Fall Series 2024 dates announced soon. Stay tuned!
Danielle Sellwood is a filmmaker, working specifically with women, the disabled community, and older people to tell diverse stories of sport and adventure. Alongside her filmmaking, she is an expert in making content and film accessible via open captions and audio description. Before working in film, Danielle spent many years as a designer and trend forecaster in the sports industry. In 2008 she co-founded Sportsister.com, a trail-blazing sports website for women and directed visual campaigns at Women’s Sport Trust (WST), helping create lasting change in the representation of female athletes.
This speaker was part of VIMFF 2024 which is now over.
There’s been a big shift in adventure films over the last decade away from what could be described as “white man climbs mountains” action videos to an inspiring range of diverse stories of people, places and adventure that better represent the diversity that is all around us. This shift addresses some of the lack of representation on screen, which is great, but begs a question: Can everyone access the films?
Some of these films tell stories about people from the disabled community and include protagonists who are D/deaf and/or blind/visually impaired. The challenge is that many of these films are not accessible to either the protagonists themselves, or the audiences that they’re trying to inspire.
So, what can filmmakers do? In this workshop presentation, Danielle, Poppy and Tim will explain why it’s important, how to start making your films accessible and the practicalities for production houses and brands.
