subject: Narration Is The Act Of Storytelling [print this page] Narrators give character to books, missives, commercial messaging, live events and scripts. Narration is used for such mediums as film, television, radio, websites, and podcasts. These voice-overs are audio recordings that may be used in perpetuity, often stored and archived in digital form.
Using the spoken word as a vehicle of expression, narrators are able to captivate, amuse and delight their audiences as well as educate, persuade and instill information.
The Human Voice and Narration
The art of narration, and also the ability to narrate, is comprised of a combination of several elements including the narrator's mental faculties which enable them to interpret a script and its context, the narrator's imagination to color the words, and prominent use of the narrator's voice to deliver a written message to their audience.
Narrators posses a unique voiceprint, no two voices are the same. Narrators also make definite choices when interpreting the text that is before them, resulting in content that is as individual as it is expressive.
History and Development
Narration, sometimes called storytelling, was developed by ancient civilizations, claiming its earliest roots in prehistoric times through oral tradition, passing down stories and tales from person to person, or storyteller to storyteller over generations and across geographical boundaries through troubadours traveling to distant lands carrying news from one location to another.
Techniques
Narrating audio books is a marathon that requires the ultimate balancing act of artistic and technical endurance coupled with the ability to continuously suspend the audiences' disbelief.
Suspension of disbelief means that although the listener is quite aware that the narrator is only telling a story, no matter how fantastical, they decide to put that fact in the back of their mind to enjoy the show, suspending their disbelief in order to be entertained and embrace the narrator's world and a different reality as intended by the author.
The steady voice of a trained narrator provides many things for the listner including; balance, structure, an anchor, touchstone, verbal perspective, interpretation, intelligence, and a window into the writer's mind.
The Art
A narrator provides companionship on the journey you are taking and affirms what you are seeing as it unfolds. They're goal is to captivate, persuading the viewer to stay on the journey until the end.
Narrators provide security for the listener. They can spur on new thoughts, segue eloquently when required and persuasively convey emotion using the most powerful and innately wonderful tool in humanity's communicative arsenal -- the human voice.
