Itfc Provides Subtitling And Audio Description For Michael Jackson Film

itfc, the leading London-based media access services provider, has completed work on This is It, a film that followed Michael Jackson as he prepared for his series of sold-out shows in London.
itfc provided full subtitling and audio description services, making it possible for the blind or partially sighted and deaf or partially deaf to enjoy the film.
They also prepared subtitle files for eight foreign languages for the digital release.
The film, a compilation of interviews, rehearsals and backstage footage, premiered in London's Odeon cinema in Leicester Square at 1am on October 28 to coincide with the premiere in Los Angeles.
Peter Taylor, Managing Director of Sony Pictures UK, said: "Michael Jackson is a universally admired performer who reaches out to all audiences.
"We were delighted to work with itfc in making sure that fans could enjoy this incredible movie."
With just a week to complete, the first stage of the project was to prepare subtitle files for eight languages - including Finnish/Swedish, Thai and Norwegian. This involved professional translators reviewing the translations provided against the film and the positioning of subtitles in each language to clear on-screen captions - and a team of 15 people worked on this for the film's digital release.
The second stage was cinema access and the team audio described and subtitled the film in just five days. There were 1,753 subtitles and about 50% of the film is made of songs, so the official lyrics had to be researched and checked. Caroline Lomas, Subtitling Coordinator at itfc, said: "The challenge was trying to turn ad-libbed song lyrics into subtitles. Hard-core MJ fans know exactly what he's supposed to be singing. Yet, often the lyrics went in another direction. It certainly looks like it would have been a memorable concert."
For the audio description, the team had an interesting task ahead. James O'Hara said: "A major challenge for us was that we were given material originally used for subtitling, so we couldn't see the full picture - making it harder for us to describe what was happening in each scene.
"But as the project moved on, we were provided with more content. As a team, we were unable to view all content and see the final described film, so all in all, it was a very intriguing and mysterious project."
Due to the secrecy surrounding the movie, only three people at itfc were able to work on the audio description: the writer (for the described script), the recorder and the proof reader. But it was only the writer who was able to view the full film, and he often worked late at the facility when no-one was around to keep it all under wraps, In total, 3042 words were described.
This is It is made up of more than 100 hours of behind-the-scenes footage between April and June, and the film shows Michael Jackson rehearsing a number of songs and mentoring his team for the 50 planned shows.
(KMcA/BMcc)