The UK Film Council’s Cinema Access Programme can fund up to 50% of the cost of creating “soft” subtitles and audio description for UK-distributed films. IMS is one of the leading providers of this service and to date, we have helped more than 100 UK theatrical releases gain a wider audience among the millions of hard-of-hearing, deaf, partially sighted or blind people.

As the UK’s only truly independent, UK-owned multilingual media services company, IMS is committed to the British film industry. To celebrate this - and encourage British filmmakers to provide these invaluable services more often – we’ve launched a UK Indies Access Package that includes the full range of UKFC-recommended services in a seamless procedure that filmmakers and distributors simply need to plug into their release timelines.

For a simple per-minute fee that represents a 20% reduction on current standard rates, IMS will:

Telecine your print for us to work on and securely store it in our FACT-approved facility
Just deliver an exhibition print to our offices in Soho and we’ll take care of the rest. To create the subtitles and audio description, we need to work from timecoded source video. To do this, we use a Marconi Telecine machine to create a simple, low-resolution best light transfer that is watermarked and held on secure internal servers. Your print is then either securely stored until we do the laser-etching or released for pick-up, usually within a few hours. IMS has full FACT accreditation and all our work is done in-house – we never outsource - so you can rest assured that your film is always safe in our hands. Please note that we can also work from Digital Betacam masters providing they match the theatrical release reel-by-reel.

Create and spot (timecue) English subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing people
Once we have created our non-linear timecoded video source from your print, our highly qualified English mother-tongue subtitlers create a subtitle “list” that appears in sequence, each one “spotted” to an exact point on the corresponding print at which the subtitle will appear and disappear. Subtitles for deaf and hard-of-hearing people (or SDH for short) don’t just include the dialogue: deaf audiences can only fully enjoy your film if they’re aware of the music that’s played and the relevant sound effects that appear in the original soundtrack. Before delivery, everything is spell-checked and reviewed by a second subtitler to ensure top-quality subtitles.

Script and record English audio description
If subtitling is all about capturing the soundtrack, audio description is all about capturing the gaps in-between. Our audio describers start out by spotting relevant pauses between dialogue where they can fit a concise and generally objective description of what’s happening up on screen. Audio description should be like a friend whispering into the ear of a blind person, not completely take over the soundtrack. Our voices are carefully chosen (we can also provide casting prior to recording) to ensure this.

Host an in-house screening of both services for approval prior to delivery
Our multimedia screening room gives you the opportunity to come in, put your feet up and give the resulting subtitles and audio description the thumbs-up before we deliver anything.

Deliver AD and subtitles to Dolby and DTS as well as DCinema
Most releases will be playing in Dolby or DTS theatres and IMS is equipped to provide the audio description track and subtitle files in the format required by both. We can even export subtitles as XML for Digital Cinema presentations

Arrange laser-etched prints
The UKFC guidelines do specify two laser-etched reels to be supplied to cinemas that don’t have soft subtitling facilities (where the subtitles are optionally shown on a separate screen below the main exhibition screen). If you do require this service, just send us an extra exhibition print and we’ll get both laser-etched by our partner studio and returned to you in time for release.

Other services
In addition to the above, we can quickly re-version subtitles and AD for home entertainment releases at an all-inclusive per-minute rate. This is for TIF format subtitles for all authoring systems and a mono WAV audio description file. If you’d like the audio description to be fully stereo mixed, we can provide additional pricing depending on sound studio time required. We can also re-version and originate the same services for television broadcast in the UK and abroad, including NTSC closed captions.

IMS has a fully staffed translation and new media team that can provide subtitling and voice services in all languages on all media, no matter what the combination.

For pricing information or if you would like a tour of our facilities, call 020 7440 5400 or e-mail ukindies@ims-media.com.