The phantom being of the voice-over

Using film excerpts from a wide range of films, this seminar explores the essence of voice-over: a means of expression within cinematic language that – like music – operates in the film’s extra-diegetic space.

Spoken words invariably appear in tension with the image. 

A voice-over rhythms, induces or fabulates, may or may not be reliable, but above all is inescapable.

A spoken sentence can impact like a sledgehammer blow.

Voice-over is a weapon that can pry open a film like a can opener, charge images like a battery or lay a film on its head as if with gripping pliers.

Voice-over is an essential matter of film, like image, sound and time, and is the means par excellence to regulate a cinematic distance.

We assume that a voice ‘belongs’ to someone, or more specifically, to some body. The voice thus expresses and inhabits the body: it is organic and alien at the same time, a ‘feature’ that also expresses a kind of subjectivity. In its relation to speech, voice is both ‘flesh’ and “sense”: in words, we hear ‘a voice that is still mysterious, indeterminate, on the slope of meaning’.

We explore how voice-over functions as ‘flesh’ or ‘meaning’ in film, through excerpts from contemporary filmmakers, old Hollywood films, films by SIC coaches or former SIC participants.

Those who want to venture into voice-over must go to war prepared:

Where is the voice coming from, who is speaking and to whom?

With what intent is it spoken, and what does the voice sound like?
By what detours and twists can one shape the effect of a voice-over on the viewer without stating the obvious?
And how, after all, does one describe a voice?
Every attempt reveals how elusive its singular quality truly is.

What is certain is this: the voice exerts power over the body.
Such is the lesson of the legend of the Sirens, whose enchanting song so overwhelms sailors with longing that they are lured to their doom, and steer their ships to ruin on the rocks.