Narration can be a key feature in an opening to any film. It can help the audience to connect with and understand a character, even before they've met them. For example in "American Beauty" we hear the character of Lester Burnham before we see him.
The speech that Lester gives the audience also gets them interested in the story. When he mentions that he only has 1 year to live we instantly questing "why?" and are roped into the story to see how it all happens. This is an example of how important the diolouge of a character can be and how narration can lock the audience's interest into a story.
Of course, the character's narration is nothing without a solid character. For it to have that extra edge, I believe that we need to hear somekind of emotion behind the chaacter's voice. It can't just be an actor mumbling into a microphone and layering it onto a clip. We must have what's said said in a powerful or interesting way. It's almost like an art, there must be reasoning behind the words the character says, and even reasons behind why the character pauses. But this can only be achieved through use of strong characters, which is why character development is so important.
In this video we see Don LaFontaine, the man with, possibly, the most recognisable voice in the world... Other than Morgan Freeman.
In this clip we can see how he uses different aspects of his golden voice to create different atmospheres for different films. We can see the contrast between his pitch and tone in "The Simpsons Movie", in contrast to "Terminator 2: Judgement Day". Although he doesn't use his talents for acting as characters, I can still take the lessons he gives us and apply them to the narraction of characters, if I choose to utilise that. Either way, I can see how important voice is, even if it's not used for narration.
-BW
No comments:
Post a Comment