Basically in my script, the characters recieve ransom videos from a masked man on camera, and the masked man speaks in a scrambled voice. Should I write (SCRAMBLED VOICE), in parenthesis, next to the masked character's name, in order to describe that, or no?
-
Wondering which camera, gear, computer, or software to buy? Ask in our Gear Guide.
If a character speaks in scrambled voice, how should I write it?
- Thread starter harmonica44
- Start date
I think you mean altered, not scrambled. Scrambled means you wouldn't be able to understand it. Altered means it's been changed to mask their real voice.
Nothing comes to mind but you should look up produced screenplays that have phone conversations or scenes with video where the voice is altered.
What movies have you seen that have people speaking in altered voices?
Nothing comes to mind but you should look up produced screenplays that have phone conversations or scenes with video where the voice is altered.
What movies have you seen that have people speaking in altered voices?
One movie I could think of where this happened, was Ransom (1996), but could not have that script online. I will try to think of more.
The disguised voice isn't in the "Batman Begins" script. The first time he speaks as Batman it's just BATMAN and then the dialogue with no instructions as to change of voice.
I already looked for RANSOM before I posted above and could only find a transcript.
Trying to think of other films where phone convos happen with disguised voices but drawing blanks. Maybe some bank job heist films?
Wiki for Voice Changers lists these films: Scream, Saw, Super Troopers, Steel, Home Alone 2: Lost in New York.
Not sure if any of those indicate the altered voices in the screenplays.
That's true, but I want it to look more professional when it's finished. I read the Scream script, and there isn't really a parenthetical for the man with the distorted voice. However, in scream though, the audience is not meant to know who the man is. Where as in my script, the audience is completely aware of it. So they wonder why the character who they know chooses to talk in a ransom video, and not wonder why his voice is not being recognized by the people who know him. So therefore, I probably have to put something in so the audience knows the voice is distorted.
"Look more professional"
What about DISTORTED VOICE?
It is so easy to overcomplicate every tiny detail.
As if asking a forum on the internet to take all your (in)decisions looks professional.
Last edited:
Totally! This is called bikeshedding.
http://bikeshed.com/
If you are unfamiliar:
bikeshed + -ing. The term was coined as a metaphor to illuminate Parkinson’s Law of Triviality. Parkinson observed that a committee whose job is to approve plans for a nuclear power plant may spend the majority of its time on relatively unimportant but easy-to-grasp issues, such as what materials to use for the staff bikeshed, while neglecting the design of the power plant itself, which is far more important but also far more difficult to criticize constructively. It was popularized in the Berkeley Software Distribution community by Poul-Henning Kamp and has spread from there to the software industry at large.
Popular term in software/tech but applies SO WELL to filmmaking.
It is brilliant!
The audience isn't going to be reading your script....