Experimenting with AD for in house TV series THUIS. An example from Flanders

Abstract

Audio description (AD) for television holds specific challenges. This article analyses the genre-bound features of the Flemish TV series Thuis, a new hybrid soap, and explores the options for tailor-made AD guidelines to optimise its AD process and product. It suggests turning some of the series' more mechanical features, typical of soaps, into advantages for the AD scriptwriting process, thereby allowing for a greater systematisation of AD scriptwriting and a more efficient exploitation of the series' website. It is expected that the AD strategies developed for this very specific Flemish context may be adaptable to other TV series with similar genre-specific features. In fact, as is pointed out in the conclusions, some of the suggestions made in this article regarding the use of TV websites are already being implemented.