Three Tips for Writing Documentary Narration
Narration is making a comeback! The omniscient voice-of-god narrator is being usurped by personable voices that lend mood and an appealing point-of-view to your documentary film.
Last week I shared several tips for writing intriguing narration to my Inner Circle members. You’ll learn three tips in this newsletter from the many we discussed.
But first, I invite you to join me for a free teleseminar on “Writing Personable Documentary Narration” on Tuesday, May 17th, 5:30-6 pm PST. Register at:
https://newdocediting.com/writing-documentary-narration/
Second, need funding for your film, right now? Join film fundraising expert, Jilann Spitzmiller, for “FIND YOUR CROWD, FUND YOUR FILM”, an in-depth, step-by-step webinar series that will teach you the strategies for Crowdfunding success. A small investment in the series will catapult you forward to more funding and better distribution opportunities, guaranteed! Check out: http://www.crowdfundingsummit.com/film-webinars to see more details. New Doc Editing folks get a 15% discount when you use coupon code NDE15!
Note that writing good narration is very labor-intensive. According to PBS producer Jon Else, it can take 20-30 business days to complete spoken exposition for a narration-heavy film. That includes research, writing, reviewing, fact-checking and recording.
But the resulting narration will enlighten, awe and move your audience, if you know the tricks of the trade.
First, here’s a tip about using numbers. They don’t always work. Big numbers may have no meaning to viewers. It’s much better to use comparisons. It’s more personable. For example, rather than tell the audience how many people live in Lima, Peru (8.38 million), convey a sense of the population not with numbers, but in a phrase such as “a city the size of New York City”.
Instead of saying that “health care cost $253 billion in 1980 and now costs more than $2.3 trillion”, consider using numerical comparison that a viewer can wrap his or her head around. For example, “Health care today costs eight times more than 30 years ago.”
You’ll have to do a little research to come up with these comparisons, but I researched the previous two sentences on the web in just 2 minutes. You can ask your film’s experts for meaningful comparisons as well.
Second, apply the “need to know” test. The first part of your documentary is likely to convey most of the film’s exposition, so in order to avoid what “Documentary Storytelling” author Sheila Curran Bernard calls “Frontloading” the Set Up, convey only the story points and information needed.
Specifically, apply this question to each line of narration, “Does the audience need to know this?”
A third and related point is to weed out unnecessary dates, as well as proper names for people and places. I recently story consulted on a historical film about the Enlightenment. We cut out half the names of people and places, as well as specific dates, because the audience did not need to know them. Most of the names were in French, Italian and other Germanic languages, making it even more challenging for an English-speaking audience to process and retain the information. Clarify your exposition in the barest sense.
On another note…you’ll learn how professional documentary filmmakers craft narration and structure world-class films when you join my upcoming New Doc Inner Circle, beginning June 1st, 2011. Limited to five filmmakers, the Inner Circle gives you extremely detailed story guidance and energetic peer support over a six-month period. For more information, email me or register at:
https://newdocediting.com/land/innercircle/
Again, the link to register for the free teleseminar on “Writing Personable Documentary Narration” is: