Voice Over Or No Voice Over?

Okay I was writing the draft for the pilot of a tv show I got the idea for about a month ago. A dramedy about a young nurse moving into a midwestern city and taking a job in an abortion clinic to pay the bills.

Anyway I'm stuck on a artistic decision: Should I give the protagonist a voice over or not?

Considering her choice of profession I'll got to make sure that the audience has a reasonable amount of sympathy with her and knows of her feelings and thoughts. So giving a her an inner monologue seems like a petty clear way of doing that. Oh the other hand considering the subject matter I was thinking it would be best to keep the tone as realistic as possible, perhaps even Pseudo documentary in style. So having easy access to main character's thoughts would be intrusive at best.

What's your view on the use of voice overs? Do you find it acceptable, even intimate? Or just clunky and alienating.

edited 29th Dec '10 8:47:35 AM by joeyjojo

Voiceovers are usually used badly, because they're literally infodumps. (Though some are less dragging than others) Ideally, you'd be able to garner sympathy, hint at inner feelings and so on just from what the characters say and do.

Get ahold of the first few seasons of Dexter. They use voice overs extensively and even insert comments mid sentence. It works because part of the schtick is trying to figure out how the protagonist's mind works.

Or Scrubs.

If you're going to use a narration, use it sparingly and try to keep it interesting.

Voiceovers if done well add a great deal to the story, keeping the pace fast without confusing the viewer; as has been stated, they are basically info dumps, but there are places where a single sentence can sum up a concept way better than a visual image. its a cheap trick but it works really well, which is in turn why its used so often.

Voice overs work the best when they are funny or at least humorous in some way. Deadpan tough-guy narration got overused to the point of parodying itself during the film noir days (basically a case of Seinfeld Is Unfunny).

A great example of a modern voice-over use is the film Lord Of War; Nicholas Cage's deadpan snarking and vast understatements make the first half one big Crowning Moment Of Awesome.

An example from that film; the main character is about to complete his first arms deal; he's sitting in a cheap motel room nervously flipping through an UZI manual.

Nic: Selling your first gun is a lot like the first time you have sex...you have no idea what you're doing but it is exciting, and one way or the other its always over way too fast.

VO can be used for different purposes, so you have to figure out what purposes you want. First is exposition, second is internal reflection and third is outside voice snarking, which can sometimes be self-snarking. (Any others?)

Most uses of VO are for exposition which is why I found Dexter to be so entertaining, because it didn't use it. It is mostly first person but wanders off into third person to explore subplots of other characters or even to set up the main character.

One of my big turns offs for VOs is when the narrator is too slick and cocky— they make complex allusions and metaphors or they're soooooo snarky and witty in their heads. It just grates.

If you're going the pseudo-documentary direction, you have easy access to a VO in the "personal camera" that is omnipresent in today's reality programming. That way you get into her head with a very understandable reasoning, plus you have the chance to use Unreliable Voice Over and play with whether what she says to the camera reflects what she really thinks.

What I always thought would be interesting is if you had a Voice Over that was very very rambling, so you got an Infodump, but it was all useless. Just throwing that to the wall...

Like the opposite of Conservation of Detail?

Be careful going that route.

My Idea for the MC's personally was to be fairly flaky and slightly self obsessed so that would suit her.

Sarah Silverman with a Job?

Use VO sparingly.

Or even better, customer needs abortion, she tells her story of woe. Nurse snaps at Customer. VO: I always get cranky without my morning bowl of Krusty-os. Customer: more woe. VO: Because I had no milk. Customer: more woe. VO: When I went to the milk-store, I left my wallet at home. Customer: more woe. VO: Why does everything happen to MMEEE???

edited 29th Jul '11 9:56:38 AM by Trotzky

Unless you're really using it for a legitimate purpose, it looks like a cop out. (Making exposition easier to write doesn't count as a legitimate purpose.)