Screenplay Voice Over Sucks

Voice Over Sucks

I thoroughly discourage my students from using voice over (a.k.a. V.O.) in their projects. There are a couple excellent reasons for this.

 

General rule of thumb, V.O. in modern features is a dead giveaway there's bad storytelling ahead. The age-old film-writing commandment "Show me don't tell me" goes straight to the heart of this. Voice over is largely a cheat, a crutch, a painful admission of defeat by writers and/or filmmakers that they don't have the skill necessary to tell their stories without holding the audiences' hand and talking them through everything play-by-play. By spelling everything out in the most ham-fisted way possible -- literally telling you what they want you to think or know or feel -- the movie's authors become mouth-breathing strangers in the multiplex, anxious chatterboxes who won't shut the fuck up, living in rightful fear of their images failing to sell the story as hoped.

 

Legit Film Noir of the '40's and '50's offers one of the few historical exceptions. This genre elevated V.O. to stylistic high-art, giving audiences a sneak peek into the reeling psyches of taciturn post-WWII tough guys loath to say much about their feelings at all. Noir-era voice over allowed viewers to bear witness to the existential struggles and complex psyches of these troubled characters from the inside. It helped audiences navigate these largely unsympathetic protagonists' waking nightmares alongside them, hell, as one of them, bringing empathy and a sharper understanding to the myriad of moral dilemmas confronting these chiaroscuro loners.

 

Just as importantly, this device was used to enhance and deepen the film's text -- not simply explain away plot gaffes, excuse thin character development or make ridiculous and implausible events sound somewhat less ridiculous and implausible. V.O. didn't serve Film Noir as a crutch, it became a fascinating key component, a sublime accoutrement, if you will, of the story itself. Wikipedia calls this era "The Golden Age of First Person Narration". I couldn't have defined it any better myself.

 

Obviously, there are some brilliant modern exceptions to V.O. as disingenuous cheat -- Taxi Driver's Travis Bickle, The Usual Suspects' Verbal Kint, Jack Manfred's aspiring novelist in The Croupier, among select others spring to mind; all residing within the one one-thousandth of the top one percent ever to utilize the device.

 

Unfortunately -- and I'm being extremely polite here -- the lion's share of today's cinematic voice overs sag woefully shy of such lofty storytelling. During the contemporary/post-iPod era V.O. is primarily used as narrative caulking to disguise, patch and explain away substandard material which most likely shouldn't have been put into production given its present state.

 

Being a younger/aspiring writer the odds are pretty good you haven't quite reached the Taxi Driver/The Usual Suspects level yet. With twenty-plus years and a bunch of big league scalps under my belt, I'm still not at that level and have zero issues coming correct and owning it. Writing true God-tier V.O. is hard fuckin' work and not every writer will master the skill despite the best of intentions.

 

More deeply, reliance on V.O. can seriously stunt a writer's storytelling growth. Forcing yourself to come up with interesting ways of telling your tale visually and through fresh action is ultimately what will make you good at it. Think logically -- is there any skill out there you can truly master without practice? When a Mr. Olympia contestant wants to build muscle mass, what does he do? (No, I mean after the anabolics, blood doping and creatine shakes.) Very good, my fair-haired friends -- big-assed homeboy hits the gym. So how does your skinny ass expect to build the monstrous screenwriting biceps, quads and delts needed to compete if you won't do the heavy lifting your discipline requires?

 

Don't think V.O. fools anyone. It doesn't. Quality execs filter the shit out to see if your story holds water without it. And God Forbid your scripted V.O. isn't spectacularly compelling, because if it drags or reads awkwardly, it could risk hogging the spotlight, becoming the very focus of things, and working against you by killing what otherwise might have been a pretty kick-ass script.

 

Once again, repeat after me -- "Show me, don't tell me." If there's a better general guide to keeping your script's storytelling on point and in check, I haven't come across it. Remember -- you're not writing a podcast, radio skit or Off Broadway show. Motion picture is the most spectacular visual medium that's ever existed, the screenplays accompanying them the most precise visual writing ever practiced. Your script needs to reflect those dynamics at all times.

 

Heard the old chestnut "a picture's worth a thousand words"? If somehow you missed that one, let me bring you up to speed --

 

Once more, from Wikipedia -- "A picture is worth a thousand words" refers to the notion that a complex idea can be conveyed with just a single still image. It also aptly characterizes one of the main goals of visualization, namely making it possible to absorb large amounts of data quickly."

 

That's precisely what movies themselves are all about. Thinking in pictures. Using the full weight of the visual to create an impact far exceeding what the spoken word alone can accomplish.

 

This is what all good screenwriters shoot for. Do I even have to say it's what you should be aspiring to in your own pages as well?