WOODLAND HILLS : Narration Brings Movies to the Blind

Thanks to Helen Harris, blind moviegoers may not stay in the dark much longer.

Harris, head of Retinitis Pigmentosa International in Woodland Hills, has come up with the idea of TheatreVision, a process that allows the blind to receive film narration through a headset.

The invention will officially debut tonight at a special showing of the smash movie “Forrest Gump” at Paramount Studios in Hollywood.

“It brings back the memory of seeing,” said Harris, 58, who first got retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative, hereditary eye disease, when she was 8 years old. She became completely blind seven years ago.

“I can walk into the theater with a sighted person and watch the movie my way,” she said.

Harris first thought of the concept a few years ago after friends stopped inviting her to movies because they got tired of trying to explain everything to her and annoying others in the audience. She became especially frustrated in 1993 when everyone raved about “Schindler’s List.”

Nobody would take her. Enough was enough.

She met with Sherry Lansing, head of Paramount Pictures, who suggested “Forrest Gump” be used as TheatreVision’s first film.

Harris then enlisted the help of Dodger broadcaster Vin Scully, who provides the narrative. Scully describes the action in the film when there is no dialogue.

“The blind person is still getting all the verbal communication,” Harris said.

Harris said she and a friend wrote the narrative, and that Digital Theater Systems in Westlake Village provided a way to synchronize the sound with the movie.

She estimates it would cost theaters about $6,000 apiece to install the technology for TheatreVision.

Her organization is trying to raise money to help theaters across the country, Harris said, and though it may cost millions of dollars, “it would let 10 million people have access to motion pictures.”