Let's Talk Script

[Ser_not_appearing_yet]

Really? Guess you don't like film noir, Trainspotting, Taxi Driver, the original Blade Runnner (not the directors cut) etc.. But I understand, it's personal preference. :)

I didn't mean a narration. I just never cared much for the internal snippets mid-dialogue (books are another matter). Its not something I'd lose sleep over, just don't feel its needed. I like to read these emotions from the acting.

FYI Taxi Driver is my favourite film of all time. :P

[Brude]

I'm curious, but in your experience do script readers / producers usually subtract from the page count because of V.O.s? It seems to me a V. O. would rocket the page count.

Page count is page count. If there is V.O. there is supposed to be images being conveyed in the Scene Action on the page along with it. The V.O. is basically just going to replace the dialogue that would have been there, anyway, so it works out about the same. Figuring out the length of a movie based on the pages is more of a rough guide than a final determining factor, especially if it's a movie with a fair bit of action. If it's very talky, then it's going to usually hew closer to the page count. Sometimes a screenwriter will say in a script:

Bob and Joe have a knockdown, drag-out fight. Bob wins.

But when the director gets a hold of of the movie, that single line on the page is turned into a three minute fight scene.

Guess it depends on whether the V.O. really adds and is important to the story. If it makes sense to keep it I'd suggest continuing, but if it's more a script trick you like (but isn't necessary to the story) then cut it. Yes, it will be some work though, sorry. :|

I've written about five scripts for school movies - I never, EVER, use VO for anything other than phone calls, and even then, I prefer not to use them.

Unless it's absolutely impossible to convey it any other way, do not use a Voice Over. There are, of course, exceptions, but rare ones.

V.O. is hard to do well, and when it's bad it can be especially terrible. When a movie does it right (like several of the Coen Bros. movies - Raising Arizona, especially, Taxi Driver or Fight Club), it can be magnificent. Otherwise the general consensus is to not go there. A lot of script readers in Hollywood have an automatic knee-jerk reaction against V.O., especially if it's coming from a writer they don't know. If you are trying to sell your first script in Hollywood, don't do V.O., it just gives a lot of readers/D-girls and D-boys/etc. a reason to say "no" and get on to the next of eight scripts they need to read that Tuesday.

I'm not trying to sell my script to anyone, I'm working on an indie to shoot myself, so the rules are pretty different. Know your venue, know what you are doing, read a LOT of scripts and see what does work and doesn't work and how and why. Rules can be broken, especially in the indie world, but if you break them know why you are doing it. I just re-read "Fight Club" the other day to compare my V.O. to that and to sort of recall how Jim Uhls uses it. Is it as good? No. If I really work hard on it can I get it in the same vicinity? I think I have a shot.

[Ser Greguh]

Voice-over is one of those rules that most screenwriting classes will tell you to avoid. That doesn't mean that they're right, and anyone with half a brain and a rudimentary knowledge of cinema can come up with examples aplenty of excellent films that feature voice-overs, but the reason they tell people in general to avoid it is not incorrect. It's very often a crutch, a lazy device that writers will use to convey their thoughts straight from their brain to the potential viewer's ears without going through the work of showing why that character is thinking what they're thinking to begin with.

VO is generally at its strongest when it exists devoid of context - that's why movies can get away with opening narration moreso than in other places, and when it makes some kind of pithy point that there's no other way to tell. One of the better lines of voice-over, for my money, is in American Beauty, in the opening narration where we close in on Lester in the shower and it becomes clear that he's masturbating: "Look at me. Jerking off in the shower. This will be the high point of my day. It's all downhill from here." Or, describing his wife: "You see how the handle of her shears matches her gardening clogs? That's not an accident."

For my money the best VO in film belongs to Charlie Kaufman's Adaptation, which exists as a kind of recursive infinite loop on the process of screenwriting. In the movie, the main character (named Charlie Kaufman), who is a screenwriter, attends a McKee screenwriting seminar where a voiceover monologue is interrupted with McKee bombastically stating "...and God help you if you use voice-over narration!" Later, a voiceover monologe interrupts itself with "Wait ... that's voiceover. McKee would not approve."

[fitheach]

Voice over only works if you only have one narrator. Doing VO for all the POV characters would be absolutely awful.

:agree:

The poster who (m?) suggested having Roy Dotrice as a narrator is more of what I had in mind. I agree that V.O. can be done badly, but when done right we get Goodfellas.

It's not a make or break for me if not done.

[Ser Greguh]

Although I agree that having VO for every character would be awful (and I would hate to see VO anywhere in this series), Goodfellas expertly breaks the mold with multiple narrators. And it is, of course, freaking amazing.