While I think McKee is too absolutist, there is a lot of bad voice over and narration in features and documentaries.

Some of the best docs like Hoop Dreams and Frederick Wiseman's films don't have narration.

David Fincher said he was very careful in recording Edward Norton's voice over in Fight Club so it would sound like thoughts in his head.

(posted in two parts because of too many links)

Jessica Yu used Dakota Fanning very well for the narration in The Realms of the Unreal (which should have gotten an Oscar nomination).

I'm going to see her on a panel and Hiroshima Mon Amour (which I haven't seen since college) Saturday as part of the Asian American International Film Festival (the link is to my preview). If you're in San Francisco, HMA is at the Castro at 5 pm.

As a fan, I'm on the record for preferring voice-over to excision of thoughts in movie scripts.

Steve,

Many documentaries avoid overlapping narration: Robert Drew and Richard Leacock (Primary), D.A. Pennebaker (Don't Look Back), and the Maysles Brothers and Charlotte Zwerin (Salesman, Gimme Shelter.) So did another recent documentary, the Oscar-nominated The Story of the Weeping Camel. I'm sure it's a very difficult thing to do, just letting the images speak for themselves.

Please note I'm not opposed to no narration; I just don't think that including narration is a fault.

Adrian Martin is a 'he', not a 'she', and I should know!

Sorry, Adrian -- my bad

The best choice for the narrative...

There are many choices of expression available to any artist in any medium. Whether expressing ideas through voice-over, flashback, dialogue, event structure, imagery, symbol, and others, the artist chooses the type of expression that best communicates an idea with the audience.

McKee may have been heavy-handed with his remark on voice-overs. He may be stating it overzealously to call attention to how the voice-over expression has been abused.

Either way, it's speculation.

The critical point isn't whether voice-over is valid, but identifying where and when it's the best choice of expression. A post that quantifies another's opinion as "for amateurs" might not be as beneficial to aspiring writers, or the blogger's credibility, as blog post that attempts to help a writer consider when the voice-over should be considered.

But I suppose that would be the more difficult choice, requiring critical thinking and an effort invested in clarity of argument.

Much like the choice to write without voice-over.

Robert McKee is not wrong because if he read this article he would probably disagree with one thing and one thing only: the fact that he is believed to hold a different view somehow. In fact, McKee could have himself written or at least subscribed to pretty much any factual statement or value judgment made within this article. The problem is not with McKee, but with those that oversimplify his message.

The phrasing used by Adaptation's version of McKee may indeed sound too absolutist; however, Kaufman, not McKee, authored everything in that movie including McKee's seminar lines, and it's a far simplified version of McKee's actual viewpoint (while McKee endorsed and helped with the movie, his endorsement may simply mean that he did not care enough to change it, rather than fully subscribe to it).

The way McKee approaches the topic in his book 'Story' is far more flexible. While he does take issue with voice-overs as a shortcut/excuse for being lazy (and for this reason may discourage beginning, inexperienced writers from even thinking of using it), he fully acknowledges that the technique can work fabulously when used for good reason by someone who knows what they are doing:

"Like the Flashback, it's done well or ill. The test of narration is this: Ask yourself, 'If I were to strip the voice-over out of my screenplay, would the story still be well told?' If the answer is yes . . . keep it."

"Counterpoint narration is Woody Allen's great gift. If we were to cut the voice-over from 'Hannah and Her Sisters' or 'Husbands and Wives' his stories would still be lucid and effective. But why would we? His narration offers wit, ironies, and insights that can't be done any other way."

Doesn't this sound a bit like, "All great lines, all voice-over, all perfectly memorable, and all achieving emotional effects you couldn't possibly get through just dialogue" (see article above)?

While I agree with all the points this article makes in favor of voice-over, it seems to me that Rodney Welch has chosen a wrong opponent to fight against. In reality McKee and Welch hold pretty much the same opinion of the subject. The only people from whom voice-over should be defended are those who misunderstand and oversimplify what McKee actually says. This may or may not include Charlie Kaufman, as well as all those film students or audience members who overreacted to McKee's words of warning to beginning writers and mistakenly took it to be a blanket dismissal of ALL voice-overs, rather than merely a dismissal of BAD and LAZY voice-overs, which was McKee's point.

Have any of you actually read Robert Mckee's, "Story". If all you know of this literary giant is what you've heard or seen in adaptation then you're attack on him is unfair and erroneous in the extreme. When discussing the technique of voice over in, "Story" Mckee says, and I quote, "If you can take out the voice over and have the story still work... keep it in. You most likely have found one of the rare, elegant uses of the device. Voice over for exposition is a lazy, artificial and pathetic device and god help you if you use it. But voice over used to color the narrative can be a wonderful device indeed."

If you pay attention to all the excelent voice overs listed in the main article you will find that none of them are used solely for exposition and the movies could work just find without them. To write an article in defense of voice overs is like writing an article in defense of the color blue. It is merely part of the artist's pallete. Robert Mckee is attacking bad uses of the device, not the good ones, and he says as much in his all-popular book.

Sorry for those of you who bought the five videos. "Story" costs less and will teach you more.

In response to the discrepancies between the fictional "Robert McKee" and the "real" Robert McKee, its a rather obvious one, in drama you are going to "exaggerate" this "mythic" figure for comic/dramatic purposes so there was no "realism" intended on the part of the filmmakers.

However, there is also a fundamental difference between the "written" word (McKee's word's in "Story") and the "spoken" word (Kaufman's words as delivered by Brian Cox in "Adaptation"), one could say this is yet another adaptation (or translation) in itself.

But, this "spoken" language is clearly embedded in McKee's comments about voice-over, his words are extremely macho and full of bravado ... so i feel the screen version of McKee and what he declaims is actually quite accurate "caricature" ... yes he makes allowances for when voice-over is appropriate (and not in most cases), but they are on his "absolutist" terms ... one could in fact conclude that Robert McKee is in fact the ultimate "voice-of-God" narrator!

[an aside Robert McKee thought Harold Bloom ("Anxiety of Influence") should have played him in the film]