Notes “Introduction”:

‘”Narrated films […] call upon viewer to assume complex, if not contradictory, positions.” I don’t understand what she means when she says contradictory.

“Adding voice-over narration to a film creates a fascinating dance between pose and actuality, word and image, narration and drama, voice and “voice.” I think that all of the possible layering and contrasts that can arise through this device are what makes voice-over narration such a valuable tool in cinema.

 Documentaries possessing poetry?

I’d like to see examples of the French New Wave and Latin American film that comment on Hollywood.

 The distinction between voice-over narration and thinking out loud is interestingly analyzed. It implements a close look at everyday speech patterns in stroytelling.

Notes “A defense”:

History of voice-over narration is rich and many respected directors have used it effectively.

Some object to the use of it, in spite of the thematic possiblilities it offers because these cinema purists believe that what distinguishes film from literature and theatre is the ability to manipulate images for the end of showing the drama, rather than telling the theme or subtext.

 Kozloff states that in instructive literature about scriptwriting that there still exists an anti-voice-over majority, even though, as she demonstrates through the use of strong examples, that this tool has been used effectively by respectable artists.

The films Kozloff references in the Introduction are more antiquated and I have not seen the majority. In her second essay, she cites more contemporary works and I have seen most of those.

 For my own analysis I am considering Y tu mama tambien, Amelie, but I am open to looking at more options if I think that they offer themselves more freely to the assignment.

    People such as Robert McKee bash voice-over narration by saying that, “Any idiot can write a voice-over narration to explain the thoughts of a character.”  He objected to the use of voice-over narration because he believed that film is a special medium of art because it has the capacity to convey information nonverbally.  According to Kozloff, “…some saw in speech the death of film art.”  Some people think of film as strictly a visual art, in which speech and dialog should be kept to a minimum.  They believe film should be expression without explanation.  It should “show” you, not “tell” you what’s going on in the story.  Kozloff wrote that, “…because of association with authoritative, voice of god narrators, voice-over has been charged with enforcing ideological biases, restricting the viewers’ ability to interpret onscreen events freely for themselves.”

I think Kozloff feels the need to defend voice-over narration because good narration is art.  She believes the cinema is an audio and video experience.  She defends voice-over by tracing it’s history.  At the turn of the century films were watched while a lecturer narrated.  She goes on to describe many films throughout history in which voice-over narration was in vogue and highly influential.  She uses contemporary literary theorists Jeffrey Youdelman and Bill Nichols to make the point that, “in many circumstances narration is a more forthright, honest approach to the subject matter than pretending that the represented scenes speak for themselves or that editing is noncoercive.”  She also quoted literary theorist Wayne Booth, who wrote, “‘showing’ is just as manipulative as ‘telling’.”  Voice-over narration needs to be defended because using it implies an implicit recognition of the spectator.

I am not too familiar with voice-over narration, because as Kozloff explained, it often passes the average moviegoer unnoticed.  After reading the article though, I remember hearing voice-over narration in “It’s A Wonderful Life,” “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” “A Clockwork Orange,” and “Fight Club.”  I remember that in “Y Tu Mama Tambien,” the narrator was an unknown voice that introduced the characters.  In “A Clockwork Orange,” the main character was narrating his own experience of a different place and time.  I have only seen three of the countless films she mentioned in her writing, so her writing does not intersect very well with my familiarity.  However, I am now inspired to see some of the films she mentioned.

I’m not quite sure what film I am considering for analysis.  I am searching for a film with voice-over narration that had a influence on my life.  I have never seen the film Amelie, but I am in love with its soundtrack music, so I think I will watch that one as soon as possible.

I realized I forgot to actually address the prompt…. and don’t know how to edit my posts

As I stated that Koslov stated, people object to voice over because they think it is “sloppy”, or “not real film art”. They have very rigid ideas about what film should be– that it should “[connect] Image A via editing, camera or lens movement with Image B, and the effect is meanings C, D, and E expressed without explanation.”

Koslov defends it because she feels that it is a very underrated, yet popular and important, aspect of film, and does so through the ways I listed in my previous post.

I’ve seen some movies with voice over, and watched some shows– clueless (which I am going to do for my project), fight club, About a Boy, and the wonder years. I never noticed the voice over before, but now that I think about it I think that it added to my experience and understanding.

I started watching Clueless again the other day, and already I am noticing that the narration is giving me insights into Cher’s personality that I would not gain from the visuals alone.

The first article I read, “A defense- and history- of voice over narration”, brought up some very good points, considerably better than those of her opposition, which seem to consist of “it’s sloppy” or “it’s not real art”.  She lists many movies that make good use of voice over– and not bad movies, either. Mainstream, popular movies, like Clueless, A clockwork Orange, and Fight Club. She points out that voice over can convey some things better than the movie alone, as with the post-war documentaries, and womens’ films of the 1940s. She points out, as well, that some films are so complicated that voice over is essential to even understanding what is going on, and, as a rebuttal to the “telling is manipulative and coercive” argument, she points out that showing is often just as manipulative, as the director puts a lot of energy into using the pictures to make people see what he wants them to. In my opinion, one of the most important points she brought up was that voice over gives us insight into characters that we would not otherwise fully understand. She makes three final points– that voice over can make a film more poetic, more intimate, and, in spite of what many people say, actually more conplex, as it adds another dimension or layer to the film experience.

The next article probably should have been read first, as it breaks down voice over narration into its essential parts and explains them. She begins her other article, “Invisible Storytellers” with something very important– an explicit definition of voice over. She continues with a definition of narration, broken down into 6 kinds of sentences, and delves into some things; asides, soliloquys, that can sometimes be confused with voice over, and distinctly separates them. She admits that it can be misused sometimes, but then proceeds to list many films in which voice over has added greatly to her experience.

I completely agree with all of her points, especially about intimacy and character development. Often, in movies, we see the characters actions, but voice over narration adds another level: how they think about their actions. Whether or not they struggle with them, alternative motives, etc.

We’ve discussed sound a lot in class, and I have stated I personally beleive that it is a lot more powerful than visuals, a belief that I maintain here. The insight voice over narration gives us into the characters is priceless, and every movie I have ever seen with voice over was tastefully done, and came out enhanced by it.

So I never realized how much thought could be put into voice-over narration, but I guess someone could say the same thing about a bridge built by an engineer. In the first article, “Introduction”, there was an actual definition laid out for how to categorize a movie that has voice-over narration. In the second article, Kozloff goes into the argument between the importance of using or not using voice-over narration.

People might object to using voice-over narration for a few reasons. The main one is that if done a certain way, the movie condescends to the audience because it is directly telling the viewer what is occurring rather than showing it. Some directors feel that it is less artistic. Kozloff defends the use of voice-over narration because no one else rarely does and she feels that directors use the technique all the time without expressing their appreciation. To defend it, she defines the technique and then show how it made certain movies better.

I am actually not very familiar with voice-over narration, I feel like the person in her first article that recognizes what it is once it has been defined.  I realize when it’s been used but I don’t normally make an effort of analyzing the technique.  Initially, I was enthusiastic about using “Singing in the Rain” for my sequence one writing because it was a movie specifically about voice-over and the time period when it started being used, but after reading the articles I am having second thoughts.  I’m not exactly sure what I am going to do, I’ll see if “Singing in the Rain” could bring a different perspective to the paper rather than the stereotypical movies that students have done papers on.  We’ll see.

Invisible Storytellers started off with a really nice image. Kozloff describes oral storytelling as one of the oldest, most fundamental narrations, while cinematic storytelling is the youngest technologically dependant narrations. And then to combine the two… She then goes on to define what exactly voice over narration is, describing it as the narration by somebody who is in a different time than what they’re narrating, among other requirements. The history of voice over narration was also really interesting, seeing how it developed over the years. The first article was about that, and the second one goes more in-depth, showing how it first started (broadcast radio). Even with Voice over narration spanning close to a century, there is still fierce debate over it.

Many opponents of voice over narration deride the directors who use it as lazy. Also many people argue that films are art, and thus they should be treated as it, not diluting it with vioce over narration. They say that cinema is unique in its capacity to convey images and meaning to to viewer. While this may have been true, nowadays, I think, movies are more an outlet just to relax. Instead of studying the actors actions and guessing on what it means, voice over narration can tell the viewer what the actor is thinking. Of course, that means that there would be less variety in the interpretations of the movie. And thus, opponents of voice over narration argue that it means the directors are insulting the viewers, by telling them and not letting them figure out on their own.

From her word choice here “So it has been throughout the history of filmmaking. Many have issued pronouncements against voice-over, and few have murmured in its defense” it makes me think that over the years, all anybody hears about Voice over narration is negative. Many Pronounce the faults of it, while few murmer the virtues of it. Kozloff seems to be a very big proponent of voice over narration, and is very passionate about it. Thus, she would want to do something about it; get people to know the other side of voice over narration. How it can enhance a story. Kozloff writes that voice over narration can effectively add whole new layers to a movie at could be achieved otherwise. She also says that since oral commentary is one of the most basic and fundamental narrations, doing voice over narration will only serve to heighten your experience by making it feel more “natural”

For me, think about movies I watched, I cant really come up with any movies off of the top of my head that featured Voice over narration. I suspect it is because like Kozloff said, a really fundamental type of narration. Thus, I can assume that when I watch a movie, I don’t pay attention to voice over narration. I take it in, but because oral commentary has been wired into the brian from all those millenia, I just take it in without thinking. Looking over films, I think it’d be interesting to do analysis for A Clockwork Orange

Sarah Kozloff pretty well persuaded me about the overall neatness of “voice over narration”, but I’m starting pretty well from square one as far as this sort of thing goes.. so I’m susceptible to bias. I’m also hopelessly uncultured and oblivious to the finer details of filmography, so thinking about it this intensely is new to me. (Ironically, when I first began pondering along these lines, “The Triplets of Belville” came to mind, which is actually a movie that doesn’t include any words, instead relying on images to convey the message- pretty much the opposite of a movie the utilizes voice over narration). Anyhow, I was never a fan of the Christmas Story and I accidently fell asleep before the end of “Stranger than Fiction” so I will need to expand my cinematic horizons and check some of these type of films soon.

I can see how voice over narration isn’t “noble” enough for some people.. it seems showing something without words is inherently harder than just spitting it out, but that’s no reason to completely discount it. (It’s almost like taking the elevator v. the stairs- just because I take the elevator to floor 7 instead of huffing and puffing up the stairs, doesn’t mean I’m a lesser person than the overachiever across the hall who does. And least I hope not.) From the sounds of it, voice over narration is typically overgeneralized as spoon feeding the viewer.

Anyhow, Kozloff writes like she knows what she’s talking about. So I’ll stop babbling a pick out a couple of her points I annotated.

“Regardless of how much the narrator speaks, and regardless of whether he or she ever actually recounts the action of the story, we are so familiar with the structure of the narratives that the speech act as a whole is implied by the presence of any one of the six elements.”

This quote, from the intro we read, pretty will describes my experience with voice over narration- it’s so normal, I just don’t notice it. And I think voice over narration deserves a little more respect than that.

“Probably because of its association with authoritative, voice-of-God narrators, voice-over has been charged with enforcing ideological biases, restricting the viewers’ ability to interpret
onscreen events freely for themselves. Thus, during the apogee of “direct cinema,” influential documentary theorists and filmmakers threw off voice-over as inherently patriarchal, monolithic, and coercive.”

I think I picked this quote out because it’s such an ambitious claim. It’s also an ambitious claim that I’d really like to believe. The two articles we read detail pretty throughly how voice over narration has been historically slighted pretty harshly- at least there was a good reason behind it.

“Voice-over narration is no more or less inherently valuable or cinematic then any other element of film. And when this device is well-executed, it opens up inimitable avenues for filmmakers.Voice-over is notoriously useful for efficiently conveying expositional or historical information, for instance.”

I like that this quote so closely followed the one comparing voice over narrations to the voice of god (who is forever Alan Rickman in my mind). It leads me to think, for all the other claims she’s made, the author is a pretty sensible person, and I trust what’s she’s told me in her articles. Kozloff defends voice over narration, but doesn’t raise it up on a pedestal, which gives her arguments a certain amount of legitimacy.

“From the beginning, film aficionados have felt the need to defend cinema as an art and to do so by setting it apart from other media, especially theater and literature. What makes film distinct and special, these theorists argue, is its capacity to convey information nonverbally—through mise-en-scène, editing, camera movement, POV, facial expression or pantomime.” This quote explains how some people like to say that cinema should not need a narrator in the background to explain everything. The film should be able to affect the audience nonverbally. Another point against voice-overs is explained in this quote, ” A fallback charge against voice-over narration is that using it is insulting to the audience. Voice-over narration is suspect because it is a means of “telling” rather than “showing.” “Telling” is judged as a mark of laziness and/or condescension.” This explains how voice-over narration can be perceived as insulting the audience because they can’t figure out the movie with out it being told to them.

I believe Kozloff is defending voice-over narration because she states positive comments towards voice-over narration, such as, “Voice-over narration is no more or less inherently valuable or cinematic then any other element of film. And when this device is well-executed, it opens up inimitable avenues for filmmakers.”This quote directly proves how Kozloff feels about voice-overs.

I am fairly familiar with voice-overs. I have seen several films with voice-over narrations. Kozloff’s writing intersects with my familiarity because I have never put any thought into the voice-overs and Kozloff has completely analyzed them in depth. It makes me think about how much really goes into a film.

One film that I enjoyed was, Stranger Than Fiction (2006). I feel that the voice-overs within the film were essential to the film because the entire movie was based off the narrations. In this sense, the argument about voice-overs being condescending towards an audience does not apply because the movie is completely based off of voice-overs.

    Sarah Kozloff’s Invisible Storytellers: Voice-Over Narration in American Fiction Film begins by juxtaposing cinematic storytelling with oral storytelling to introduce voice-over narration as a combination of the two: the ancient oral style superimposed on the cinematic story. She calls narrated films “hybrids” and even though she calls them “half-retrograde, half-pathbreaking, and half dissembling,” she clearly supports voice-over narration as a “fascinating dance between pose and actuality.” Kozloff goes to great lengths to define voice-over narration, formally defining it as “oral statements, conveying any portion of a narrative, spoken by an unseen speaker…” Kozloff then concedes that there are different types of voice-over narrators such as “authorial” and “character” narrators. Towards the end of the introduction, Kozloff clarifies the purpose of her work: “for my readers to hear such films with my ears.”

    Kozloff’s other text, she begins with the claim that “voice-over narration remains an integral part of moviemaking—so common that we often overlook its contribution and ignore its development.”She then presents her definition of voice-over narration much like she did in Invisible Storytellers. Kozloff then proceeds to outline the history of voice-over narration from its first appearance in 1933’s The Power and the Glory to voice-over in modern films such as Fight Club. This long history of voice-over narration begs the question that Kozloff then asks: “So why are we still debating the legitimacy of voice-over?” Kozloff then provides some of the reasons why film aficionados don’t like voice-over narration, primarily that film is unique as a storytelling device because of its ability to convey a story nonverbally. Kozloff cites film theorists such as  Jeffrey Youdelman and Bill Nichols to support her warrant that “in many circumstances narration is a more forthright, honest approach to the subject matter than pretending that the represented scenes speak for themselves or that editing is noncoercive.” Kozloff then counters the film aficionados’ critiques by offering several reasons why voice-over narration is an important and artful component of film, such as that “when [voice-over narration] is well-executed, it opens up inimitable avenues for filmmakers.” Kozloff substantiates her argument with many concrete examples from well-known films such as Apocalypse Now and Seabiscuit.

     After reading Kozloff’s texts, I have learned that one objection that many people raise against voice-over narration is that it negates film’s unique ability to convey a story nonverbally in a way that theatre and other storytelling mediums cannot. I think that Kozloff feels she must defend voice-over narration because few people rise to defend it against the many criticisms it receives and that voice-over narration serves its purposes well and efficiently conveys important information to the viewer. I find Kozloff’s texts easy to understand because I am very familiar with voice-over narration such as in A Christmas Story, War of the Worlds, March of the Penguins, Arrested Development, Seabiscuit, Fight Club, and 300. I support Kozloff’s arguments because I believe these films would not have been as powerful without the voice-over narration. I am considering analyzing the use of voice-over narration in the film 300.

 

At first in class when the topic about voice over was brought up the main things that came to mind were movies where they cut out cursing and you can totally tell the difference, music videos with the clean version of the song with original video, or even a preformance with a pre-recorded track. A few different situations came up in my mind about what there could be possibly be written about voice over and pertinent to this class.

 After reading the two pieces the topic on voice over was a lot more interesting and even more indepth than I thought possible. Kozloff made many strong points on the defense for voice over and the creativity. I did not think there was a situtation that a voice over would be a good or necessary thing but she definitly made her case. The artistic side of narration versus what I originally believed to be a cheap cop out or way to please over sheltering mothers is cleary defended in both of her pieces. 

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Enrty part II, responding to the prompt after reading the pieces for the second time:

Notes on Invisible Storytellers: Voice-Over Narration in American Fiction Films

• It is very true that the average moviegoer watches many movies without noticing voice-over narration (myself included)
• voice=medium, someone must be speaking, no text
• over= off screen, in a different time and space than the time and space of the discourse
• narration= content
• verb tense and the ways things are stated strongly affects whether is can be considered voice-over narration or not
• 6 elements very interesting
• *thought: many movies that are made after books seem to have proper voice-over narration because the books are already narrated?
• verb tense in again very particular
• I haven’t seen any of her example movies yet…
• The different types of voice-over narration and the many things that make narration not voice-over are getting complicated and rather particular/detailed

Notes on A Defense – and history – of Voice-pver Narration

• Piece makes her statements more clear and less particular about what is and what isn’t voice-over narration (while my original beliefs of what is was were incorrect this makes it more clear than the confusion of the first piece)
• History of voice-over narration was not at first by choice but by the only means of being able to produce sound
  • later becoming popular, it stuck around even when new technology was available
• Still listing many titles, I have not seen any, until CLUELESS… finally a title I recognize and  can relate to voice-over narration
• Interesting and clear distinction of “The art of cinema connects Image A via editing, camera, or lens movement with Image B and the eddect is meaning C, D, E expressed without explanation….” 
• States many quotes of critics, some are seen below in answering prompt questions but the counter arguments are helpful in persuading to her beliefs in V-ON
• My dad is in love with the movie Apocalypse Now… but again I have never seen it (voice-over tends to be in sci-fi and older movies… not so much the movie genre I tend to watch…)

Prompt:

It is clear how many different people object to voice-over narration because Kozloff quotes tons of different people’s beliefs and objections to V-ON portraying how much they do not believe it to be artisit, classy, etc. Kozloff definitly feels the need to defend V-ON because it is something she is passionate about and she is well aware by the many negative quotes how and why people do not think its affective and do not use it in film. She very thoroughly defends V-ON however, by clearly and repeatedly stating the oppositions counter arguments and then clarifying their flaws to prove her opinions/points. Examples:

• “And God help you if you use voice-over narration in your work, my friends. God help you…”
• “…using it is insulting the audience”
• showing is better than telling.. etc
• it is singular, requires no thought, imagination, etc
• “But why bother, it is just a cheap shortcut, the last resort of the incompitent.”

I was not familiar at all with voice-over narration. When I thought I knew anything about it- as you can read in my first entry above I was clearly wrong… After readind the first piece by Kozloff I was not anymore clear on what V-ON was or wasn’t- I was more confused. But then reading the second piece it became clear to me the importance of V-ON and what exactly it is… which I tried to portray in my notes.

Ideas: The Notebook, Stranger Than Fiction, Clueless, The Shinning, 300