Use of Narration

Narration can be a really important part of Short film, as it can help the audience to understand what is going on, as it can be hard to communicate a storyline in a short film to help the director get across what they are trying to say, and to help the audience understand what is going on.

For my AS piece I used narration in the opening 2 minutes of "The Life of Emily Banks" to engage the audience with my character, she introduced herself and her background that we understood her as a person, as I thought that this was a really good way of enticing my audience by familiarising themselves with my character, she was letting them into her life. We also see narration in the film "Mean Girls" at the beginning so that we can understand where shes from, and that she has moved to America from Africa, so it gives an instant insight into her life so that we already know what is going on before the film starts, it was a really good way of communicating what was going on so we can connect with her, and also engages the audience by adding some comedy.

Narration is used in many feature length, short films, TV series as it is another tool which is used for Breaking Fourth Wall and can add some comedy and personality to a programme or film.

Narration has changed a lot over the years, for example 1950s Radio and TV narration with a very proper English accent, as at the time that was what was seen as proper and you would rarely hear any accents on TV, Film or Radio, another example of this is the film "Mary Poppins", The Banks family are very upper class and Mary Poppins, their Nanny all have very proper English accents but Bert, the Chimney sweeper, has a very Cockney accent, this is typical of this era as it was seen as very "Working Class" to have any accent that wasn't prim and proper.

Times have changes and now we see a lot of regional identity in narration, as it is now understood that a narrator has to be clearly spoken, yet doesnt have to be really Britsh for the audience to understand what they're saying. For example the Big Brother narrator, Marcus Bentley, has a strong Geordie accent which is one of the most recognisable voices in the UK, even to people who don't watch Big Brother. accents are a really good way of getting some character into the medium.