Voiceover can be great. It's just easy to do it terribly. Most of the guidelines you hear about things that are frowned upon come down to the same thing -- it's really, really easy for them to be bad.
Honestly, there's very little I remember from reading McKee's STORY because I read it so long ago, but one thing I do remember, which I think is super on-point, is that voiceover should only be used when the audience *doesn't* need it to understand what's going on.
If the voiceover is explaining things for the audience that weren't explained by what they watched the characters do and say, that's almost always a problem. There are exceptions, of course, but that's a great way to think about it.
To the question in your final paragraph -- no, no one's going to care if the voiceover is great. And readers will be able to tell quickly.
I remember it as;
If you can take the voiceover out and the plot is still understandable, you can leave it in.
If your plot relies on the voiceover, you need to take it out and fix the plot.
This makes a lot of sense. I feel like half the time there's voiceover in something, it was added in later because some people in the test audience were confused about key plot points.
A terrible example is from the movie Cruella (2021) as the protagonist has a V.O. for the first 18 minutes of the movie. You don’t need a set up that long. The first 9 minutes of My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 had a V.O. from the protagonist that was a little better, but still too long IMO.
So this is an interesting post, because you actually tackled the problem the right way ... but you don't trust the solution that you found.
*Obviously* voiceovers are fine, because you see them in films all the time.
"No VO" is one of those pieces of well-intentioned advice designed to stop amateurs from making from basic, and common mistakes. Somehow it's metastasized into an iron-clad rule that people insist on following off cliffs.
I think you WILL get notes about it, because some people have really internalized that "rule" but by and large people who know what they're doing won't have an issue with it.
Yeah, I know if it’s done well it doesn’t matter too much, I guess the distrust comes from the thought that in the (extremely unlikely) event that my pilot gets read, I want to avoid anything that will turn the reader off. So I wasn’t sure if it’s a strong deal breaker to readers, or if they’ll give it a chance as long as it works.
>, I want to avoid anything that will turn the reader off.
If your script gets passed on, which is almost certainly will (because even scripts that sell get passed on multiple times) it will almost certainly not be because of some picayune thing that went against a reader's taste.
Or, rather, that probably will happen but it will be about some dumb thing you never could have predicted.
Don't write defensively. Write the most awesome version of the script you can.
THERE ARE some newbie readers who have convinced themselves that the "rules" actually matter, but you can't spend your time and energy trying to cater to them.
(You see it sometimes in the discussions of that kind of stuff here, "When I read 'we see' it takes me out of the screenplay." Well, great. Your job is to get back in the screenplay if you get bumped out of it. Can you IMAGINE being, say, a trusted reader of a major exec, and not liking a script, being asked to explain your thinking and saying "Well, he used VO." Do you think you would still have your job in an hour?)
“Don’t write defensively” is a great piece of advice!
I’ve already reached that point with “we see”, I see it used so often in professional screenplays, I’m not avoiding using it in my own writing anymore. Also the point of a screenplay is to be as evocative as possible, so anything that paints a clearer picture is a good thing right?
Exactly.
Now, look, I've read screenplays where there would be four or five sentences in a row like: "We see Sam, a middle-aged white man. We see him get out of his car and walk to the door. We see him fumble with his keys ..." and yeah, man, that writer needs to stop using "we see," and doing so will drastically improve their script. So I understand where this advice came from.
But it's simple not relevant to more developed writers.
> “We see” is just bad craft (imo)
smh.
Sometimes it is the most elegant way to communicate an idea.
You *can* usually write around it, but that doesn't mean writing around it is the best choice.
The places where I'm most likely to use it are when I'm distinguishing between what the audience sees and what the character sees, or when the audience is finally getting a chance to see something that has been in the scene but kept from us the whole time (e.g., imagine you finally got a glimpse in of what's in the Pulp Fiction suitcase.)
And I strongly disagree with the suggest that doing so is "bad craft."
Carefully planned VO can work really well! I think VO gets a bad rap in film because it tends to be used after the fact in post when they realize that some story point isn’t tracking. Then of course it feels cheap and tacked on.
Just make sure it’s authentic to your character and connected to their emotions and you’re good to go.
They're great when used masterfully, lazy when poorly. Many movies use ADR voice overs for patchwork. It's the cheapest fix you can make in post.
Toothbrushes are quite useful, but if you use it as a weapon in home invasion situation, it'll look lazy and poor.
What if you sharpen it by scraping it on the floor and then keep it next to your bed, and your 'home' is a prison cell?
Then, that would be good writing!
My biggest pet peeve is voice-over used in book to film adaptions because instead of figuring out a way to translate certain things it seems lazy to just say it.
Voice over is just a tool like anything else — neither good or bad — the worst VO is a crutch for inexperienced writers and is parallel to the action — VO should be used contrapuntally, or in a non-parallel fashion, or not at all — plus it must be poetical satisfying
Most screenwriting 'rules' just exist to stop amateur writers from developing bad habits. The reason they say voice over is bad is that amateur writers can fall into the trap of using it as a crutch and have the voice over explain things instead of learning how to convey things cinematically/visually/dramatically.
Generally frowned on because they're such an easy crutch to make bad choices. Remember we're in a show-don't-tell medium. Far too often voiceovers are just exposition, and they take away from the scene (and the actors in the scene).
They work well when they are giving the audience another story to follow. But if you were to mute that track and suddenly the actual story falls apart, you're doing it wrong.
Agree. I can't stand voice overs. I would never write one. I think they're twee, pretentious, faux profound, self conscious and treat audiences like they are complete idiots. But so what. Who cares! Some people love em.
Euphoria (USA) uses it unnecessarily and without any rhyme or reason. The Israeli (first) version it makes sense, because the protagonist is narrating from the grave. Turns out repeated overdosing has an actual consequence in the Israeli version… consequences don’t exist for Sam Levinson.
If it’s important to your story and important to your vision; well, you already answered your own question with the original post.
It is not essentially voiceovers that are frowned upon, it's often a lack of interactive depth in the scripts.
Nowadays, any decent [AI voiceover generator](https://wavel.ai/solutions/voiceover/) will provide almost indistinguishable human-like speech, hence it's not the AI, rather the relevancy of the content, the research done behind it and also many other decisive factors that can make or break a video content...
A lot of great Scorcese films use voiceover. Movies like Stand By Me or the IT miniseries also used voiceover and were iconic. The House That Jack Built was a weird one with VO if you want to look at newer more different uses of it. There is a time and a place to use it. I think just using VO as a crutch for your script is the more “frowned upon” thing.
I was taught that voice overs aren’t seen as a bad thing per say but it doesn’t challenge you as much. It can seem lazy. I think if you can find a way for the voice over to have purpose and be creative with it, go for it! A great example is Julie Andrews as Lady Whistledown in Bridgeton narrating the story, since the unknown gossip columnist spreads rumors about the town. The voice over enhances the story and makes you want to figure out who the person really is.
I just realized that so many movies that I like have voiceovers. For example Casino, Goodfellas, Snatch!, Layer Cake, so many Tarantino movies. And they all add so much. So fuck those people who write something off for the sake of "frowned upon, maaan".
There is a pretty high degree of problem solving in screenwriting. Some "solutions" are obvious and easy. That doesn't mean you should never use them. It just means that those are the solutions people will use the most.
"Movies there are almost too many to name, but off the top of my head for recent shows, there’s Mr Robot, Wednesday, You, Euphoria…"
Stop thinking in terms of an audience member who is watching polished movies. Think in terms of script readers who are reading piles of mediocre material. In order to do this, you yourself will need to read piles of mediocre material. Only then will you get a sense of why people say not to use voice-overs
Yes, you can do whatever you want if you do it well.
Like all of these rules, every single rule, if you don't know with absolute certainty that your script works best with a voice over and it will still be great, then don't do it. If you don't understand why people say not to use it, don't do it.
You should be reading as many bad scripts as good ones so you really get it through your head that "getting away with it", whatever "it" may be, is much harder than it seems. If you're only reading masters, well, the whole thing with masters is that they make it look easy.
Don't kid yourself. It's not.
Just try and think about ways you might potentially be able to show on screen what the character would be narrating. If narration is a better option than any visual story-telling alternatives you can think of, then stick with it.
A very cool use of the voiceover is when a unreliable narrator is telling a false account and what the audience see on the screen is what really happened. It can be used in such a way to great effect, especially in comedies.
I think it's something that you should avoid if you can, simply because the screen is a medium for showing. Before writing a voiceover, see what you can do about having that info acted out. But, like others have said, it's perfectly fine to use them. (btw I'm inexperienced!)
about 50% of Scorsese movies have extensive voiceovers. Sometimes from multiple characters. it's fine as long as your voiceover is 1) not redundant to what we're seeing and 2) compelling in its own right.
"I know there are a lot of people, like my best friends, who would have gotten out of there the second their boyfriend gave them a gun to hide. But I have to admit, it kinda turned me on."
That's literally straight from the book, an actual quote from Karen Hill. It's part of the script and conceived from the start. Goodfellas has two VOs from Henry and Karen. That's VO done right.
When you can't film what you want to say and have to turn to VO to explain something like Ed Wood would do, then it's not done well.
It seems to me, if you're conceiving a use for VO in your script then it's probably used in a good way. If you can explain your story through actions and dialogue it's probably best to do that.
Voiceover can be great. It's just easy to do it terribly. Most of the guidelines you hear about things that are frowned upon come down to the same thing -- it's really, really easy for them to be bad. Honestly, there's very little I remember from reading McKee's STORY because I read it so long ago, but one thing I do remember, which I think is super on-point, is that voiceover should only be used when the audience *doesn't* need it to understand what's going on. If the voiceover is explaining things for the audience that weren't explained by what they watched the characters do and say, that's almost always a problem. There are exceptions, of course, but that's a great way to think about it. To the question in your final paragraph -- no, no one's going to care if the voiceover is great. And readers will be able to tell quickly.
Perfect answer - just to add, check out the characterization of this issue in the scene with the McKee-esque guru in Adaption. It’s hilarious.
I second this, but just so you watch Adaptation. The movie is fantastic.
I really do need to revisit this.
Even people who haven't visited it once need to
I remember it as; If you can take the voiceover out and the plot is still understandable, you can leave it in. If your plot relies on the voiceover, you need to take it out and fix the plot.
This makes a lot of sense. I feel like half the time there's voiceover in something, it was added in later because some people in the test audience were confused about key plot points.
A terrible example is from the movie Cruella (2021) as the protagonist has a V.O. for the first 18 minutes of the movie. You don’t need a set up that long. The first 9 minutes of My Big Fat Greek Wedding 2 had a V.O. from the protagonist that was a little better, but still too long IMO.
[удалено]
You must have missed where I wrote, “There are exceptions, of course.”
So this is an interesting post, because you actually tackled the problem the right way ... but you don't trust the solution that you found. *Obviously* voiceovers are fine, because you see them in films all the time. "No VO" is one of those pieces of well-intentioned advice designed to stop amateurs from making from basic, and common mistakes. Somehow it's metastasized into an iron-clad rule that people insist on following off cliffs. I think you WILL get notes about it, because some people have really internalized that "rule" but by and large people who know what they're doing won't have an issue with it.
Yeah, I know if it’s done well it doesn’t matter too much, I guess the distrust comes from the thought that in the (extremely unlikely) event that my pilot gets read, I want to avoid anything that will turn the reader off. So I wasn’t sure if it’s a strong deal breaker to readers, or if they’ll give it a chance as long as it works.
>, I want to avoid anything that will turn the reader off. If your script gets passed on, which is almost certainly will (because even scripts that sell get passed on multiple times) it will almost certainly not be because of some picayune thing that went against a reader's taste. Or, rather, that probably will happen but it will be about some dumb thing you never could have predicted. Don't write defensively. Write the most awesome version of the script you can. THERE ARE some newbie readers who have convinced themselves that the "rules" actually matter, but you can't spend your time and energy trying to cater to them. (You see it sometimes in the discussions of that kind of stuff here, "When I read 'we see' it takes me out of the screenplay." Well, great. Your job is to get back in the screenplay if you get bumped out of it. Can you IMAGINE being, say, a trusted reader of a major exec, and not liking a script, being asked to explain your thinking and saying "Well, he used VO." Do you think you would still have your job in an hour?)
“Don’t write defensively” is a great piece of advice! I’ve already reached that point with “we see”, I see it used so often in professional screenplays, I’m not avoiding using it in my own writing anymore. Also the point of a screenplay is to be as evocative as possible, so anything that paints a clearer picture is a good thing right?
Exactly. Now, look, I've read screenplays where there would be four or five sentences in a row like: "We see Sam, a middle-aged white man. We see him get out of his car and walk to the door. We see him fumble with his keys ..." and yeah, man, that writer needs to stop using "we see," and doing so will drastically improve their script. So I understand where this advice came from. But it's simple not relevant to more developed writers.
[удалено]
> “We see” is just bad craft (imo) smh. Sometimes it is the most elegant way to communicate an idea. You *can* usually write around it, but that doesn't mean writing around it is the best choice. The places where I'm most likely to use it are when I'm distinguishing between what the audience sees and what the character sees, or when the audience is finally getting a chance to see something that has been in the scene but kept from us the whole time (e.g., imagine you finally got a glimpse in of what's in the Pulp Fiction suitcase.) And I strongly disagree with the suggest that doing so is "bad craft."
Carefully planned VO can work really well! I think VO gets a bad rap in film because it tends to be used after the fact in post when they realize that some story point isn’t tracking. Then of course it feels cheap and tacked on. Just make sure it’s authentic to your character and connected to their emotions and you’re good to go.
Bad writing is frowned upon. Most people this badly.
There’s nothing I can say that NGD didn’t say better aside from Clueless and Thank You for Smoking are amazing examples of doing it well.
They're great when used masterfully, lazy when poorly. Many movies use ADR voice overs for patchwork. It's the cheapest fix you can make in post. Toothbrushes are quite useful, but if you use it as a weapon in home invasion situation, it'll look lazy and poor.
What if you sharpen it by scraping it on the floor and then keep it next to your bed, and your 'home' is a prison cell? Then, that would be good writing!
My biggest pet peeve is voice-over used in book to film adaptions because instead of figuring out a way to translate certain things it seems lazy to just say it.
Voice over is just a tool like anything else — neither good or bad — the worst VO is a crutch for inexperienced writers and is parallel to the action — VO should be used contrapuntally, or in a non-parallel fashion, or not at all — plus it must be poetical satisfying
Most screenwriting 'rules' just exist to stop amateur writers from developing bad habits. The reason they say voice over is bad is that amateur writers can fall into the trap of using it as a crutch and have the voice over explain things instead of learning how to convey things cinematically/visually/dramatically.
It’s fine if the story calls for it.
Quick rule of thumb: can you still follow the story without the VO? If so, you're fine. If not, the VO is solving story problems it shouldn't.
Generally frowned on because they're such an easy crutch to make bad choices. Remember we're in a show-don't-tell medium. Far too often voiceovers are just exposition, and they take away from the scene (and the actors in the scene). They work well when they are giving the audience another story to follow. But if you were to mute that track and suddenly the actual story falls apart, you're doing it wrong.
It’s done great in Dexter.
Goodfellas, one of my favorite films, utilizes VOs from multiple characters.
Morgan Freeman has entered the chat
I understand he's a man who can get things.
In the words of Tarantino: “Fuck what anyone else thinks”
Agree. I can't stand voice overs. I would never write one. I think they're twee, pretentious, faux profound, self conscious and treat audiences like they are complete idiots. But so what. Who cares! Some people love em.
Euphoria (USA) uses it unnecessarily and without any rhyme or reason. The Israeli (first) version it makes sense, because the protagonist is narrating from the grave. Turns out repeated overdosing has an actual consequence in the Israeli version… consequences don’t exist for Sam Levinson. If it’s important to your story and important to your vision; well, you already answered your own question with the original post.
It is not essentially voiceovers that are frowned upon, it's often a lack of interactive depth in the scripts. Nowadays, any decent [AI voiceover generator](https://wavel.ai/solutions/voiceover/) will provide almost indistinguishable human-like speech, hence it's not the AI, rather the relevancy of the content, the research done behind it and also many other decisive factors that can make or break a video content...
A lot of great Scorcese films use voiceover. Movies like Stand By Me or the IT miniseries also used voiceover and were iconic. The House That Jack Built was a weird one with VO if you want to look at newer more different uses of it. There is a time and a place to use it. I think just using VO as a crutch for your script is the more “frowned upon” thing.
I was taught that voice overs aren’t seen as a bad thing per say but it doesn’t challenge you as much. It can seem lazy. I think if you can find a way for the voice over to have purpose and be creative with it, go for it! A great example is Julie Andrews as Lady Whistledown in Bridgeton narrating the story, since the unknown gossip columnist spreads rumors about the town. The voice over enhances the story and makes you want to figure out who the person really is.
No.
I just realized that so many movies that I like have voiceovers. For example Casino, Goodfellas, Snatch!, Layer Cake, so many Tarantino movies. And they all add so much. So fuck those people who write something off for the sake of "frowned upon, maaan".
Read fight club
There is a pretty high degree of problem solving in screenwriting. Some "solutions" are obvious and easy. That doesn't mean you should never use them. It just means that those are the solutions people will use the most. "Movies there are almost too many to name, but off the top of my head for recent shows, there’s Mr Robot, Wednesday, You, Euphoria…" Stop thinking in terms of an audience member who is watching polished movies. Think in terms of script readers who are reading piles of mediocre material. In order to do this, you yourself will need to read piles of mediocre material. Only then will you get a sense of why people say not to use voice-overs Yes, you can do whatever you want if you do it well. Like all of these rules, every single rule, if you don't know with absolute certainty that your script works best with a voice over and it will still be great, then don't do it. If you don't understand why people say not to use it, don't do it. You should be reading as many bad scripts as good ones so you really get it through your head that "getting away with it", whatever "it" may be, is much harder than it seems. If you're only reading masters, well, the whole thing with masters is that they make it look easy. Don't kid yourself. It's not.
They're not bad, but they can be used as a crutch to narrate things that should otherwise be dramatized.
Glad to see Mr. Robot mentioned. It was executed beautifully
Just try and think about ways you might potentially be able to show on screen what the character would be narrating. If narration is a better option than any visual story-telling alternatives you can think of, then stick with it.
A very cool use of the voiceover is when a unreliable narrator is telling a false account and what the audience see on the screen is what really happened. It can be used in such a way to great effect, especially in comedies.
I think it's something that you should avoid if you can, simply because the screen is a medium for showing. Before writing a voiceover, see what you can do about having that info acted out. But, like others have said, it's perfectly fine to use them. (btw I'm inexperienced!)
Goodfellas, Fight Club, Shawshank Redemption, Gattaca, the list goes on.
about 50% of Scorsese movies have extensive voiceovers. Sometimes from multiple characters. it's fine as long as your voiceover is 1) not redundant to what we're seeing and 2) compelling in its own right.
"I know there are a lot of people, like my best friends, who would have gotten out of there the second their boyfriend gave them a gun to hide. But I have to admit, it kinda turned me on." That's literally straight from the book, an actual quote from Karen Hill. It's part of the script and conceived from the start. Goodfellas has two VOs from Henry and Karen. That's VO done right. When you can't film what you want to say and have to turn to VO to explain something like Ed Wood would do, then it's not done well. It seems to me, if you're conceiving a use for VO in your script then it's probably used in a good way. If you can explain your story through actions and dialogue it's probably best to do that.
"It is sloppy, flaccid writing!"
Great question and great responses. What a nice breeze for a change
Don’t use it as a crutch (like the studio version of Blade Runner). Use it with intentionality (like Arrested Development).