the.com/voiceover
A disembodied voice that gets to narrate your life without ever living it.
means A voice track recorded separately and laid over footage or performance, narrating, explaining, or supplying dialogue the viewer never sees spoken aloud.
from A 20th-century compound from film and broadcasting jargon, literally 'voice' placed 'over' the visual or musical track. It emerged alongside radio and cinema sound technology, as studios needed a term for narration added in post-production rather than spoken on camera — the word just describes the physical act of laying audio over picture.
- origin
- Started in 1920s radio and newsreels
- economics
- Pays per word, not per hour of effort
- paradox
- Most persuasive when speaker is invisible
- trade secret
- Warm tone sells more than loud tone