After all, seeing knights fight over treasure is much more interesting than watching Christopher Plummer tell the story in its entirety. This kind of voiceover is known as diegetic, meaning that it has a root in the action of the movie and isn’t disembodied (even if we can’t see the speaker at all times).īen’s grandfather tells the story of the Templar’s Treasure while the audience gets to see what he’s talking about on the screen in a series of flashbacks. For a perfect example, check out this clip from the beginning of National Treasure. It’s a little hard to explain in writing, but it’s something done in movies and TV all the time. This is where voiceover comes in.Ī character can start telling a story in a scene, and then the screenwriter can continue that story in voiceover while showing what happened in a flashback. ![]() It’s one thing to hear a character tell a story, it’s another entirely to see that story play out on screen. So it only makes sense that the characters in movies we watch tell stories too.īut the thing about telling stories is that it’s not very visually engaging. We humans tell stories all the time - it’s sort of our thing. You can download the script here if you want to see what this looks like. The audience never learns the identity of this all-knowing narrator, but he is an integral part of the experience of the movie. (500) Days of Summer features one such third-person omniscient narrator. Most often the non-diegetic narrator is a character somehow involved in the story, but every once in a while, a movie comes around that has a true third-person narrator. We never see him speak any part of this narration on-screen, but we know it’s him because he’s the protagonist in the story. Non-diegetic voiceover functions the same on the page as it does on the screen - it allows someone to impart information about the story without interrupting the action of the story itself.įor example, in About Time, Tim leads the audience through the story with non-diegetic narration about his family, career, search for love, and time-traveling abilities. This type of voiceover is non-diegetic, meaning that it has no root in the action that takes place in the story. In the same way, some films feature a narrator who speaks to the audience through voiceover but never appears on screen. Some novels have third-person narrators - narrators who aren’t involved in the story but have enough knowledge of the goings-on of the story that they’re the ones telling it to the reader. To see how the voiceovers in Fight Club were written, check out the script here. It’s actually because of the voiceover that the big twist at the end of Fight Club comes as such a gut punch - we think the Narrator is telling us the truth because he’s speaking with authority in the first-person, but in actuality, he’s an unreliable narrator. This voiceover defines the tone of the entire movie and is one of the reasons it’s so memorable. Throughout the story, the audience is treated to a near-constant stream of interior monologue narration from the Narrator. ![]() ![]() Using voiceover as interior monologue means that you can reveal a character’s inner thoughts, feelings, and opinions without having them voice those things to the other characters in the story.Ī great example of this kind of voiceover can be seen in the movie Fight Club. ![]() But voiceover allows you to do just that. Unlike novelists, screenwriters can’t typically get into their characters' heads. So let’s look at three different ways you can use voiceover in your script. While some screenwriters are vehemently against it, if used well, voiceover can actually enhance a story in interesting ways. Voiceover is one of the most hotly debated topics in the screenwriting world, probably because there are multiple ways it can be used. To use voiceover… or not to use voiceover.
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