The Importance of Audio Production and Consumption for the Sight Impaired

On This Episode

The episode opens with Dawn Prall and Audivita Studios founder, and MyMacDLife production partner, David Wolf. They discuss the relationship between Audivita Studios and MyMacDLife as well as exchange views on the rise and importance of audio production and consumption. David shares his journey in the creative field; his love of audio shines throughout, specifically creating visual experiences in the mind of the listener. They then introduce the speakers for the next segment.

Voiceover actors Kim Monti and Steve Corona join the conversation and explain audiobook narration. They begin by providing a brief background on their paths to voice acting and answer questions about the challenges, techniques, and physicality of their work. Kim then tells a story about the freedom and independence audiobooks offer to those with vision loss. Audiobooks allow you to listen on your own time, removing the need for someone to read to you. There is a vast range of audiobooks; you can explore almost any subject in the world. 

The conversation continues as Kim and Steve share their experiences with character development and how they keep multiple character personalities organized while recording. The interview transitions to David, Dawn, Kim, and Steve verbalizing the importance of stories and the innate nature of storytelling. This entertaining conversation concludes with lightening round questions for Kim and Steve.

The episode finishes with Bill Kilroy, Vispero’s Senior Sales Director for the Northeast and Mike Woods, Strategic Accounts Manager for Education, discussing the DaVinci Pro, a larger desktop unit by Enhanced Vision. This high-performance desktop video magnifier has a 3-in-1 high definition 1080p camera, ensuring a crisp, clean, high quality image on the 24-inch monitor. This device has two levels, the DaVinci HD and the DaVinci HD Pro. While both have OCR functions, the functional difference lies in the OCR capability. You can go online www.enchanedvision.com to see videos on the device and learn more about the product. 

What We Discuss in this Episode

This tenth episode covers the following featured topics:

We're freeing people from screens, pages, anything visual. We're giving them a choice in how they consume content, for the sighted population. But for those that are visually impaired, or can't read it all, audiobooks are amazing in that they're an inclusive medium. (10:59)

There needs to be vocal separation, you need to be able to tell the characters apart. So that's everything from gender to accent, pitch, pacing, tone, all of it. We spent a lot of time going through and developing the characters. There's also the more daunting part, for me anyway, is putting the list together of all the words that we need to make sure we're saying correctly. (18:50)

I just always try to make every story that I tell, every book that I voice, be so vividly expressed through my voice that you can see it anyway in your mind's eye, whether you have vision or not. You should be able to, if you have good vision, and you close your eyes, you should be able to see that picture just as vividly. I always aim to bring that mentally visual picture telling, with my narration. I go very deep in my in my visualization, Kim knows this. I'll do exercises where I close my eyes, and I become these characters. I can see and feel and smell and taste and hear everything that's going on in their world before I jump into it. Then I start narrating, and I'm there. So hopefully I can pull you in with me. That's always my goal. (35:40)

I don't know if people understand how deep storytelling goes. Storytelling, vocal storytelling, is the first media of communication. If you ever want a classic example, listen to a two-year-old tell you how they stub their toe or got their booboo. (36:58)

If you've got a page of text that you want to have this product scan in, the DaVinci Pro can scan that and then read it out loud to you in multiple voices. You can customize the voices, whether you want male or female, you can change the speed of that, really customizable. When you're magnifying, you've got a 24-inch monitor. It’s widescreen 24-inch magnification, which allows you to get up to 77 times magnification, that’s pretty high-powered. You can use that to do your magnification, change the color contrasts. You've got 28 different viewing colors, so if you want to use black on white, white on black, you know, yellow, one black, you name it, there's 28 different color combinations that you can use. (49:16)

Quotables

“There's also, and I've observed this as a producer, there's an intimacy about audio, it's a very primal thing to have stories read to you, it's the first thing your mother did, for example. It's a very primal kind of way to experience story and narrative.” – David Wolf

“The thing I like about audiobooks is, whoever you are, you can create what the character looks like. You get the basic description from the author, but you decide how tall the palm trees are. You decide how green the grass is, or if you live out in the southwest, not green the grass is. You paint these pictures.” – Kim Monti

“…you were talking about why audiobooks are becoming a huge thing. I think part of it too, is it's sort of harkening back to that golden age of radio…” – Steve Corona 

“…it's like the theater of the mind because you're visualizing everything that you can't see because it is only audio.” – Steve Corona 

“They said that it [audiobooks] is so freeing, and they don't feel like they are dumbed down. People sometimes feel, and I had a friend tell me this, that when her eyesight went away, and hers one way very abruptly, there was no gradual it was lights on lights off. She said she felt like she had to stop learning because she didn't know how else to get the information.” – Kim Monti

“This is storytelling at its finest, it is that innate. You have a two-year-old that will give you strong storytelling. It was only after storytelling that they start painting pictures on the cave walls. Storytelling came first. This is why it grabs people.” – Kim Monti

Recommended Resources

- https://audivita.com/

- http://www.supportsight.org/

- http://www.mymacdlife.org/

- https://vispero.com/

- https://www.freedomscientific.com/

- https://www.enhancedvision.com/

- https://www.enhancedvision.com/low-vision-product-line/davinci-pro.html

- https://us.optelec.com/

- https://www.healthyvisionassociation.com/

- https://www.novartis.com/

- https://www.centricbank.com/

- https://hinklestein.com/

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