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