Still looking at the use and effectiveness of voice overs to help with the editing of the Night Journey piece we look at another set of films.
A Million Feet of Film which is a documentary about the editing of Apocalypse Now and Hearts Of Darkness which is just an overall Documentary about the Making Of Apocalypse Now (Coppola, 1979). The use of voice overs in these documentary films are pretty substandard to the ones we have seen in the previous weeks. The only difference being that we are aware of who is speaking, the words of whome ever is currently speaking cross between being sync sound and narration as the edit cuts between them speaking and what they are speaking about. The interesting thing is to see how the cuts between the various speakers and even bits from the actual movie interlace. How one person mentions the name of another, and thus it cuts to them, or to them in action as a charcater also how the cuts on their dialogue is only between interesting facts, keeping the audience entertained.
Hannah and Her Sisters (Allen, 1986) where the use of voice over was described as a thought track voice over whereby the person whose voice we are listening to is describing what he thinks and feels at that current moment in time. Putting the audience into their state of mind almost immediately. This is in comparison to the retrospective voice overs we have been previously looking at.
[1.47 to 7:25]
It is interesting how this voiceover starts, whereby the character reads the line that appears in white script over a black backing which starts his monologue "God She's Beautiful". After that it is in some ways disguised as to who is speaking as all eyes are one the woman who is being talked about, until the voice talks about how she squeezed between him in the door frame and thus our wondering suspicious eyes have found our narrator, our guider of events in this film. During theses to events there is only one cut. We watch as if we the audience are the preying eyes of the narrator, the first cut ensuing when she squeezes past him, thus allowing us to get a clear look at whose head space we are invading, before it cuts back to us preying on her. Not only that but we are so enraptured by the voice especially when he notes that he is lusting over his wife's sister, that you don't notice that there are only two cuts, and we blink with them as is described in Murch;'s In The Blink Of An Eye. The more exhilarating the less blinking and thus should be correlated with the number of cuts
Other little pieces that are ensembled to help this piece include the instrumental that plays during the opening credits; You Made Me Love You by Harry James, which can be seen as foreshadowing. Another note on the sound is how the tune that plays during the monologue Stardust by Charlie Barnet is then taken from the reigns of the sound editor and becomes part of the production sequence as it is being played on the piano. A mirror of what happened with the text to speech earlier mentioned.
After taking a look at our rough cut , Chris made the following comments that we should consider when cutting for the final;
-Consider the characterization of the cannibal.
-No break in the voice over to absorb what is being said.
-Strip down the dialogue and work on the sound design.
-Dramatic moments.
-Construct a beginning that draws in the viewers.
-A shock ending.
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