Another open forum question – from Ryan H.:
Narration is generally considered a no-no in screenwriting, but some films have made magnificent use of it (A CLOCKWORK ORANGE, for one). Do you have any tips as to when and how to use narration?
There does seem to be a conventional wisdom in Hwood against narration. My guess is execs and producers think it can represent sloppy writing per the axiom, “Show it, don’t say it.” However consider this list of movies:
A Clockwork Orange
Forrest Gump
The Shawshank Redemption
Fight Club
Apocalypse Now
Sunset Blvd.
Double Indemnity
Trainspotting
American Beauty
Stand By Me
Platoon
The Big Lebowski
To Kill A Mockingbird
Lolita
Babe
A Christmas Story
Each of these movies uses narrator V.O. – and that’s just a list off the top of my head.
So what can we glean from this list?
1. When the narrator ties together a story that takes place over a long span of time. Movies that make several time-jumps and cover several years — like Forrest Gump and The Shawshank Redemption — can benefit from a narrator V.O. Hell, they probably wouldn’t work if they didn’t use narration.
2. When the narrator provides a distinctive personality (read: entertainment value), ala The Big Lebowski and A Christmas Story. The narrators in these two movies offer some of the most entertaining moments along the way.
3. When the narrator can help to establish a mystery upfront like American Beauty and Sunset Blvd. In both cases, the narrator foretells in the movies’ opening scenes the Protagonist’s impending death.
Other than that, when I look at that list, I see movies where the narrator offers deep insight into the Protagonist’s inner world, revelations that might not be made as well through action and dialogue — Platoon, Fight Club, A Clockwork Orange, Trainspotting, Apocalypse Now, Lolita — each a deep journey into dark psychological places, where the narration is both revelatory in content and evocative in tone.
As it is, even without a narrator V.O., scripts have a Narrative Voice, evidenced in the language of scene description, the nature of scene transitions, the pacing of scenes, and so on. For more on that, you can go here for an article I wrote for Screentalk magazine.
I guess the question boils down to whether your story benefits from taking that Narrative Voice, which is invisible in most scripts, and giving ‘life’ to it in the form of V.O.. Given Hwood’s apparent disaffection for this narrative device, you’d have to have a genuinely compelling reason, like those listed above, for using narration.
What does everybody else think? And what other notable movies use narration?
UPDATE: Here is a comment from one of my students in the most recent online screenwriting course I took, her recollections of what Robert McKee had to say about using narration:
Can you strip out every bit of VO and still understand the story? Is the script moving without the VO? Coherent? Is the plot the same? If the answer is yes to all of these, then you can keep the VO. That means you aren’t relying on VO to tell/clarify/explain the story, but are using the VO (if well-written) to add new depth, perhaps even contrast, to the story. You are using VO as an effect element of characterization and world-creation, not as a crutch to keep a lame plot hobbling along.
Perhaps that’s the easiest way to decide: By using narration V.O., are you adding something of value to the story, not just relying on it to facilitate a “lame plot?”
[Originally posted 10/26/09]
You mentioned Sunset Boulevard, but I wanted to add other Billy Wilder films like Sabrina and The Apartment that have a voice over narrator to introduce the film.
Don't forget Taxi Driver.
The entire genre of Film Noir is filled with voice over narration examples. These probably fall under the "…deep journey into dark psychological places, where the narration is both revelatory in content and evocative in tone."
Which brings up Blade Runner. There are two versions (at least) of this script and film, one with narration and one without. A little research and study of these versions would probably give some insight into how/when/why narration works and doesn't work.
Thanks for the response, Scott and co.
I've seen redundant narration before (Hel brings up the theatrical cut of BLADE RUNNER). I suspect that Snyder's 300 would have been a more striking experience had they dropped that awful narration, allowing the visuals, which were often quite striking, to speak for themselves.
But I've also seen films where the narration seemed to elevate the film, and not always in the obvious ways. THE ASSASSINATION OF JESSE JAMES BY THE COWARD ROBERT FORD uses narration as a kind of rambling force that offers us strange insights into the characters, deepening our experience. The closing narration may be some of the most beautiful writing I've encountered in a film (whether it's lifted directly from the source material, or came from the pen of writer/director Andrew Dominik, I can't say):
There would be no eulogies for Bob, no photographs of his body would be sold in sundries stores, no people would crowd the streets in the rain to see his funeral cortege, no biographies would be written about him, no children named after him, no one would ever pay twenty-five cents to stand in the rooms he grew up in. The shotgun would ignite, and Ella May would scream, but Robert Ford would only lay on the floor and look at the ceiling, the light going out of his eyes before he could find the right words.
Wow.
Another thing worth mentioning is that I bet a lot of movies with voiceover only get it in the post phase. When movies don't make any sense in production that is really the only way to fix it.
Days of Heaven and Badlands both rely on narration to tell the story; in fact, I'd argue more of the storytelling happens through narration than through dialogue. The narration shares key facts and feelings with us, while the dialogue is more atmospheric.
Of course, any screenwriter who'd dare imitate Terence Malick is taking a hell of a risk.
I think the bottom line is that narration is a very easy crutch for screenwriters to use to cover up bad or insufficient storytelling in other areas, and that's why so many people warn against it. But if you can execute it well, a reader would be foolish to fault you for it.
I think this 'no narration' rule came about because trainers don't want their students to use the VO as an expositional crutch, a trap that novice writers can easily fall into.
Flashbacks also used to be a big no-no with writing teachers for the same reason but now seem to be accepted practice.
Or is the flashback now overused?