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Audio narration: re-narrativising filmJan-Louis Kruger aa North-West University, School of Languages , PO Box 1174,Vanderbijlpark, 1900, South AfricaPublished online: 24 Sep 2010.

To cite this article: Jan-Louis Kruger (2010) Audio narration: re-narrativising film, Perspectives:Studies in Translatology, 18:3, 231-249, DOI: 10.1080/0907676X.2010.485686

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Audio narration: re-narrativising film

Jan-Louis Kruger*

North-West University, School of Languages, PO Box 1174, Vanderbijlpark 1900, South Africa

(Received 26 October 2009; final version received 23 February 2010)

Audiovisual texts rely on their polysemiotic nature to create audiovisual narrative.For audiences who do not have access to any one of the semiotic codes, the veryessence of the narrative is compromised. The nature of these texts has changed tosuch an extent that they have to be re-narrativised. Within that part of the field ofaudiovisual translation (AVT) that aims at providing access to audiovisual textsto viewers excluded from the visual codes, audio narration (AN) is discussed as amode that seeks to provide access through an integrated, independent narrative.This mode is suggested as an alternative to the established mode of audiodescription (AD), both modes being found on a descriptive�narrative continuum.The article begins by investigating the problems posed to AN by the iconicity ofnarrative film. It is then shown how focalisation in film manifests in a number offilmic markers that have to be substituted by linguistic markers derived fromwritten narrative in an audio narration that is integrated with the remainingiconic codes of the soundtrack. Finally, the argument is illustrated by means of adiscussion of the opening sequences of Everything is illuminated (Liev Schreiber,2005).

Keywords: audio description; audio narration; audiovisual translation (AVT);comparative narratology; focalisation

1. Introduction

How do films make narrative sense? This very simple question is at the heart of any

attempt to make this audiovisual mode accessible � particularly in the case of

audiences excluded from entire code systems such as the visual or auditory codes.

Narratologically speaking, and greatly simplified, literary narrative is narrative

because it presents a story (fabula) through narration, in other words by telling (also

called the discourse or sjuzet) metaphorically through the device of a narrator.

It could be argued that fiction film as a narrative text also ‘narrates’ or at least that it

presents a story by showing in picture and sound. In other words, only the mode of

delivery of the sjuzet changes.

But what happens when either the picture or the sound, the visual or the auditory,

is unavailable to an audience? Much of the field of audiovisual translation is

dedicated to this problem (the exception being that part of AVT that deals with

interlingual translation for audiences who do not understand the language of the

original). Essentially, I would argue, the absence of codes from one of these semiotic

systems means that the original narrative no longer operates in the same way and has

*Email: JanLouis.Kruger@nwu.ac.za

Perspectives: Studies in Translatology

Vol. 18, No. 3, September 2010, 231�249

ISSN 0907-676X print/ISSN 1747-6623 online

# 2010 Taylor & Francis

DOI: 10.1080/0907676X.2010.485686

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to be re-narrativised in order for the audience to get the benefit of a coherent

narrative.

This article will focus on audio access where the lack of access to (any or all of)

the visual codes of film means that this largely visual narrative mode has to relyexclusively on the auditory semiotic codes of the film (the soundtrack consisting of

verbal and non-verbal auditory codes), supplemented by a narrator through which

the film then has to be re-narrativised. Ultimately, however, the text created from the

initial audio(�)visual signs by a sighted audience and the text created from only the

auditory signs by a blind audience will never be the same text. Holland (2008, p. 184)

makes the following statement about theatre, a statement that also applies to film:

‘There is no direct equivalence between a moment on stage and the words chosen to

describe it’. This is mainly due to the difference between iconic and symbolic semioticcodes that impact on the very nature of the narrative.

This article will consequently investigate the more (although not exclusively)

symbolic component of narrative when film is made accessible for a blind or visually

impaired audience. The contention will further be that, even though practitioners

and theorists alike concede that AD has to have a stronger narrative element, exactly

what is understood under narrative and how this can be achieved are less clear.

1.1. AVT and narrative

It seems self-evident that the audiovisual translation of film for audiences excluded

from the visual codes has to ensure that the auditory text will at least still be a

coherent narrative, a narrative that does not constantly foreground the fact that a

particular user group1 is excluded from an important part of the text. Increasingly,

theorists of and practitioners in the field of audio description (AD) have begun to

call for a stronger awareness of the narrative function of the description (see Braun,

2008; Holland, 2008; Orero, 2008; Salway, 2007; Yeung, 2007; see also Remael, 2004,for a discussion of the narrative functioning of film dialogue in AVT).

Salway (2007, pp. 151�152), for example, points out (in connection with the

language of AD) that ‘since audio description acts as a surrogate for the visual

components used to tell stories in film, we predict that the language of audio

description is shaped in part by its narrative function’, which is supported by his

analysis of a corpus of AD scripts (see also Salway & Palmer, 2007). The move to a

stronger emphasis on narrative is also supported by Jessica Yeung’s article (2007) on

audio description in the Chinese world where she mentions the concept of describersas co-narrators versus as independent narrators.

Nevertheless, not enough research has been done on exactly how the visual

components of film tell stories, how film narrates visually, and consequently how AD

has to render these visual narrative elements, or the effect thereof, into words. This

article aims to contribute to this emerging line of research in AVT by comparing

filmic and literary narrative. The emphasis will be on the way narrative is accessed, or

even constructed by the audience, particularly in terms of orientational positioning

in relation to the story world through focalisation. Specifically, the article proposesaudio narration (AN) as a non-exclusive alternative to the conventional AVT mode

of AD, based on an interface between AVT, film studies and narratology. The use of

this term builds on the growing movement towards the narrativity of the mode of

AD by various authors mentioned above, but also foregrounds the very different

premises of description and narration that may indeed require an explicit break with

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the term AD, and a foregrounding of the explicitly narrative demands of audio

access in the term audio narration (AN).

1.2. Defining audio narration (AN)

In that field within AVT that deals with providing access to audio(�)visual texts by

means of supplementary auditory input that substitutes the visual component of the

film (what we may call audio access for short), one may distinguish between

traditional AD, where the emphasis is on description (although the narrative still

plays a role in some genres � hence the term descriptive narration), and AN as a

mode of audio access that seeks to provide access through an integrated narrative.

As such, some current approaches to AD do, to varying degrees, already emphasisethe narrativisation of film, and it may therefore be useful to see audio access as a

descriptive�narrative continuum as follows:

� Explicitly descriptive AD (as in a documentary) would be closer to the

clinically objective, descriptive extreme.

� AD that supplements description with some narrative markers and subjective

interpretation would be around the middle of the continuum.

� AN that moves away from a strict fidelity to what can be seen on-screen infavour of a coherent narrative would be situated closer to the explicitly

narrative extreme.

In other words, AD will already contain narrative elements just as AN would

contain descriptive elements. Trying to pinpoint a particular film’s audio access at an

exact position on this continuum would be taking this continuum too seriously as it

is merely intended to illustrate the complicated mix of description and narration in

audio access. At the descriptive extreme the emphasis would therefore be onsubstituting the visual codes (what can be seen by a sighted audience), and at the

narrative extreme the emphasis would be on creating a coherent narrative that

corresponds more closely to the narrative effect of the visual codes than with the

codes themselves.2

Most definitions of AD in the literature emphasise the verbal description of what

is on screen and what happens on screen (the WHAT). This is typically done in the

gaps between dialogue and major sound effects in the AV text. Hence, according to

Salway (2007, p. 151), AD ‘is a description of visual information delivered via anaudio channel and it is crucial for improving media accessibility for blind and

visually impaired people’. Benecke (2004, p. 1) similarly describes AD as ‘the

description [that] fits in between the dialogue and does not interfere with important

sound and music effects . . . it consists of an additional narration [that] describes the

action, body language, facial expressions, scenery and costumes’.

The term ‘audio narration’ or AN will be used for a proposed mode in AVT

alongside this existing and widely-used mode of AD at the narrative extreme of the

descriptive�narrative continuum in audio access. In AN the emphasis is on the(re-)narrativisation of the visual codes in narrative film supported by and integrated

with the existing auditory signals (or original soundtrack3) of the film in order to

provide blind and visually impaired audiences with access to the film as an integrated

narrative text. Given that this is largely also the implied intention with AD

(particularly towards the middle of the continuum), AN is further characterised by

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an approach where fidelity to the visual codes is subservient to fidelity to the

narrative implication or effect of what can be seen. This would at times mean that the

narrative will seem to ignore something that takes a very prominent position on-

screen, although it will focus on the effect of the action or object.

At the root of the difference between the extremes of AD and AN on the

descriptive�narrative continuum is the fact that AD in most conceptions isconsidered to be something that is entirely external to the story world or diegesis

of the film (extradiegetic), whereas AN, in my definition of the mode, would often

(although not always) become integrated with the intradiegetic auditory codes of the

film in a more autonomous framing narrative, like that produced through an

intradiegetic (homodiegetic or heterodiegetic) narrator in a novel, even though the

narrative is activated from outside the text. The narrative in conventional AD, on the

other hand, is by definition extradiegetic and heterodiegetic.

Fundamental to an appreciation of the nature of AN is a conceptual under-

standing of the way in which filmic narrative is created, and the role the visual plays

in this narrative. Only when we understand how film comes to narrate can we begin

to attempt to re-narrativise film for an audience excluded from (part of) the visual

codes. The call for a shift away from a descriptive bias to a narrative bias here is

rooted in the acknowledgement of the fact that filmic narrative consists of more than

just a series of visual and auditory cues. The blind or partially sighted viewer’s

immersion in the fictional world depends as much on the narrativisation or re-narrativisation of these cues as it does on the cues themselves. This re-narrativisation

will always be based on an interpretation of the visual presentation, presenting a

coherent narrative that does not disturb the audience’s immersion in the story world

with the voice of a commentator that inevitably yanks the audience out of the story

world into a world where they cannot see. In the words of Holland (2008, p. 184):

‘Description should aim to get to the heart of a work of art and to recreate an

experience of that work by bringing it to life. It should not be content with telling

someone the physical details of what they cannot see’.

According to Vercauteren (2007), based on an overview of a number of AD

guidelines, what should be described includes images, sounds and onscreen text. In

terms of images, the AD should describe ‘where things are taking place, when things

are taking place, what is happening and who is performing the action and how’; in

other words, what can be seen, not how it is shown, and definitely not why it is shown

(which, in most guidelines, would constitute subjective interpretation that has to be

avoided).However, in order for the blind and partially sighted audience to make narrative

sense of film, what is important is not only WHAT is shown (characters, actions,

settings), or even HOW it is shown (from what angle, from what distance, from

whose perspective, etc.) but WHY what is shown is shown the way it is shown � or,

SO WHAT? (the narrative effect). AN should not simply substitute the visual codes

for the blind audience by means of verbal codes, but should consciously and

consistently create a narrative text that will be accessible to the audience who does

not have access to those visual codes that allow the sighted audience to activate the

audio(�)visual narrative text.

This narrativisation or re-narrativisation of the text will be discussed in the

following paragraphs. Due to the similarities between AN and written narratives in

the narrativisation of the story world by means of words, techniques from literary

narrative may prove to be a meaningful starting point. Nevertheless, AN will remain

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an integrated presentation of the auditory codes (the soundtrack) and the verbal re-

narrativisation of the visual codes in creating an auditory text that will allow the

blind and partially sighted audience to access the story world of the film.

2. From audio(�)visual narrative to auditory narrative

Because narrative film keeps characters and props persistently before our eyes and earswith virtually limitless sensory particularity, there seems no need for films to describe; itis their nature to show � and to show continuously � a cornucopia of visualdetails . . .The film offers a multitude of visual details, more than any viewer couldmentally specify; the specification would be in words, and we do not name every detailwe see. (Chatman, 1990, p. 39)

What this passage emphasises is the fact that the film an audience without full

access to the visual codes receives is fundamentally different from the same film

received by an audience who does have full (potential) access to these codes. This

difference lies in the first instance in the details that are intrinsically tied to the

iconicity of the mode. And since this visual iconicity has to be translated into

auditory (verbal) narration (i.e. into a symbolic mode), the best that can be achieved

is an attempt at conveying the effect of the visual signs in the interest of the narrative

as a whole.

The term ‘narrative’ hides a complexity that has a profound impact on AVT. For

one thing, as Jost (2004, p. 79) notes, ‘[t]he semiotic materials of film and novel are

not the same, and one cannot mechanistically transfer concepts forged in one domain

to another domain’. To complicate matters, film is largely iconic and not symbolic,

which, as Prince (1993) points out, means that less emphasis should be placed on the

‘grammar’ of techniques such as shot/reverse shot and POV shot and more on the

narrative context of any given scene or shot. Specifically, Prince (1993, p. 20) states

that ‘film theory tends to view cutting patterns, camera positions, even perspectivally

based images as culturally relative yet syntactically precise conventions’. However,

we cannot base the interpretation of film or the cognitive reception of film on such

specificities. Film is primarily iconic and we interpret it based on our experience in

interpreting the visual world around us. Therefore, the context of a shot is more

important than whether it can be classified into a precise syntactic convention.

To summarise the argument thus far: in translating filmic narrative for audiences

who are excluded from the visual codes, the process by means of which the audience

is brought to conceptualise the narrative and the story world has to compensate for

the fact that the audience cannot see what is shown in order to base their

interpretation on these cues. In other words, instead of merely describing visual

codes, AN has to be concerned firstly with the narrative unity of the text and present

the narrative making use of devices that are closer to those of written narrative

fiction rather than attempt to achieve fidelity to the visual signs. The effect of filmic

presentation of characters, actions, emotions, setting, as well as of focalisation

through devices such as mise-en-scene, framing, and camera angle or perspective,

therefore has to be verbalised to supplement the auditory channels containing

dialogue and sound effects that are still available to the audience in the original

soundtrack.

But what exactly is the relation between the role of narrative devices in these two

very different, yet equally narrative, modes of film and literature? In order to arrive

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at a description of the role of the audio narrator as well as of the techniques of

presenting the paradigmatic aspects or HOW of the narrative in AN, a more detailed

analysis of what constitutes narrative in general and filmic narrative in particular has

to be done. The emphasis here will be on the narratological concept of focalisation.

3. Narration, narrative voice and fictional reality

As pointed out above, the main difference between filmic and written narrativefiction is that film shows, while literature tells. Of course it is not that simple. In

written fiction the act of telling is often hidden through the use of a covert narrator

or narrator without any obvious and identifiable characteristics that allow the reader

to form a picture of that narrator (i.e. an implicit narrator). This creates the illusion

that the novel ‘shows’ the reader the fictional world and the actions of characters

almost as a camera does even though the narrative is always verbalised through the

device of the narrator. In fact, the symbolic agent of narrator remains a device

through which the author presents the narrative and through which the readerinterprets it. Formulated differently, what we call ‘the narrator’ is a device through

which we find our way into the fictional reality; it is our point of access, regardless of

whether that device also fulfils the role of a character.

In contrast, although film does not require a narrator figure to narrate the story,

and although the use of an overt voice-over, or even on-screen narrator, may create

the illusion that the story is told by a stable narrative figure, much of the filmic

narrative still rests on the audiovisual presentation or ‘narration’ without the aid of

linguistic presentation, even though the dialogue in film obviously does carrysignificant narrative weight.4 The unifying narrative voice found in the narrator of

written fiction (and that ties the dialogue together) is replaced in film by the unifying

‘voice’ of the audiovisual presentation (including visual aspects such as camera angle

and movement, and auditory aspects such as sound effects and dialogue). This

presentation depends to a large extent on the ‘point of view’ the audience has on the

story world, which brings us to the concept of focalisation.

3.1. Focalisation

Focalisation5 refers to the positioning and oriental restrictions of narration (see

Jahn, 1996), in other words, from what perspective and under which limitations the

narrative is presented; or, not only WHAT is shown, but from which (audiovisual,psychological, emotional, ideological, etc.) angle, or HOW it is shown.6 This may

include focalisation through an identifiable character or, if not, through the filmic

narrative origo.7 In film, focalisation would therefore also include mise-en-scene or

elements identified by Mainar (1993) as auto-focalisation.8

It is important to note here that focalisation is not only concerned with

perception (what Jost [2004] calls ocularisation), but also with experience and

mental states. Specifically, focalisation is also degrees of access to the minds of

characters and narrators. In film, we know something is focalised through aparticular character if we become aware that we see something as only that character

could see it, and this is most evident in cases of obvious subjectivity.

In film, focalisation is much more obvious than in written narrative because the

camera physically shows aspects of the fictional world from different (often rapidly

shifting) positions, whereas focalisation in written narrative is more covert (and tends

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to be more stable). Nevertheless, as in written narrative, focalisation in film is marked

by the presentational limitations, or by what is shown (not told) from which

perspective that may or may not be aligned with an identifiable character in the

fictional world.Whereas focalisation in written narrative is marked (in addition to dialogue)

symbolically by deictic markers as well as markers of subjectivity in the narration,

focalisation in film is marked in the dialogue as in written fiction, but also iconically

by the use of the camera and editing in different types of shots. The shots and editing

techniques that mark focalisation include the gaze shot, point-of-view shot, eye-line

shot or match cut, over-the-shoulder shot and reaction shot, but other than the type

of shot, the shot composition or mise-en-scene also marks focalisation (see Deleyto,

1991; Jahn, 2003; Mainar, 1993).Although more overtly present to the visual sense, these markers are still covert in

that the viewer only seldom becomes aware of shifts in focalisation. For example, in

the series Heroes (Kring, 2006), a large percentage of shots are over-the-shoulder

shots with the camera getting close to one of the characters facing the character in

the gaze of the camera. This is marked by the fact that many shots contain some

form of obstruction between the camera and the object of its gaze, mostly in the form

of part of a body or an object, creating the impression that we see from a position in

the fictional world like an invisible presence hovering close to the characters, peeringat them in turn. Yet many viewers may not be aware of this consciously since the

obstruction is never particularly obtrusive. Such foregrounding of subjectivity may

also be the result of camera movement such as that achieved by a hand-held camera

that simulates the perspective of a moving perceiver in the fictional world, again

pulling the viewer into the fictional world by making them see what they would have

seen had they looked through the eyes of a character in the fictional world. Examples

of this would be The Blair Witch project (Myrick & Sanchez, 1999) as well as the first

half of any episode in a series in the Law and order franchise (Wolf, 1990�present)where a hand-held camera makes the viewer experience the story world as thought

they were part of the criminal investigation. None of these subjective elements in

audiovisual texts is simple to mark in AD or AN and as a result of the severe time

limitations, they would mostly simply not be reflected. Nevertheless, the way in

which something is shown through focalisation has a decided impact on how the

sighted audience interprets what is shown and therefore AN should attempt to

compensate for the subjectivity. This will be done not by describing the way in which

something is shown (close-up, long shot, over-the-shoulder shot, etc.) but rather bypositioning the audience in relation to the fictional world by means of verbal markers

(through deixis, subjective interpretation, and other literary techniques that will be

discussed below).

A large part of the impact of the narrative on the viewer resides in this imaginary

positioning of the audience in relation to the story world. Simply describing or

commenting on what is shown in cases like these does not provide the blind or

partially sighted audience with sufficient narrative information to gain similar

access.9

Focalisation and subjectivity

Although most studies on focalisation in film focus mainly on the difference between

internal and external focalisation and the use of different focalisers,10 it may be

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useful for the purpose of this article to move away from such a distinction and

classification, and to rather focus on the tension between subjectivity and objectivity

inherent to focalisation in film.

Mainar (1993, p. 154) points out that ‘the pervading function of internal

focalisation is to allow the film to present to its audience a character’s reaction to

what (s)he and/or we see. Focalisation therefore gives preeminence to the process of

conveying a character’s attitude through his/her gaze. Focalisation has an attitudinal

component’. This attitudinal component clearly has to be inscribed in the AN in

order to provide access to the narrative and to position the audience in relation to the

story world.The subjectivity contained in filmic focalisation poses a problem in any form of

audio access since a mere description of or commenting on what is shown fails to

convey the narrative effect of the focalisation. However, as Salway and Palmer (2007)

indicate, AD does contain orientational markers that pull the audience into a

position of access to the thoughts of characters (an important element of

focalisation). For example, phrases containing the verb ‘to look’ in Salway’s corpus

analysis of 91 AD scripts produced in the UK ‘tend to provide information about a

character’s current focus of attention’ (2007, p. 160), and also describe characters’

attention on other characters and on events or actions. Although AD therefore does

contain markers of subjectivity, research on how this is inscribed in AD (Salway and

Palmer, 2007) also indicates that this is not done consistently. Whether such

focalisation present in AD does, however, create the narrative effect of the filmic

focalisation still has to be investigated.

Since this article posits that a key to the success of narrativisation or re-

narrativisation of film through AN may be found in the way that written narrative

(as a verbal mode) marks focalisation, it may be useful to look more carefully at how

focalisation is typically marked in written narrative.

Markers of focalisation in written narrative

In drawing the reader into the story world, written narrative makes use of a number

of linguistic markers. Focalisation (and point of view in general) in written narrative

is therefore marked extensively through language, and these markers have been the

object of a number of studies dealing with the translation of narrative fiction (see, for

example, Bosseaux, 2004, 2007; Herman, 1994; Jahn, 1996; Kruger, 2009; Levenston

& Sonnenschein, 1986; May, 1994).

But how exactly do we gain access to the minds or states of mind of characters in

written fiction? And how are we oriented towards the fictional world? In essence,

written fiction makes it possible for us as readers to imagine positions in the story

world (as imaginary vantage points) by marking these positions (physical and mental

or cognitive positions) linguistically. These markers tell us when and where an event

takes place as experienced from a particular position internal or external to the story

world or to the mind of a character or narrator. In other words, markers provide

orientation in terms of characterisation (the qualities of the character through which

we imagine experiencing events), subjectivity (interpretation of events as opposed to

straightforward or objective description, use of personal pronouns), and deixis.

The most obvious markers are the latter, namely deictic markers. Deixis marks

what is said by either characters or narrators in relation to who makes the utterance.

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As such, the use of deixis in the AN will in many cases be different from the deixis

used by a character in dialogue.

There are mainly three types of deixis: spatial, temporal and person deixis

(although some theorists also identify social and discourse deixis). According to

Bosseaux (2007, p. 31), ‘[d]eictic information is supplied principally by personal

pronouns, tense and adverbs of time, adverbs of place and other locative

expressions’. The different types of deictic markers can be summarised as follows:

� Markers of temporal deixis are evident in temporal adverbs ‘now’ and ‘then’,

as well as verb tenses.� Markers of spatial deixis can be identified in verbs such as ‘come’ and ‘go’, as

well as spatial adverbs such as ‘here’ and ‘there’.

� Markers of person deixis present clear indications of the position from which

focalisation is used to imagine/recreate the relationship between the narrative

function and the events, emotions and so forth contained in the narration.

� Markers of social deixis are less overt than the first three types of deictic

markers, but are nevertheless evident in register, language variation, slang,

profanities and curses. In film these markers would still be evident in thedialogue. They may also be used effectively to narrativise a characterised audio

narrator in certain cases.

� Markers of discourse deixis include modal adverbs, conditionals, references to

portions of the discourse in which the utterance is located, markers of voice

such as interjections, and directions for the imagining of an utterance. In other

words, markers of textuality.

Apart from deixis, focalisation in written literature is also marked in terms of

degrees of subjectivity, or in terms of degrees of access to the minds of characters.

When a narrator tells us what a character thinks or feels, that means that the

thoughts or feelings are focalised through that character.

Since film presents the fabula by showing, filmic focalisation is marked rather

differently, although markers of focalisation present in dialogue are still linguistic.

So, for example, the social deixis contained in the dialect a character speaks will

provide the audience with important information in terms of the social positioning of

the focalisation through that character.

Markers of focalisation in film

As discussed above, the non-verbal visual code constructs the narrative of the film

with WHAT is shown (the paradigmatic semiotic code), together with HOW it is

shown (i.e. filmic devices such as focalisation). We would do well, however, not to

attempt to pin down all these filmic devices and to heed the warning offered by

Deleyto (1991, p. 171) when he says: ‘Film language is so flexible that any set of rules

or classification of textual elements is always risky and become invariably

incomplete’. In other words, it may be dangerous to try to come up with a specific

list of filmic devices with corresponding linguistic markers.

Nevertheless, it is important to understand how filmic narrative works, in order

to determine the narrative effect created by filmic devices. Consequently, the HOW

(including focalisation and what Jost [2004] calls ocularisation) could broadly be said

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to be presented by means of the following angles and shots as described by Jahn

(2003, F2):

� camera angle (straight-on angle, high angle, low angle, oblique angle) (Jahn,

2003, F2.5)

� static or dynamic shots (pan, tracking or pulling shot, push-in or pull-back

shot, zoom, dolly shot or crane shot) (Jahn, 2003, F2.3)

� length of the shot (extreme close-ups, close-ups, medium shots, American

shots, full shots, long shots and extreme long shots) (Jahn, 2003, F2.2)� cuts between shots or scenes (cut or direct cut or straight cut, jump cut, and

transitional cuts such as dissolve, fade-out or fade-in, swish pan and wipe)

(Jahn, 2003, F2.4).

The HOW also concerns when what is shown is shown (the syntagmatic semiotic

code).

In the creation of the AN these filmic techniques have to be interpreted in terms

of the way they allow and even direct the creation of the story world.

As in written literature, focalisation in film is also used specifically to mark

subjectivity, often in internal focalisation where the audience is given the sense that

the story world is presented from the experiential angle of a character and not from

some objective, external angle. According to Deleyto (1991, p. 171): ‘there seem to be

four textual codes that are frequently used to establish relevant internal focalisation,

without making the focaliser disappear. These are editing, movements of the camera,

framing and mise-en-scene’.

In the case of editing, Deleyto (1991) distinguishes between the eyeline match

and the shot/reverse shot. Both of these two-shot techniques show the focaliser

externally and then the focalised, together creating internal focalisation. Deleyto

(1991) also identifies framing and mise-en-scene as filmic techniques that can be

used to establish internal focalisation. In both these cases the internal focaliser and

the object of his/her gaze (the focalised) may be visible on screen simultaneously.

Finally, Deleyto (1991) discusses camera movement, other than that in a subjective

shot, as a technique to establish internal focalisation. Here, as in editing, framing

and mise-en-scene, the filmic technique is used to position the viewer internal to the

story world.

These elements that establish (textualise) internal focalisation in film may be the

most prominent, but Deleyto (1991) also identifies lighting, colour, camera

distance, and internal sound as some of the other elements that are used for the

same purpose. Deleyto (1991, p. 176) concludes that the tension in film between

internal and external focalisation could ‘be described as the tension between the

cinema’s natural tendency towards objectivity and the centrality of the gaze in film

narration’.

All these types of shots and editing (the HOW) mark what is seen by the viewer

in some way and therefore have an impact on the way in which the viewer constructs

the fictional world. Indeed, without this aspect of the film, much of the narrative

depth is lost.In order to illustrate the argument further, I will now turn to examples from

Everything is illuminated (Liev Schreiber, 2005).

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4. Application: Everything is illuminated (Schreiber, 2005)

In the opening sequence of the film, Alex (the young Ukrainian man � played by

Eugene Hutz � as yet unidentified, who will guide Jonathan on his journey) is

introduced as the frame narrator. This is done by means of a voice-over narration by

the character in the traditional retrospective first-person mode of filmic voice-over

narration. The viewer is further introduced to the concept of the journey (the rigid

search) through the Ukraine by means of a slow, close-up pan of old photographs

pinned to a large map of the Ukraine next to the names of towns and cities. The voice

of the narrator is then made more concrete with visuals, again in close-up, of the

narrator and the pen as he writes the last words spoken before the camera slowly

moves up to reveal fragments of the words he has already spoken. The sequence

concludes with a shot of a hand holding a pen writing the name of the first chapter,

‘An overture to the commencement of a very rigid search’. As this introduction

signals, Alex may be the frame narrator, but can hardly be seen as the narrator of the

film, as becomes evident in the second sequence, which could by no stretch of the

imagination be seen as narrated by Alex. In fact, as in most films making use of a

frame narrator, this telling narrator is quickly replaced by the audiovisual

presentation of the fictional world.In this sequence (00:15�2:48) there is nothing to help anchor the focalization in

either the fictional reality or in a character as we follow the slow progress of the

camera revealing minute details of the map and photographs while listening to the

voice-over narration. The focalization could therefore be called objective or external,

a perspective that would typically be signalled in written fiction through deictic

markers, the use of third-person pronouns, etc. The fact that this filmic narrative

unfolds simultaneously with the first-person voice-over narration of Alex (from

01:40) simply means that the AN of the sequence would fulfil the role of the third-

person, objective narration done by the camera and editing (by the filmic authorial

collective) in the film.

The AD of this opening sequence is exclusively descriptive, providing a catalogue

starting with the grasshopper trapped in amber (that becomes an important symbol

in the film of Jonathan’s grandfather’s hidden past, providing the motivation for the

journey), then moving to a description of the photographs and the map. This

description serves no apparent narrative function and could be argued to contribute

very little to the exposition. Clearly the sequence merely provides an illustration,

a backdrop to Alex’s frame narrative that will gain meaning as the audiovisual

narrative unfolds. As such, the theme music, which creates a melancholy mood

(muted as it is to make the AD audible), together with the first-person frame

narration would be sufficient to establish the narrative frame without a description

of the props. I would argue that an AN of this sequence could be limited to a list of

the credits right at the beginning to keep that separate from the narrative and

minimize the disturbance of the filmic illusion that is the film. In the AD these

credits are interspersed with the cataloguing description of the props. In other words,

the AN approach would simply be an elimination of the visual focalization in favour

of a purely auditory narration in this sequence since this is all that is needed to

establish the narrative frame.

But let us turn to the more subjective focalization in the subsequent sequence

where there is no voice-over narrator.

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The opening sequence fades out into the second sequence in the film, which

begins with Jonathan in a graveyard, follows him on his journey home, shows him at

the deathbed of his grandmother, then the deathbed of his grandfather (whose grave

he just visited) when he was a young boy, and ends with Jonathan studying thependant of a grasshopper trapped in resin that also began the opening sequence in

extreme close-up.

In all of this (around five minutes of screen-time) there are exactly four verbal

utterances (and a few isolated sounds) that provide the blind viewer with iconic signs

from the fictional reality. For the rest, this audience is fully reliant upon the AD.

In order to illustrate my argument, I will now discuss the first two scenes of this

second sequence in the film, and then refer briefly to the rest of the sequence. I will

begin the analysis of the two scenes with the AD transcript as an account of what isshown (possible in this instance because of the lack of dialogue), followed by an

analysis of the focalization or how this is shown, followed by an interpretation of

what is shown and the way it is shown to determine the narrative importance of each

scene. Finally I will attempt a sample re-narrativisation of the two scenes in the guise

of AN.

The first important aspect to mention is that the changes in time are shown in

a manner that emphasizes internal focalization through Jonathan, including his

flashback in scene four and five to himself as a young boy at his grandfather’sdeathbed. In all of this the filmic narration guides the viewer by means of objective

shots showing Jonathan looking at something, followed by subjective shots showing

what he is looking at as though we are looking from his vantage point (external

focalization of Jonathan establishing his internal focalization). The objective shots

allow the viewer to imagine seeing this from particular vantage points in the fictional

world.

4.1. Scene 1 (2:48�3:10)

AD (what is shown)

Jonathan Safran Foer, a grim, solemn-faced young man of about 20, with pale skin,handsome features, and striking blue eyes behind a pair of large thick spectacles, staresat the tombstone of Safran Foer, 1921 to 1989. A gardener uses a leafblower to blowleaves across the graveyard.

The AD in this sequence therefore contains only an external perspective, even

though it is marked subjectively in the phrases ‘solemn-faced young man’; ‘handsome

features’; and ‘striking blue eyes’. This subjectivity is just that, a subjective

interpretation of the actor/character, and not a subjective perspective marking a

position in the fictional world.

Focalisation (how it is shown)

From a close-up of Jonathan’s face looking down at something, the shot changes to

a close-up of the gravestone of Jonathan’s grandfather. This is a typical shot/reverse

shot, showing Jonathan as focaliser externally and then the gravestone as focalised,

indicating internal focalisation. The subsequent shot is a medium shot showing

Jonathan from the side looking at the gravestone. This framing technique further

establishes the internal focalization showing focaliser and focalized together and

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leaving no doubt about the meaning of the first two shots. Whereas the first three

shots establish internal focalization through Jonathan, the fourth shot (a long shot of

Jonathan from behind looking at the gravestone, showing rows of gravestones with

green trees behind them, a group of mourners further away and a man with aleafblower in the foreground) establishes external focalization, thereby positioning

the viewer in relation to the fictional world as an observer. This is done by means of

the mise-en-scene.

Effect of focalization of scene (why what is shown, is shown in the way it is shown)

The editing of this first scene pulls the viewer into the fictional world in a position

that is subjectively aligned with the internal focalization through Jonathan, beforemoving the viewer to an objective position to add meaning and perspective to

the scene. This scene establishes Jonathan’s obsession with his grandfather’s life and

shows him as a serious young man. The focalization as presented through the

sequence of four shots has the effect first of bringing the viewer closer to Jonathan’s

frame of mind as he stares at the grave, and second of pulling the viewer into the

fictional world as we assume (by virtue of the camera) three observer positions

focalizing Jonathan, or three orientations (one from the position of the gravestone,

one from the side and one from the back in receding order of proximity). Thissequence could be said to establish the theme of death, brought into perspective in

the subsequent five scenes as we come to realize that Jonathan has been obsessed

with the mysterious past of his grandfather from an early age, an obsession

symbolized by the grasshopper trapped in the amber pendant.

Possible AN

In a Jewish graveyard surrounded by trees, Jonathan, a forlorn figure among rows of

gravestones, stands staring at the gravestone of his grandfather with a seriousnessbeyond his years. From up close a star of David can be seen, above the words, Safran

Foer, 1920�1989, with a Hebrew inscription carved underneath.

Motivation for AN

Whereas the AD provides more details about the actor playing Jonathan, the

narrative impact is lost in the detail. The AN, in contrast, makes use of markers of

focalization (primarily deixis) to enable the audience to situate themselves in the

fictional world, and at the same time it provides a stronger characterization whileforegrounding the fact that the Foers are Jews, a central concern of the narrative.

4.2. Scene 2 (3:11�4:07)

AD (what is shown)

A city. A train passes along a raised railway line in the distance, disappearing behindsome trees and a tall neo-classical building. Jonathan travels in the back of a car, staringglumly ahead. [credits] The car drives along a street of tall clapboard houses withverandas, then past apartment blocks. [credits] Bright white sunlight breaks through thetreetops. When it clears . . .

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Focalisation (how it is shown)

A static elevated long shot (almost a bird’s eye view) of a leafy city, bisected

horizontally by a train, is replaced by a profile shot of Jonathan inside a moving taxi

that passes through the graveyard. This is followed by a shot of the upper branches of

trees seen from a low angle (as through the window of a moving car). Next is another

profile shot of Jonathan in the taxi as it drives past suburban clapboard houses,

followed by a shot of the houses (then apartment buildings) as seen from a movingvehicle. Then, another profile shot of Jonathan in the taxi passing through the city,

followed by another shot of the upper branches of trees seen from a low angle. This

final shot gradually becomes blurred out as the gaze turns to the glaring sun.

Effect of focalization of scene (why what is shown in the way it is shown)

This slightly longer scene has a very simple narrative meaning. In the absence of

dialogue (only credits on the screen from time to time), the viewer becomes aware of

Jonathan’s state of mind as he leaves the cemetery and is driven through the city. He

stares emptily ahead, presumably mulling over his visit to his grandfather’s grave.

This scene together with the previous and subsequent scenes form the ‘overture to

the commencement of a very rigid search’ and after the subsequent scene, Jonathan’s

preoccupation with his past and his roots, which provides the reason for his trip tothe Ukraine, becomes clear. The shot/reverse shot pattern of Jonathan’s profile and

the scene the taxi passes establishes internal focalization after the initial external

focalization with the objective shot of the city. The relatively lengthy profile shots of

Jonathan interspersed with the moving shots of the scenery the taxi passes establish

mood rather than plot content. The viewer becomes aware of the fact that Jonathan

is deep in thought and that his stone-faced exterior might be hiding stronger

emotions. The focalization therefore also has a strong characterizing effect.

Possible AN

Jonathan leaves the graveyard in the back of a taxi. As he is carried along through the

leafy city past row upon row of suburban houses interspersed with apartment blocks,

his face betrays no emotion as he sits motionless, staring straight ahead, oblivious tohis surroundings. Slowly his mind empties until all that remains is the motion of the

wheels and the bright sunlight flickering through the branches overhead.

Motivation for AN

In terms of the narrative unity of the scene, Jonathan’s state of mind (which can be

gleaned from his lack of expression) is more important than the scene he passes

through. He seems oblivious to his surroundings because his grandfather’s grave is

still so fresh in his mind, and the AN evokes this with markers of subjectivity that

takes the audience into his mind.

4.3. Concluding analysis

The remaining four scenes of the second sequence can be divided into two scenes that

are at the same time level as the first two scenes, and two flashback scenes

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representing Jonathan’s memories. In these four scenes the AD varies from openly

subjective to clinically objectively descriptive. An example of the subjectivity is the

sections in the description of his grandmother in Scene 3 (4:08�6:21) marked in bold

below:

. . . an old woman lies dozing in bed. Her eyes flicker as she opens them. She takes amoment to focus them, then begins to smile at Jonathan who stands at her bedside,wearing a neat black suit and tie with white shirt, a barely perceptible smile momentarilybrushes Jonathan’s lips before his features retreat to their habitual melancholy.

. . .

The old lady’s smile fades and her expression becomes sad. She closes her eyes.

‘Grandma?’

Grandma doesn’t respond, but her chest rises and sinks as her grieving grows deeper.

This part of the AD could easily be located around the centre of the descriptive-

narrative continuum. Scene 6, in turn, provides a cataloguing of the various personal

items Jonathan collects in little plastic bags that he pins to the wall and is clearly

much closer to the descriptive extreme, in spite of the fact that the AD is inevitably

also subjective in what it chooses to mention and what to leave out.

The important thing to mention here is that these more descriptive sections of

the AD, in attempting to list as many of the visual cues as possible, result in

a fragmentation of the narrative whole. The juxtaposition of subjective and objective

creates an uneven tone in the AD that detracts from the narrative unity as the

audience has to alternate between trying to glean the significance of items for

themselves, and being given a subjective interpretation of an expression.

The transfer between Scene 5 (7:10�7:40) and Scene 6 (7:41�7:53. . .) is

particularly interesting. Here the AD is as follows:

The child [Jonathan as a boy] walks down a dark-panelled corridor and pauses outside awhite door. He turns a gold doorknob. The door opens and a grownup Jonathan entersand stares ahead at a wall which is covered from floor to ceiling with labelled plasticbags holding various personal possessions.

Apart from the fact that the setting remains the same while the time changes, this

transfer in the AD (as happens earlier between Scene 4 and 5) presents the obvious

memory or flashback in a problematic manner. Of course these events do not follow

directly upon each other, and of course this sudden transfer signifies (in the

convention of the cinema) a memory or flashback. In written narrative this fact

would be marked either by deictic markers in the form of tenses, or in some cases

by clear breaks such as chapter breaks. The point is that the audience who does not

have the benefit of the multitude of visual signs has to rely on the narration to

provide them with the necessary cues to make sense of complex narrative elements

like flashbacks.

In AN, the transfers above could be achieved by simply stating something like:

The experience of sitting next to his grandmother’s deathbed suddenly triggers a vividmemory in Jonathan of his grandfather’s death when he was a boy of around five or

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six.. . . He recalls walking down the corridor with the amber pendant in a plastic bag ashe walks down the same corridor now, the photograph of his grandfather and the girl inhis hand. He enters the same door he entered a decade before and stands looking at hiscollection.

5. Conclusion

The iconic nature of narrative film places certain constraints on the AVT modes of

audio access for blind and partially sighted audiences. This is primarily the result of

the fact that all the modes of audio access on the continuum from the extreme of AD

(objective description) to that of AN (integrated re-narrativisation) have to provide

access through a verbalisation of verbal and non-verbal visual elements, resulting in a

narrative that is fundamentally different from the original audiovisual narrative film.

The descriptive extreme of AD, in providing access mainly through a description

of the filmic WHAT, does not allow sufficient insight into the filmic HOW and WHY

to allow optimal access to narrative film. It is argued in this article that this can only

be achieved through a verbalised re-narrativisation of the visual narrative of the

audiovisual text through the device of an audio narrator supported by and integrated

with the auditory codes contained in the soundtrack. The audio narrator should

therefore be a more overtly unifying narrative instance that makes it possible for the

blind and visually impaired audience to imagine themselves in specific positions in

relation to the fictional reality. Because of the immediacy of the mode and the

presence of the iconic soundtrack, the audio narrator of AN would typically be

intradiegetic and heterodiegetic, making use of internal focalisation through

characters or external focalisation from positions in the fictional world not

associated with identifiable characters inside the story world. The article further

argues that this narrativisation can be achieved in many cases simply by drawing

upon the wealth of devices employed in written narrative such as linguistic markers

of focalisation.

By being shown the story world in a particular way in narrative film, the viewer is

inevitably positioned in relation to this world through camera and editing techniques

(that also mark focalisation). In this respect, Prince (1996, p. 32) remarks that:

A perceptually realistic image is one which structurally corresponds to the viewer’saudiovisual experience of three-dimensional space. Perceptually realistic imagescorrespond to this experience because film-makers build them to do so . . .Perceptualrealism, therefore, designates a relationship between the image or film and the spectator.

Important here is the fact that, for the blind and partially sighted audience who

does not have access to the perceptually realistic visual images, film remains iconic on

the level of the auditory codes. In the ideal conditions of a movie theatre with

surround-sound, but also to a lesser extent in other settings, this audience will

experience the film three-dimensionally in terms of their experience of three-

dimensional sound. This will include Jost’s (2004) notion of auricularisation, which

positions the audience in relation to the source of the sound. In terms of the visual

focalisation (including Jost’s auricularisation), it remains up to the audio narration

to supplement the auditory codes in such a way by verbalising the visual codes that

the audience will be able to imagine the characters, setting, actions (i.e., the story

world) and a particular imaginary angle to this world. And since this can only be

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done through the narration provided by the device of the audio narrator, the

focalisation has to be marked linguistically as in written narrative.

Merely describing the story world will not necessarily allow the audience to

imagine this world. Therefore, AN should focus on presenting the story world by

consciously drawing on literary techniques to evoke symbolically what was presented

iconically in film. In doing so, AN has to present both the narrative elements as well

as the orientational elements contained in focalisation.

Where focalisation in film is therefore marked by means of devices such as

camera angle in combination with shot changes, in AN it has to be marked

linguistically through markers of deixis or subjectivity as in a written narrative. By

imbuing the AN with these orientational markers, we could therefore make a strong

case for the fact that we now deal with an autonomous form of narration,

narrativising the filmic narrative through the use of AN delivered by means of the

narative device of an audio narrator that becomes part of the story world. This

allows the audience to gain imaginative access to this fictional reality by means of

narrative cues provided in a re-narrativisation of the filmic text. As such AN provides

a framing narrative for the narrative film as a whole.

Notes

1. This user group could be defined as any audience or audience member excluded from anyor all of the visual codes of the audiovisual text for whatever personal or physicalcircumstance. For the purposes of this article, this will primarily refer to blind andpartially sighted audiences.

2. As Chatman (1990, p. 16) states, ‘‘‘to describe’’ is different from ‘‘to narrate’’, and if wewere asked for the typical verb for representing Description, we would cite the copula (orits equivalent) rather than the more active kind of verb. We would say that the subjectwas so-and-so, not that it did so-and-so’. Chatman argues that description is as muchpart of narrative as narration (and argumentation).

3. See Van der Heijden (2007) for an in-depth discussion of the complexity of the filmsoundtrack and the importance of respecting this semiotic level when producing AD.

4. Seeing all the (speaking) characters as covert narrators (cf. Kozloff, 2000) is technicallycorrect with respect to the narrative of each individual character, but these micro-textualnarratives seldom fulfil any macro-textual narrative role � they remain framed narratorsat best.

5. Gerard Genette first introduced the term in his Narrative discourse (1980, p. 186) toaddress the confusion between ‘Who sees?’ and ‘Who speaks?’. Since then it has been apervasive presence in narratology and subsequently in film studies, although the term isby no means stable.

6. Even though Jost (2004) identifies the literary concepts of ‘point of view’ or ‘focalisation’as central to a comparative narratology between cinema and literature, he distinguishesbetween focalisation (stripped of its visual connotations, meaning subjective access to themind of characters � ‘thinking and knowing’) and ocularisation (‘perceiving’). He pointsout that although literary theorists (mistakenly) refer to the camera metaphorically as anobjective perspective, in film it can be either objective or subjective.

7. The filmic narrative origo may be defined in brief as a deictic and orientational positionand vortex that represents the centre from which and into which the narrative originatesthrough the shared activity or function of filmic narrative impostulation.Filmic narrative impostulation may in turn be defined as a presentational andinterpretive activity shared by the filmic authorial collective on the one hand (includingthe audio describer, sometimes called the ‘narrator’ of AD, and the AD and ANscriptwriters) and the audience on the other hand. See Kruger (2009) for a discussion ofnarrative impostulation in written fiction.

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8. Mainar (1993, p. 155) introduces the term ‘auto-focalisation’ because the mimetic qualityof focalisation in cinema means that ‘a certain part of the process of focalisation may becarried out by the image itself, and about itself ’.

9. This access to the story world as an activity performed also by the audience will bedefined in more detail elsewhere as filmic narrative impostulation.

10. Mainar’s (1993) argument, for example, is built around the fact that things such as mise-en-scene and the mimetic presentation of characters auto-focalise.

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