Hi Jonathan. How would you describe your business and what it does?

I run a media production company called jonathandunn.net Media Production. I specialise in film production, which in itself covers camera, editing, directing, writing and producing. I also offer services in photography, graphic design, motion graphics, animation, music production, podcast production, sound design and web design. I’ve found a specialism in working with dance and theatre companies, but also collaborate with other companies and sectors.

How did you find out about the Clwstwr funding?

My project partner Jack Philp, who was familiar with Clwstwr, told me about it.

What inspired you to apply for funding?

I was particularly attracted to how Clwstwr focuses more on R&D and exploring the process rather than a specific outcome. I felt this environment would allow me to be more creative and explore more interesting ideas than if I were constrained to produce an end product.

Explain what you were aiming to do in your application

The central idea was to see if I could find a way to make dance on film more accessible, specifically to a blind and visually-impaired audience. I wanted to test whether, if you considered a variety of different outcomes at the start of a production, you could create more specialised output to reach wider audiences with only a minimal increase in production.

For this project, we consulted with representatives from the blind and visually impaired communities to consider how a short dance film could be made more accessible to them. By integrating those variations into the production of the film, we were able to offer the audience ways of constructing the film themselves to cater to their individual needs or preferences.

Variations ranged from adjusting the brightness and saturation, including an audio described introduction, a choice of different audio descriptions for the piece itself, editing variations (where the audience could choose if they wanted more close up shots, more wide shots etc.) and control over the sound mix. By considering these assets at the start, we only needed to increase production time/cost by about 10% to increase the output by up to 800%.

The intention behind this entire process was to allow more people to access a piece of dance and be able to discuss it on the same level as each other, no matter how they’ve accessed it. By ensuring these considerations were taken at the beginning of the process, it meant that the artist’s intentions for the work wouldn’t be skewed or diluted, and their voice could be heard no matter how the audience wants to construct the edit.

How much funding did you receive?

£5,000

Describe the process you’ve been through since receiving the funding

The most important stage was the initial stage, where we consulted with a selection of representatives from the blind and visually impaired communities to discuss their access requirements and their specific personal preferences for how they digest media. We also talked about how we could translate certain themes from the work that relied on visual storytelling into a form that would resonate with a blind or visually impaired audience.

Taking these considerations into effect, we planned the shoot of the short dance film with a number of identified variations, including shooting additional material for a visual/audio introduction to the dancers, the space, the theme, the costume and the lighting. We shot in a variety of formats to ensure malleability when it came to the edit. For example, shooting in a higher-resolution meant that I could enable shot-distance customisability without having to shoot at a range of proximities.

When we’d gathered the material, we brought it to our blind/visually-impaired representatives to talk about how best to construct a system to allow the audience control over their custom built edit of the film. We explored several existing systems to see if we could adapt them to work for this type of workflow, but we found that nothing that currently existed was compatible with screen readers, thus making it inaccessible to our target audience.

I decided to instead build a prototype of a system that could be developed further with more funding at a later date. This took the form of a simple webform where you would request your custom edit. I would then manually put it together and upload it for the user. We circulated it to our representatives, who circulated it to other members of the community to request a series of custom variations. We sent out a feedback form to gather data on how successful this process was. We also hosted a stand at the Clwstwr showcase event where people were able to request a variation on the floor and see how the process worked.

What would you say were the main outcomes of the R&D?

The main outcome from this project was the feedback that we received on the concept. The data came back with resounding positivity. Whilst the system wasn’t ideal, as it was still gating access to the content behind a third-party (in this case, me putting the edit together manually), the ability to take ownership of an edit knowing that you were still getting a ‘true’ version of a piece of work left many audience members feeling empowered.

There also appeared scope to develop this concept further to cater to other accessibility variations, but also a desire for this type of system to be in place for people without specific accessibility requirements as well. It showed a desire for audiences to have more control over how they consume content, depending on their tastes, requirements or their changing mood. If they can have control over these factors, then they were more likely to engage with the content instead of passing it by if they didn’t feel a particular relevance to it.

Where do you think you’ll go next, having carried out the R&D?

The potential for this concept is huge. In networking with some other Clwstwr projects, I was able to see a similar desire for this user-controlled content approach, and I feel that the industry is heading in that direction, especially by harnessing AI-powered software to do the heavy lifting of producing variations without manual consideration.

One of the biggest positives that came out of this project was seeing how easy it is to incorporate different accessibility options into a final product by considering them at the start of the process. So many accessibility options are only applied as an after-thought or as a compromise. I hope that this is just a small example of how production companies can consider these things to make richer, more accessible content without compromise.