The Accessible Filmmaking Guide

In an increasingly multilingual and accessible world, a monolingual and non-inclusive approach to filmmaking is certain to leave behind huge swathes of audience – not only foreign audiences and people with disabilities, who require the production of additional soundtracks or subtitles, but also the viewers of the growing number of films that include more than one language in their original versions.

Current distribution strategies and exhibition platforms severely underestimate the audience that exists for accessible cinema. Over 50% of the revenue obtained by most current films comes from translated (dubbing, subtitling) and accessible versions (subtitling of language and sound, audio description [AD] of the image), yet only 0.01%-0.1% of the budget is spent on these additional versions. To compound matters further, these additional versions are usually produced with limited time or money, for little remuneration, and traditionally involving zero contact with the creative team.

This can result in a version of the film that is artistically compromised: the filmmaker’s aesthetic and tonal vision may be ruined by the use of large, brightly lit subtitles over a dimly lit and subdued scene; an inaccurate AD track may give scant narrative details, leading to plot points not being effectively established; worse still, it can even affect the representation of characters. The result may be a vastly inferior product that betrays the filmmaker’s original artistic intentions.

Despite being joined by a common art and a shared objective, filmmaking and translation/accessibility have unfortunately remained two separate professions – but historically this was not always the case. During the silent film era, the intertitles were considered a vital part of the medium’s storytelling – and therefore were part of the standard post-production process, and budgeted for accordingly. It was only as the medium moved into the “talkies” era that subtitling and dubbing were relegated to the distribution process.

Research into audiovisual translation spanning over two decades has shown that this relegation has had a negative impact on the way foreign audiences and people with disabilities consume and respond to films. In an effort to avoid these audiences experiencing an inferior product, Accessible Filmmaking encourages close collaboration between filmmakers and translators/media access experts.

The following guide is intended for filmmakers and other professionals within the film industry who wish to become accessible filmmakers. The approach is supported by both the EU and the UN, and has been tried and tested successfully in research, training and professional practice.