Voice Overs: Definition

Voiceovers: offscreen, offstage or otherwise unseen narrations, announcements or vocal utterances — voice — usually (but not necessarily) heard over visual images.

These are all examples of voice overs:

  • radio and TV station identifications,
  • documentary narrations,
  • voicemail greetings,
  • web voice-assist prompts,
  • corporate video narrations,
  • training narrations,
  • radio commercials,
  • off-camera television commercials,
  • medical narrations,
  • audio book narrations,
  • Mary Alice Young‘s insights on Desperate Housewives, and
  • the most famous line in Citizen Kane (because it was added to the scene with enhanced sound effects in post production — after the scene was shot).

The term voice over originally came from the film industry. It was the term used to designate on the movie script the off-camera voice heard over the onscreen action.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

*


You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>