Narration

Narration is a set of representational, organizational, and discursive cues that deliver the story information to the audience. The fiction film should be thought of as a text, a collection of narrative systems, each of which functions and exists in its own history, with its own stylistic options. For instance, during the short film, Vincent, by Tim Burton, the narrator is reciting what seams like a poem with impeccable timing that tells the story of the on screen stop motion character.

Vincent is a 1982 stop-motion short horror film written, designed and directed by Tim Burton and produced by Rick Heinrichs. It is the second Disney's horror film, the first being The Watcher in the Woods. It lasts just over 5 minutes in length, there is currently no individual release of the film except for a few bootleg releases.

The film is narrated by actor Vincent Price, a lifelong idol and inspiration for Burton. From this relationship, Price would go on to appear in Burton's Edward Scissorhands. Vincent Price later said that the film was "the most gratifying thing that ever happened. It was immortality—better than a star on Hollywood Boulevard."

Vincent is below:
















Vincent is the story of a 7 year old boy, Vincent Malloy, who pretends to be like the actor Vincent Price (who narrates the film). He does experiments and has multiple personality's. He is obsessed with Edgar Allan Poe, and it is his detachment from reality when reading them that leads to his delusions that he is in fact a tortured artist, deprived of the woman he loves, mirroring certain parts of Poe's "The Raven". The film ends with Vincent feeling terrified of being tortured by the happenings of his make-believe world, quoting "The Raven" as he falls to the floor in frailty, believing himself to be dead. He also annoys his Mum because of the odd ways he acts.

Examples of short films using narration to good effect

run from Mat Johns on Vimeo.


43,000 Feet from Campbell Hooper on Vimeo.


The Psychology of Dream Analysis from rcjohnso on Vimeo.

Pros/cons of narration:

Pros:

• The ability to describe what each character is feeling.
• The ability to describe things arbitrarily, like surroundings.
• The ability to switch around places, citing things (like events far away) that you couldn't accomplish in 1st person.
• Being able to focus on each character equally, unlike 1st person where you focus mostly on yourself.

Cons:

• You can't really give a 100% in depth characterization like you can in 1st person, at least not as quickly or efficiently. It can be done, but it needs to be drawn out to be good and not too wordy.

Importance of dialect/clarity
When using narration you must be sure that your recorded speech/sound is clear. This is because when adding it to the film footage you need to be sure the audience can hear and understand it. Also, you must be careful as a persons dialect can also make it hard for the audience to understand what they are saying, this can affect the viewing experience. I have had this issue when recording the voice over for my AS Media Studies film opening. For my opening I recorded a voice over using the microphone in the camera. This did work although it could have been clearer by using the music technology department at my school to record it using professional sound equipment. I also could have chosen a better voice as I used an adult with a slight Norfolk accent, this meant the dialect was not proper English which can be noticed and can cause the audience to form an opinion.