's taken on the collaboration from the blindness side of it. His name is Slau Halatyn. He has been spearheading ProTools over the years, and he's done a fantastic job, and to the point where they've created a separate app that then creates all kinds of new keyboard shortcuts for things that a sighted engineer could click the mouse for, and frankly, a blind person could do it too, but not as quickly. They've created a new piece that works in conjunction with ProTools called FloTools that just allows us to do a very complicated thing with a couple of keystrokes, and it just enhances it all. Slau is a very interesting man, and he is definitely dedicated to accessibility of ProTools.

Lee Pugsley
I didn't even realize that ProTools was accessible, and I wish I would have known that. I studied theater in college, and when I took a sound design class, we had to use ProTools to edit soundscapes, or... And I was a sound designer for one of the productions we did. I used ProTools, and granted, my vision was better than what it is now. For context, I have partial vision in one and no vision in the other eye. My vision in my strong eye or in my left eye was always stronger, and it was okay at the time. And I could read print with a magnifying glass, and I just have to get really close to the screen. But even still, using ProTools was challenging. Had I known it was accessible, that would have saved me so much time and frustration and profanity.

Tristan Snyder
I'm sure, yeah. And it's important to note for anyone who might be thinking, "Hey, I'll go get ProTools. You really do need to use the Mac version. The PC version isn't accessible. 

Lee Pugsley
That makes sense. And I think I was using the PC version at the time. So I guess it wouldn't have mattered anyway. But I'm glad to know that ProTools is accessible now. So if I decide to pick it up again, it's good to know that that's there. So I am curious to know then what your process is like for the work that you do. And I know that's a very wide net to cast in asking that question, but I'm sure there are ways that you had to make accommodations for yourself. Being totally blind, that looks a lot different than how a sighted person would do things. So yeah, I guess if you can just talk a little bit about your process, whether it's with how you do audio description, narration, how you specifically do those things.

Tristan Snyder
Well, back in the day, when we were working on The Wonderful World of Disney back in the early 2000s and other shows as well, we did stuff for Fox, That 70s Show, and some other stuff. But back in those days, the media would come to us on beta tape or beta SP. These tapes would come. And of course, you had to lay those tapes into ProTools via a beta machine and a synchronization device that would synchronize the tape and the digital clock on ProTools. And so it was a lot more complicated, actually, back in those days, because when we would then send the network our description, we had to lay it back to the beta tape and then send the beta back to them. And that was a very complex process because ProTools had to keep sync with an analog tape. They called it DigiBeta, but the reality was whenever you're using a tape, you've got a motor running. You've got a motor running spools. So it was just a trip. Sometimes things would fall out of sync and ProTools would have to catch up and keep it. It was just bizarre.

Tristan Snyder
And some of that, thankfully, all of that was accessible. The only thing at that time that was not really accessible were the meters, the level meters. And broadcast television, to this day, has very specific allowances for peaks and lowest levels and all of that. They have very specific specifications. It does vary a bit depending on the network, but by and large, they're within a range of one another, because some of that is governed by the FCC also. So keeping that level set in mind was a job for one of our sighted engineers at the time. Nowadays, we have meters, we can read the meters. Everything is accessible with that. So it's not even hard. And we even have software where you don't even have to worry about that as you mix. You can now use a piece of software to force your audio into compliance with the broadcast level specifications. So it's great. It's a lot easier these days. And of course, everything now is digital. So there's no more tapes, thank goodness. And there's no more elaborate connection and sync locks and all this. It's just all digital, and it all generally syncs up pretty well.

Tristan Snyder
As far as my process goes, so I am a fluent braille reader. But the one thing that I have never been able to master after 40 something years of reading braille is reading and speaking it at the same time in a flowing manner. I can't, for the life of me, run my fingers across those dots and speak out loud at the same time. Get ahead with the fingers so I can continue to speak. I have practiced and practiced and practiced. And for whatever reason, my brain just tells me, "That is not a capability you have. Knock it off." Keep my script in front of me in braille, and I do read my script in braille, but I do it so that I understand all the punctuation marks. And then I go back and I use my screen reader in my ear as a prompter so that I can speak the lines and read more flowing to the microphone. And when I have to knock something out really fast, if I'm on a very tight deadline, then I'll just forego the braille, and I'll just use my ear prompter with a screen reader. Because for whatever reason, my brain just tells me, "You can't do that."

Tristan Snyder
So that's an adaptation I've made over the years. I really did my best to try to use braille as my primary method of script reading. But I found that for ease and for speed, because a lot of these companies, when you work for companies that are larger and they want to get you in and out. And if you're doing... When I did Handy Manny, I did a voice on the kids show Handy Manny. I couldn't afford to take the time that it would take to use the braille. So I had to use an ear prompter.

Alex Howard
So do you have a braille printer at your house that you can-- ?

Tristan Snyder
Oh, I just... Generally, I use a braille display. I have a couple. I have an old ALVA Satellite that can sit under my keyboard, and I love that thing. It's old, and you have to use a USB connection, and there's no Bluetooth or anything like that. And all it does is, it's a braille display. It's not any kind of note taker. I love that old thing. It just works so well. I also have, I think that's a 32 character or a 40 character? I forget now. And then I have a BrailleNote Apex. Again, another old device, but it still works, and it serves my purposes. I also have the new Library of Congress issued braille reader. And I find that that also can be very helpful. It's only, I think, 18 cells or 20 cells, but it works just fine for my purposes. I don't need a note taker. I just need a display. That's all I ever actually need. But I did, back in the old days, before I got a braille display, I did absolutely have a braille printer. And that sucker, I'll tell you what, getting the paper had those little perforations on the sides. I don't know if you all remember the dot matrix printers from back in the day. Like these, if those little buggers got out of line or out of alignment, your whole printer would jam up, and then you'd have to figure out where you left off. And oh, it's just a pain in the butt. And so I can't say that I'm sad to see the back of those days.

Alex Howard
So with your readers now, does it transfer any text that you get into braille automatically?

Tristan Snyder
Yes.

Alex Howard
Or does that have to be formatted a certain way?

Tristan Snyder
No, it does transfer it automatically into braille. You basically, because your iPhone or your computer screen reading software has the ability to translate into Grade 2. I'm an old guy, so I still use BANA braille rather than UEB, but it'll translate it into Grade 2, and it's fine.

Alex Howard
You use a Mac, I'm assuming? Yes.

Tristan Snyder
I use a Mac mini with no monitor because I don't need a monitor.

Alex Howard
Wow. That makes sense. I'm taking a voiceover class next semester at Braille Institute.

Tristan Snyder
Nice.

Alex Howard
I'm starting to-- (Apple) VoiceOver for me, just trying it on my own, it's so much. Actually, I need to train my brain to turn my eyes off and just listen. It's really, really hard because my whole life I've been using my eyes as a primary sense. Training my brain to like, "Okay, just use your ears to listen and don't worry about what seeing" is really hard to do.

Tristan Snyder
That's where a totally blind person, I think, may have a slight advantage because I can't imagine how difficult it must be as a low vision person to have conflicting inputs in that way. It can be tough.

Alex Howard
Yeah. I think a lot of it is to prep for... Because my eyesight has gotten worse. I can't really read text anymore or anything like that. I find myself squinting in my laptop. So I'm like, "Okay, just to prep, make my life easier, let's learn VoiceOver now so that in the future, if my eyesight does get significantly worse, I don't really have to worry about it."

Tristan Snyder
It makes sense. My boyfriend lost his sight when he was about 20 or 21 completely, but he knew it was coming. So he prepared in advance. He started learning braille as a teenager and learn screen readers and all that stuff so that he was able to already have a leg up. And I'll give you a little tip. The elevator numbers, the first character you're going to see is a number sign because the next character you're going to see is actually, A through J is one through zero. A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I is 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and then J is zero. So once you learn those, you're also going to know the first 10 letters of the alphabet.

Alex Howard
Oh, that's cool. Okay, I didn't know.

Lee Pugsley
So another thing that I was curious about, Tristan, was what it's like doing live audio description. I know that you've done audio description for different live events, including some theatrical productions and everything. And especially when you're in that realm and you're doing live narration for theater, I mean, theater is different every night. And maybe they're going to hit their mark a few beats earlier or a few beats later, or something could happen. But yeah, what is it like doing that audio description for live events?

Tristan Snyder
I produced the audio description for the Blue Man Group in Orlando, Florida, back in the aughts, back in the early 2000s. And we did it based on their lighting cues. The Blue Man Group performances are very uniform, and they tend to stick to the process, their sequences. So we gave them pre-recorded description based on their live show that was linked to the audio... I'm sorry, the lighting cues. So when a certain lighting cue happened, the description would play. And of course, it does have its flaws. Obviously, as you said, if somebody hits their mark a little early, if somebody see something in the audience and they react, we miss that. So it is a disadvantage to pre-recording. However, at least you get the audio description of the events, the majority of them, in a general way, that you're not missing out on a lot of... Particularly in the Blue Man group, there was very little dialog, if any. Usually, it was done by an off-stage announcer. The Blue Men never spoke. So I feel like the description was necessary, but we weren't able to provide live description every performance. Now, when it comes to the SAG Awards, which I've done two of, the pieces of the show that I did were prerecorded.

Tristan Snyder
They were the nomination clips and the trailers and the little In Memoriam and the tribute, the lifetime achievement clips, all of that stuff was prerecorded. And so we got those in advance. So the writer was able to write that for me. And then I did narrate it live. But then that's all I did live. And for a situation like that, I have my phone in front of me with the script on it, and it just goes through each video in sequence. And I'll tell you that it is a terrifying feeling to have a button in front of you and when you press that button, you are going out nationally. You hit this button and your voice goes out. No matter what, it is going out nationally. It's a little bit unnerving. It was a fun process. I was so nervous the first year I did it. So... I was nauseous. I was just terrified that I would do the wrong thing. And once you get through it once, coming back, it's not so hard. You know that you're going to mess up, but it's not going to be a big deal, and you're going to correct, and you're going to move on, just like any other live performance.

Tristan Snyder
And it was a fun chance to get out there and do something live. I would do it again. If they asked me back next year, sure, I'll do it again.

Lee Pugsley
When you were doing the SAG Awards, and you said that you just press a button and it goes out all over the world, I guess, for a lack of a better term, were you at home doing this, or were you in a booth, or were you actually at the awards ceremony live?

Tristan Snyder
I was at the awards ceremony. We were in a trailer behind-- This year, we were in a trailer behind the auditorium auditorium, and we were with the other post-production crew, or the production crew, I should say. We all had our own little rooms. And so the describers, the live describers and I, I worked with Tansy Alexander on the main show. She was describing all of the live things that were happening on stage. And she and I sat about 5 feet apart, I would say, at a long table. She had a series of buttons in front of her, and I had a series of buttons in front of me. And we both had Sennheiser MKH 416 microphones, which, by the way, is my favorite, sitting in front of each of us. And she would do her part, and then I would come on and do my part. But it was all... There was a big monitor in front of her that she could see all of the stuff that was going out on the live feed. That way, she was able to see what was happening.

Alex Howard
That's really great. I'm assuming that was in LA. Let us know next time you're in LA. We'd love to meet you up if you have time.

Tristan Snyder
Yeah, it was in LA. It was in downtown LA.

Alex Howard
You did a great job, by the way. I think the SAG Awards this year... Well, last year, I was also able to watch with AD, but especially this year, it was so easy to access the audio description because it was on Netflix. The thing that helps me most about the audio description on the award shows is the In Memoriam, because I cannot read those names for the life of me, and I can't tell who is in the pictures. Having the In Memoriam read out loud was a revelation for me. I was like, "Oh, my God. I can actually mourn these people and remember who passed away this year." 

Tristan Snyder
Yeah. It always shocks me. I've done it twice, and it always shocks me how many people we lose in one year. Crazy.

Lee Pugsley
Totally. There's oftentimes people that I know who they are, but I didn't realize that they had passed away in that year, too. 

Tristan Snyder
Right. Yeah. I mean, everybody knew about Perry, but we didn't know... I mean, I didn't know about some of the other folks that were listed.

Alex Howard
What would be your advice to anyone sighted, or, I mean, specifically, blind who want to get into audio description and into all of this work that you're doing?

Tristan Snyder
Well, first of all, don't go into it thinking you're going to make a steady living. Just don't. Don't set yourself up for that because it's likely not going to happen. It's a nice side job. It's a nice way to help out your own community. You absolutely should not volunteer. You should be getting paid for what you do, but it's not constant work. I only know of a couple of narrators have made constant work out of it as far as the narration goes. The production side is a little easier to get steady work if you sign on with somebody like Deluxe or Descriptive Video Works or one of those guys, IDC, maybe. But you can't expect as a narrator to have constant work at this point. Maybe at the point where we have more steady work as narrators. But the second thing is, practice. Go listen to audio description. It's not a bad thing to imitate your favorite narrators. That's how I did it in my very first job, I was imitating one of the people that did a kids' movie on WGBH, and I was just mimicking them in a way.

Tristan Snyder
And it helped me find my own voice. Decide what you like, what you don't like, and take what you can from that. The other thing is, right now, there are no agents who are out there booking audio description gigs for their clients, I think. If there are, they're very much in the --. So it's on you to be your own propulsion. You're going to have to create a demo of some narration, some audio description narration. Even if you just have to use a script from somewhere else, create a demo of you narrating a movie that somebody else has narrated using that script and just create a demo and send that off to the audio description companies that are out there that you know are doing it. And one of the best resources to find those companies is going to be adp.acb.org. They have a listing of most, if not all, of the companies who produce audio description. And so those are the people you want to be sending your demo to once you're sure that it is how you want to market yourself. Another great resource is Roy Samuelson's ADNA. I'm blanking on the website.

Alex Howard
Is that an IMDb for audio description? Is that what that is?

Tristan Snyder
That's essentially what it is, yeah. However, finally, IMDb is allowing us to put our audio description credits up there. So that's a nice thing. It is about time. They have us listed as crew. Even though we are not crew, we are part of the cast in a way, and we should be listed in that similar area. We are not crew. In fact, SAG AFTRA maintains that they have the right to cover this work. So I think putting us as crew is unfortunate, but at least we're up there.

Alex Howard
Would you say it's harder for people who are low vision or blind to still break into the audio description industry than it is for sighted people, or do you think it's pretty even now?

Tristan Snyder
It depends on which aspect you're talking about. As an audio production person, as an engineer, yes, it's still very difficult. As a narrator, it's far less difficult now than it ever was before. There has been some pushback from the blind community saying, "Hey, we think blind people should be narrating this stuff." And we have several blind narrators now working in the industry. And a lot of the audio description companies that hire narrators are willing to hire blind audio narrators, audio description narrators. So that portion of it is much easier. Also within the QC realm, if a company feels that QC is important, and that is an important caveat, because some of them don't still, then as a blind QC person, you can get work. There are only a few companies, I think, that really believe that blind people belong in every aspect of this industry. And so it is still difficult in some ways.

Tristan Snyder
I find that when I'm doing the audio production aspect of it, I don't even tell people that I'm blind. I don't make a point of it unless I believe that it will help to book the job. If they care about it, then I will tell them. If they don't, then I don't tell them. Because they don't need to know. Because my work is just as good as any top-notch sighted audio producer. And with everything working remotely these days, you know, maybe they don't need to know. That's one of the silver linings, I feel, that came out of COVID, is that a lot of jobs were proven to be able to be done remotely and accessibly and have allowed blind and low vision people who otherwise have had difficulty getting employment in the past, has allowed us to find higher levels of employment because people figured out that you don't have to do things in a paper and pen way, in an office way. The old ways don't always apply anymore. So I think that really does help us in terms of getting ourselves out there and getting ourselves employed. I think the attitudes have shifted a little bit.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, I've definitely noticed that shift. And it's encouraging. We still have a ways to go, but it is nice to see that there is potentially more opportunity now than there used to be.

Tristan Snyder
Yeah, absolutely.

Alex Howard
I wanted to ask Tristan, can you tell people where to find the audiobooks that you've described, like Winnie the Pooh, but then also tell them where to find you, how to contact you, if they want to hire you or anything like that?

Tristan Snyder
So Winnie the Pooh is on Audible. With video, you would have to go to dcmp.org. That's for the Described and Captioned Media Program. And that's really the video and sign language versions of it are for K-12 students and TVIs, Teachers of the Visually impaired, and other educators. So if you're an educator in the K12 system, you can get a free DCMP account. If you're a student in the K12 system, you can get a free DCMP account. You can access all of the Imagination Storybook library. There's like a 140 titles, 100 and something titles. As for me, you can find me by emailing tristan, T-R-I-S-T-A-N at ear2earsound.com, or you can just go to E-A-R, number 2, E-A-R, S-O-U-N-D dot com.

Alex Howard
And we will link all that in the description as well. And one last question for you, Tristan, which we always like to ask our audio description, narrators, engineers. What are some of the projects that you've worked on that you're most proud of?

Tristan Snyder
Anatomy of a Fall.

Alex Howard
For people who don't know, people know I'm very passionate about physical media, but they just announced that the audio description track for Anatomy of a Fall will be on the Criterion collection Blu-ray that they are putting out. So that's really cool.

Tristan Snyder
Nice. Yeah, I'm proud of that. I really enjoyed doing the show The Good Doctor for three seasons, Seasons 4 through 6. I really enjoyed that. I think on Netflix, there's a new movie coming out called Thelma: The Unicorn. I'm rather proud of that one. That's a good movie. And there's some IFC titles that I really loved working on. One of my favorite movies that I've ever done with IFC was called The Djinn. Oh, creepy. Wonderful movie. Wonderful.

Alex Howard
Is it a horror movie?

Tristan Snyder
Yes.

Alex Howard
I will have to check that out. A lot of the IFC stuff has been some of my favorite movies of the year the last few years. So any time I see IFC logo pop up, I'm like, "I need to see that."

Tristan Snyder
I really loved that particular movie. I thought it was especially good. Also, See for Me. There are two versions of C for me. One is done by the inestimable Ren Leach. He's also blind. He's a blind narrator. I believe that version is on Netflix. The IFC version of that movie is My Voice. I really like that movie. I was proud to narrate that movie also. And that actually stars a blind actress.

Alex Howard
I always try and plug this movie whenever I get a chance. For anyone who hasn't seen See For Me, it is a home invasion thriller. She uses an app, which there is an actual app, but it's not called See For Me, so she can see around the house and see what's going on. The person on the app who is helping her see, she and the blind woman have to figure out how to survive this home invasion, which is a very basic premise. There are twists and turns, but it is very good. Blind actress, and it is Audio Described by Tristan and also Ren, who I have been messaging with. So if you haven't seen that movie, I highly recommend you watch it.

Tristan Snyder
For sure.

Lee Pugsley
I need to check that out still.

Tristan Snyder
I love it when they actually use blind talent in a movie instead of a sighted person pretending to be a blind person. Ah. 

Alex Howard
Yes. That and the fact that she's actually a well-rounded character and not just a flat, blind character.

Tristan Snyder
Yes!

Alex Howard
I won't say anything more, but yeah.

Tristan Snyder
She's not the stereotype. There are several media stereotypes for blind people, and she isn't any of them. And it's great. I love that. I love that about that character.

Lee Pugsley
Tristan, this has been such a wonderful conversation. And we thank you so much for taking the time to chat with us and just to share about your experiences and to enlighten and educate all of us.

Tristan Snyder
It was a great pleasure. I really enjoyed it. Thank you, guys.

Alex Howard
No, thank you so much. And we will definitely have to have you on again because I'm sure we could talk for hours. But we've been thinking about doing an AI thing, so maybe we'll have you on for that.

Tristan Snyder
Oh, boy, have I got some samples for you.

Lee Pugsley
Yeah, we could talk about that for hours as well. If you guys have any questions or comments about anything we've discussed today and want to reach me and Alex, you can email us at DarkRoomFilmCast@gmail.com. Once again, that's DarkRoomFilmCast@gmail.com. And you can also follow us on Instagram and YouTube @darkroomfilmcast. And we want to give a shout out to Matt Lauterbach and All Senses Go for making transcripts of this episode possible, as well as all of our past episodes, too.

Alex Howard
And we would love to hear from any of you about anything we talked about today or on any past episode as well.

Lee Pugsley
Thank you guys so much for listening, and we will see you back here next time on The Dark Room.

Alex Howard
Thanks, guys.