Problems it Can Solve

Let’s say that during shooting you remembered to elicit all relevant expository information from participants. You assembled the movie to see how it stood on its own feet but you face some problems:

• You are having difficulty getting the film started (convoluted and confusing setup).
• The origin and therefore authenticity of the materials are in doubt (it might be reconstruction, for instance).
• The film is too long and lacks momentum (material that links the best sequences is clumsy and slow).
• The audience needs more information on a participant’s thoughts, feelings, choices.
• Overcomplicated storyline requires simplifying.
• Getting from one good sequence to the next takes too much explaining by the participants.
• Film’s resolution lacks focus so film fails to resolve satisfyingly.

Your film has expository problems when a lukewarm trial audience becomes enthusiastic because you added comments after the viewing. Narration may be the only way to supply the missing information succinctly, but you will have to tread carefully.

Drawbacks

Narration that is less than first rate is intrusive and hampers rather than advances your movie. You’ll have to decide whether any narration may pose problems because the disembodied voice adds a mediating presence between the audience and the film’s “evidence.” Unless the narration comes either from the filmmaker or one of the characters, viewers are apt to assume that a narrator’s voice is the voice of the film itself. This means they base their judgments not just on what the narration says but also on the quality and associations of the voice. This is why finding a suitable voice is extraordinarily difficult. In effect, the search is for a voice whose words and quality convey your attitudes toward the subject.

If you choose the male “radio voice” and write too commandingly, your narration will seem like the voice of authority with all its connotations of condescension and paternalism. Audiences wait wearily to discover what product or ideology the film is touting. The intelligent documentary, on the other hand, uses narration sparingly and neutrally, inviting audience members to use their own judgment, values, and discrimination.

Positive Aspects

Narration is a lifesaver when it rapidly and effectively introduces a new character, summarizes intervening developments, or concisely supplies a few inarguable facts. Especially when a film must fit much into a short duration, time saved in one place is time won for more useful purposes elsewhere. Narration:

• Supplies brief factual information.
• Makes you take responsibility for the identity of your film.
• Avoids emotional manipulation.
• Avoids value judgments, unless first established by evidence in the footage.
• Avoids predisposing the viewer in any direction.
• May indicate visual or verbal aspects of the evidence that we might otherwise overlook.
• Lets the audience draw conclusions from the evidence.

A narration can draw on existing traditions of stylized voice already established in literature, ballad, and poetry. Documentaries may, therefore:

• Use a character’s voice-over as narration because he or she has insider knowledge and a right to an opinion.
• Take a historical view, as in films that omnisciently survey immigration, war, slavery, etc.
• Adopt the guise of a naïvely inquisitive visitor (as in films by Nicholas
• Broomfield, Michael Moore, and Morgan Spurlock).
• Take a what-if, suppositional voice, as in Cayrol’s commentary for Alain Resnais’ Night and Fog (1955, France). Its authority—and whether you know it or not seems to make no difference—comes from Cayrol being himself a Holocaust survivor.
• Express a poetic and musical identification with the subject, as in Basil
• Wright and Harry Watt’s Night Mail (1936, United Kingdom).
• Radicalize the audience by using a bland or understated way of looking at an appalling situation, as in Luis Buñuel’s Land Without Bread (1932, Spain).
• Use a letter- or diary-writing voice, as in the authentic war letters from which Ken Burns builds much of the narration for his series The Civil War (1990, United States).
• Write a diary for the next generation, as Humphrey Jennings imagined a war pilot doing in A Diary for Timothy (1946, United Kingdom). The narration (by the novelist E.M. Forster) projects the hopes of a war-weary generation.

Two Approaches to Creating Narration

Method 1: Read From a Script

This, the traditional method, can work well if you base your film’s verbal narrative on a bona fide text such as letters or a diary, when the unavoidable formality present in anyone’s reading will feel right. But, if you want spontaneity or a one-to-one tone of intimacy, written narration almost always fails. Just think how often the narration is what makes a film dull or dated. Common faults include:

• Verbosity (a writing problem)
• Heavy or literary writing (a writing problem)
• Doubt over who or what the narrator represents (a question of the narrator’s authority)
• Something distracting in the narrator’s voice—dull, condescending, egotistic, projecting, trying to entertain, trying to ingratiate, or that holds distracting associations (a performance or casting problem)

Recording a read narration is inherently risky, so do it well in advance and to picture (described later). Expect to record scratch (temporary) narration and keep changing it until you get it right. Never assume it’ll be all right on the night. It never is.

Method 2: Improvisation

Improvised narration can rather easily strike an attractively informal, one-on-one relationship with the audience. Examples include:

• When a participant serves as narrator
• When you use your own voice in a diary film that must sound spontaneous and not scripted
• When you want to create a composite poetic voice, say, of a Japanese woman carrying out a tea ceremony (a highly questionable “speaking for” ploy but formerly more acceptable)

Let’s look at what’s involved with each method.

Writing

Signs of bad narration include:

• The pseudo-scientific passive voice
• Sonorous, ready-made phrases and clichés
• Convoluted sentences
• The syntax of writing or literary discourse
• Jargon or other language used to impress
• Over-information (constant talking, which robs the audience of time to imagine or guess, is often inflicted by films for children)
• Description of what is already evident
• Condescending humor

Signs of good narration include:

• The direct, active-voice language of speech
• The simplest words for the job
• Language free of clich é
• The most meaning in the fewest syllables
• Language that is balanced and potent to the ear

As you edit and re-edit your film, keep rewriting in search of the power of simplicity. Exult when you find a way to reduce a sentence by even one syllable. Test your writing by reading it aloud to one or more listeners. For some reason, this makes one acutely aware of all that’s still wrong.

The Tryout

Now read your words aloud against each film section. The narration must:

• Pick up its sense from the words of the last speaker and feed into those of the next.
• Match them rhythmically.
• Be the right length so the narrator doesn’t have to speed up or slow down to fill the space.

Expect to go through many drafts before everything feels right and falls into place. Sometimes the needs of narration require you to adjust ends and beginnings of scenes.

Alter Syntax to Match Screen Logic

Sometimes it helps to invert the syntax so the narration follows the order in which the audience notices things. For instance, if you have a shot of a big, rising sun with a small figure toiling across the landscape you might write, “She goes out before anyone else is about.” But, the viewer notices the sun long before the human being, and your writing negates the order of perception, so that the viewer, unaware at first of any “she,” loses the rest of the sentence. Reconfigure the syntax to follow the order of perceptions (sun, landscape, woman) and you get: “Before anyone else is up, she goes out.” This complements the viewer’s perceptions instead of swimming against the tide.

Accommodate Sound Features

Sometimes you alter phrasing or break sentences apart to create spaces for featured sound effects, such as a car door closing or a phone beginning to ring. Effects can create a powerful mood that drives the narrative forward, so don’t obscure them. They also help to mask the bane of documentary—too much talk, impolitely known as verbal diarrhea.

FIGURE 32-1 Different cutting points imply different identities for the portrait’s subject.

The Power in Each First Word

Here’s a little-known fact that will make you a great editor: During a flow of images, the first word to fall on a new image influences how the audience interprets it. For example, suppose we have two shots cut together, as shown in Figure 32-1. The first, outgoing shot is a still photo showing an artist at work at his easel, and the second, incoming shot shows a painting of a woman. The narration says, “Spencer used as a model first his wife and later the daughter of a friend.”

Different juxtapositions of words and images actually yield quite different meanings, and the crux lies in which word hits the incoming shot, as illustrated in the diagram. By using a single, unchanging section of narration and positioning it differently we can in fact identify the person in the portrait three different ways, depending on how it sits against the three images.

In another situation, illustrated in Figure 32-2, a simple shift in word positioning may alter only the emotional shading attached to an image rather than its basic identity. For instance, you see two shots, each of a piece of sculpture, and you hear the narrator say, “His later work was provocatively different.”

By altering the relationship of narration to incoming image by a single word, the second sculpture becomes either just “different” or “provocatively different.” Skillful writing and sensitive word placement gives you a potent tool of communication.

Operative Words

Though you often write to images, in editing you must often do the opposite and place images against dialogue or preset narration. There is a little-known secret to doing this effectively. In any section of speech, there are strong and weak points against which to lay a picture cut. To spot the strong ones, listen to the stress patterns in the speaker’s language. They indicate dominant intentions by stressing—in slightly higher volume and note—the key syllables. Suppose a mother says this to a recalcitrant teenager: “I want you to wait right here and don’t move. I’ll talk to you later.”

FIGURE 32-2 The first word on each new image affects how we interpret its meaning. Such operative words are italicized to demonstrate how emphasis can change. In (A) the later sculpture seems like a departure in the artist’s work, while in (B) the second sculpture evoked an excited reaction.

Different readings suggest different subtexts, but a likely one is: “I want you to wait right here and don’t move. I’ll talk to you later.” Stressed words represent the dominant intention, so I think of them as operative words. We would design images to this piece of dialogue in a split-page script like this:

By cutting to a new image on the operative words, you punch home the mother’s determination and imply the boy’s stubborn resistance. This principle and the rhythms that accompany it permeate the editing of fiction and documentary films. Use Project 1-AP-6 Analyze Editing and Content on a fine feature film dialogue sequence, and you will come to understand all the thinking behind the editing. In great part, it responds to the nuances in the playing, not something theoretical or imposed. It is highly structured by the inherent rhythms of physical movement and dialogue.

A potent way to use language when you are editing is to listen like a foreign musician. This makes you listen for clues to meaning within the verbal music people make while conversing. Within a single sentence you hear rising and sinking tonal changes, rhythmic patterns in the stream of syllables like percussion, and dynamic variations of loud and soft. Now your editing, shot selection, and placement begin taking place inside a musical structure and form a new, larger structure. Here film, music, and dance coincide.

Complement, Don’t Duplicate

When you write for film, never describe what we can already see. Narration must add information to what we see, never duplicate it. For example, don’t say that the child in the shot is wearing a red raincoat (blatantly obvious) nor that she is hesitant (subtly evident), but what you can say is that she has just had her sixth birthday. This is outside what we can see or infer and is legitimate additional information.

Trying it Out: The Scratch Recording

Once you have written your narration, record a scratch (quick, trial) narration using any handy reader or your own voice. Lay in the scratch narration and watch it several times dispassionately. Improved versions will jump out at you. You’ll see where you need pacing and emotional coloration changes and that you must thin the narration out where the narrator is forced to hurry. Elsewhere the narration may seem perfunctory because it needs developing. You can now more easily imagine what kind of voice you’d prefer. Keep writing and rewriting until you’ve got every sentence and syllable just right. Now you are ready to think about auditioning and recording the final narrator.

A Script for the Narrator

The script prepared for the narrator should be a simple, double-spaced type-script, containing only what the narrator will read. Set blocks of narration apart on the page and number them for easy location. Try not to split a block across two pages, because the narrator may turn pages audibly during the recording. Where this is unavoidable, lay both flat during the recording so no handling is required. Putting pages inside plastic page protectors will keep them from rattling. If you write a contract for the narrator, stipulate a proportion of call-back time in case you need additions at a later stage.

Voice Auditions

To test native ability, give each person something representative to read. Then ask for a different reading of the same material to see how well the narrator responds to direction. Sometimes the reader focuses effectively on the new interpretation but is unable to hold onto what was previously successful. Another reader may be anxious to please and can carry out instructions but lacks a grasp of the larger picture. This is common with actors whose main experience is commercials.

After you make audition recordings, thank each person and give a date by which you will get back in contact.

Because choosing a narrator is choosing a voice for the film, you will reject many types of voice because of their associations. For any number of reasons, most available voices simply won’t sound right. As with any situation of choice, you should record several, even when you believe you have stumbled on perfection. Select the speaker by trying his or her recordings against the film until you are satisfied. Your final choice must be independent of personal liking or obligation. Make it solely on what makes the best narration voice.

Recording and Directing the Narrator

Show your chosen narrator the whole film and listen to his or her ideas about what it communicates and what the narration adds. Encouraging the narrator to find the right attitude and state of mind has much to do with getting the words to sound right. When we speak, we speak from thoughts, experiences, memories, and feelings; invoking the whole person of the narrator gets better results than imagining that everything is on the page.

Record in a professional fashion—that is, with the picture running so the narrator (listening on headphones) can key into the rhythms and intonation of adjacent voices in the film. As you go to record each section, the narrator should cease watching the picture (that is the job of the editor and director) and his or her headphones should be cut off from track in and out points, which would be distracting. No access to a studio? Set up your own rig with video playback and original sound available to the artist via headphones. It will be more than worth the trouble.

Large organizations have access to landlines, conferencing facilities, and so forth that make it economically feasible to record a narrator who is distant. This may work for history, science, or journalism, but a narrator in a remote location is difficult to engage emotionally for films that require a personal tone. No fiction director would choose to work miles apart from their actors, nor should you.

Acoustic Setting

Your best voice recording will probably come from having the speaker about 1 to 2 feet from the microphone. Surroundings should be acoustically dead (not enclosed or echoey), and there should be no background noise. Listen through good headphones or through a good speaker in another room. It is critically important to get the best out of your narrator’s voice. Watch out for the voice trailing away at ends of sentences, for “popping” on plosive sounds, or distortion from overloading. Careful mike positioning and monitoring sound levels all help.

The narrator should read each block of narration and wait for a cue (a gentle tap on the shoulder or a cue-light flash) before beginning the next. Rehearse first and give directions; these you should phrase positively and practically, giving instructions on what feeling to aim for rather than why. Stick to essentials, such as “Make the last part a little warmer” or “I’d like you to try that a bit more formally.” Name the quality or emotion you are after. After rehearsing each block, record it and move on to rehearsing the next.

Sometimes you will want to alter the word stressed in a sentence or change the amount of projection the speaker is using—“Could you give me the same intensity but use less voice?” or “Use more voice and keep it up at the ends of sentences.” Occasionally, a narrator will have some insurmountable problem with phrasing. Invite her to reword it while retaining the sense, but be on guard if this starts happening a lot. Sometimes narrators want to take over the writing. Let the narrator do it only if you can hear definite improvement.

Once you have recorded all the narration, play all the chosen parts back against the film so you can check that it all works. If you have any doubtful readings, make additional variants before letting the narrator go. These you audition later and use the best.