Using "Voice Over" with your Video

Narration which accompanies video is called voice over. Voice over (VO) is usually added in the studio. The speaker is given a microphone and the voice is recorded directly to the computer or to tape. Commercials and documentaries commonly use VO. We see footage of World War II on screen, for example, and hear the voice of Robert Redford describing the scene to us. Many times video alone can tell the story. But sometimes VO narration is essential.

In planning a video presentation, consider the role that narration will play in the finished piece, since this will determine how the project is assembled. Lets look at two typical scenarios.

1. Recording the narration before the video.

   You have lots of still pictures and slides that you would like to transfer to video tape. These are pictures of family activities from the 1940's and 1950's, and your Mom is on hand to identify the people in the pictures and to reminisce about them. You and your brother have lots of questions to ask, as well.

   Here it would make sense to do a narration session before transferring the pictures to tape. You look at each picture together, recording your Mom's comments and your questions and answers as they occur. Then, after all the pictures have been looked at, you record video of each for as long as is necessary to cover the audio (question and answer) portion of the tape which addresses this picture.

   Lets suppose that for the first picture your narration -- your questions and your Mom's answers -- took a minute. This is a very long time to hold on a single visual image.

   Perhaps there are important details in this picture of your parent's first home -- the funny old carpet, the ragged teddy bear, the beautiful grandfather's clock in the corner, for example. Rather than leaving this picture on the screen for a minute, you might choose to zoom in for a closeup looks at things in the picture as your Mom talks about each detail in turn.

   It's this ability to fit the pictures to the narration that makes laying down the VO first so desirable when creating a family history or special interest video from still images and slides.

2. Recording the narration after the video

   In a second scenario, imagine that you have taken a great deal of video on a photo safari to Kenya. After editing out the "bad parts" -- places where the camera work is shaky or out of focus, or where you left the camera running in the trunk of the car -- you want to add narration to enhance the details of your visual record.

   In this situation you would take your edited video home and figure out what you could say about each segment within the time provided from the beginning of the edit until the next cut or dissolve. Then you would come back to VideOccasions to insert the audio into the video.

Last modified 2/12/07