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A voice over is the voice
of a person who is out of the screen; it's a voice broadcasted by a
speaker who does not appear on the screen or is invisible as a
matter of fact in the case of radio broadcasting.
This denomination is very common in the world of audiovisual, movie
and radio productions and generally in the media business.
A voice over is heard mostly in three typical cases :
1. The speaker is out of the screen but is part of the story.
2. The narrator is on the screen but does not talk (his or her lips
are not moving)
3. The speaker is not part of the story.
Those three typical cases meet the voice-over needs of three
situations:
1. A movie is based on "a story told by..." : the entire movie or
only part of it illustrates what a character is telling : either
it's own story (autobiography)
or the story of someone else.
2. The narrator appears one the screen by does not seem to be
pronouncing the words that are being said, personnal thoughts are
being told or it is, once again, an autobiography :
the voice and the image do not relate to the same moment, there is a
time
difference between the two of them
3. The speaker has no link with the story told. The voice over has
solely an informative function. It's of course the case of
documentaries and also the case of fairy tale movies in which the
narrator explains the situation by "telling".
When does a voice-over interact?
- Simply at the begining, to set up the context (very common with
tale movies).
- In a discontinued manner : it is used to add informations from
time to time, to express opinions, to announce events...
What is the function of a voice over?
To influence the meaning of the image with two possibilities :
either it reinforces the meaning of the image and the voiceover
agrees with the image, or on the contrary, it discords with the
image and creates a distance toward the image.
A voice over can then reinforce what is shown on the screen by
adding informations, explaining what is going on on the screen
It can also introduce a discordance : for example, as a definite
comedy effect we see a character who fails in everything he tries on
the screen while his voiceover tells about his multiple successes.
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Remarks :
There can also be several voiceovers in the same movie, then the
function of each of them is to express one point of view and
help us understand and grasp the characteristics of each
character, his or her way of thinking, seing, judging...
The discordance between a voiceover and an image can raise the
issue of thuth in movies : is the image or the sound telling the
truth ?
The Off-the-screen character voice : it is considered a
voiceover since it's the voice of a character who takes part in
the situation that is talked about on the screen but is not seen.
Several interpretations are possible :
-surprise effect : a character is called, he turns his
back, the narrator of a voiceover is identified.
- "focusing" or" isolation" effect : characters are heard
around the one or the ones that are shown on the screen but
those don't matter : what matters is the character present on
the screen and his perception of what is going on around him or
her.
The idea behind the off-the-screen character voice is to suggest
a space outside the screen
and then, depending on the context, that opening outside the
screen is left to interpretation. |
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